This paper reports on a reflexive exercise contributing a meta-mapping of typologies of GCE and supplementary analysis of that mapping. Applying a heuristic of three main discursive orientations reflected in much of the literature on GCE – neoliberal, liberal, and critical – and their interfaces, we created a social cartography of how nine journal articles categorise GCE. We found the greatest confluence within the neoliberal, greatest number within the liberal, and a conflation of different ‘types’ of GCE within the critical orientation. We identified interfaces between neoliberal-liberal and liberal-critical orientations as well as new interfaces: neoconservative-neoliberal-liberal, critical-liberal-neoliberal, and critical-post critical. Despite considerable diversity of GCE orientations, we argue GCE typologies remain largely framed by a limited range of possibilities, particularly when considered as implicated in the modern-colonial imaginary. In a gesture toward expanding future possibilities for GCE, we propose a new set of distinctions between methodological, epistemological, and ontological levels.

This article builds from scholarship in Environmental Education Research (EER) and Critical Global Citizenship Education calling for more explicit attention to how teaching global issues is embedded in the colonial matrix of power. We also consider the extent to which recent calls in EER for explicit attention to coloniality connect to discussions about posthuman thinking through a shared critical reading of modernity. We argue that ethical approaches to global issues, and pedagogical processes and practices that would contribute to them, are possible only if we recognize the relations of power that have shaped history and engage with critical modes of inquiry. Furthermore, we argue for the need to engage deeply with and confront historical patterns in concrete pedagogical practices in order to interrupt our own epistemic, political, ethical, and strategic place and categories. Finally, we will draw upon an example from our classroom-based research to consider how our findings relate to what is being called for in the critical scholarship of praxis, as informed by empirical studies.

This article builds from scholarship in Environmental and Sustainability Education and Critical Global Citizenship Education calling for more explicit attention to how teaching global issues is embedded in the colonial matrix of power (Mignolo, 2018). It reports on findings from a study with secondary and upper secondary school teachers in England, Finland, and Sweden who participated in workshops drawing on the HEADSUP (Andreotti, 2012) tool which specifies seven repeated and intersecting historical patterns of oppression often reproduced through global learning initiatives. Teachers reacted to and discussed the tool and considered how it might be applied in their practice. The paper reviews two of the key findings: a) the relationship between formal and nonformal global education and mediation of mainstream charity discourses, and b) emerging evidence of how national policy culture and context influence teachers’ perceptions in somewhat surprising ways.

This article extends and expands a nuanced unpacking of conceptualisations of critical global citizenship education (GCE) in typologies of GCE (Pashby, K., M. da Costa, S. Stein, and V. Andreotti. [2020]. “A meta-review of typologies of global citizenship education.” Comparative Education 56 (2): 144–164.). It finds approaches to critical GCE can be described in broad terms that conflate quite distinct agendas; critiqued as unpragmatic, idealistic, and morally-relativistic; and fail to engage substantively with their complicity within the systems they seek to transform. It then explores what a selection of empirical research on secondary schools in ‘global North’ contexts that draws on critical GCE analyses contributes to illustrating the possibilities and tensions of critical GCE in practice.

This article introduces the Special Issue ‘Mobilising Global Citizenship Education for Alternative Futures in Challenging Times’. Our call for papers was inspired by the 10th anniversary of a 2011 special issue on the political economy of global citizenship education (GCE) edited by Vanessa Andreotti. In this introduction, we review the main aims of this follow-up collection, noting the proliferation of scholarship on the topic of GCE and calls for more critical engagements. We outline the key provocations of the call for papers and review the contributions, setting out an overview of the landscape of the SI through intersecting themes, concerns, and possibilities. The articles in this collection demonstrate ongoing concerns around neoliberalism and how GCE is always implicated in the inequalities it aims to address. They also highlight emerging possibilities and further questions in response to current conditions. This collection contributes and maps new edges of debate within critical approaches, provides practical insights into reflexive approaches in situ, and sheds light on common and specific issues and possibilities across regions and across formal and nonformal educational contexts. We end the introduction by highlighting the contribution from Vanessa Andreotti that concludes the collection and articulates a ‘passing of the torch’ to those entering and continuing work in this dynamic field.