A Study on Secondary School Teachers Global Citizenship Type and Perceptions of Global Citizenship Education

Abstract

Sociable Citizens and Anti-political Citizens had higher scores on GCED perceptions. The results also reveal that among personal variables, teaching subject, overseas experience and frequency of contacting foreigners affect teachers citizenship type. Additionally, the findings show that the number of teaching years and the frequency of contacting foreigners on a regular basis affect teachers attitude toward GCED. In terms of teachers knowledge on GCED, the results show that the teaching subject and whether the teacher was trained about global citizenship education matter. In regard to obstacles and improvements to be made, the largest number of teachers answered that proper educational environment to implement GCED needs to be established. Therefore, providing more flexible environment for teachers to introduce global citizenship education to classroom seems to be an urgent task for policy-makers and school administrators.

In this globalized world, international society and educators have been pursuing a new paradigm of education in order to prepare todays youth for the future. Discussing post-MDGs, international agencies and INGOs reached an agreement to include global citizenship education in SDGs to be achieved by 2030. This study aims at gaining insight from current teachers perceptions on global citizenship education in order to find out the readiness of Korean secondary school teachers in the mist of international society and the Korean government pursuing global citizenship education for this new era of globalization. This study examines the global citizenship types of Korean secondary school teachers and their perceptions of global citizenship. The study categorizes teachers global citizenship types and looks into the relationship between global citizenship types and the perceptions on global citizenship education. It also explores the differentiating factors among personal variables that affect global citizenship types and GCED perceptions. Lastly, it seeks to discover what the obstacles to GCED implementation are and what needs to be improved. Quantitative method, more specifically, survey questionnaires, was used in order to gain the overall understanding of Incheon secondary school teachers global citizenship types and their perceptions on global citizenship education. In total, 253 teachers from seven schools and two teacher-training sessions participated in the survey. The study reveals that both groups of teachers can be divided into six types of global citizenship. Furthermore, they were presented as a result of cluster analysis: Sociable Citizen, Responsible Citizen, Anti-intercultural Citizen, The Less Interested, Anti-political Citizen, and Active citizen. Out of the six types, The Less Interested was the biggest group, which accounted for about 31% of the total. Only 17% of participants belonged to the ideal type, Active Citizen. Considering that teachers worldview affects the results of global citizenship education and students world view, the numbers indicate that Korean secondary school teachers need to improve their readiness. Teachers global citizenship types turned out to have a statistically significant impact on teachers GCED perceptions