Teachers' Perception on Global Citizenship Education in ASEAN Countries

Abstract

also, educational materials and information are fully supported from school and government appropriately. Importantly, the study found that the perception of teachers on global citizenship education in ASEAN countries is not only influenced by their national education policies and types of teacher practices, but also other educational challenges such as lack of sufficiently qualified teachers, effective training, and low national educational budget allocations. Due to the challenges, the integration of global citizenship education in ASEAN countries is slow and tedious, aside from Singapore.

The purpose of the study is to understand the perception teachers have of global citizenship education in ASEAN counties. As interlinkages between people and places have increased enormously in the global era, global challenges require global solutions attained through global citizenship education. Hence the study focuses on the significance of the perception of teachers of global citizenship education as a way to constitute global solutions through transformative learning. The researcher reviews country reports and existing literature of ASEAN countries and conducts in-depth interviews with select teachers in Cambodia, Singapore and Thailand. The study finds that global citizenship education has already been reflected in the national basic education curricular of most ASEAN countries. Core concepts of global citizenship education are embedded in basic courses such as social studies, geography, history, and etc. Nevertheless, teachers have yet to acquire a clear understanding of what global citizenship education is in ASEAN countries excluding Singapore. Moreover, each ASEAN country has a different cultural and historical background and developmental status and thus, teachers from each country have different perceptions on global citizenship education. In particular, because Cambodia and Thailand have strong backgrounds in religion and humanity, moral values and human rights values were deeply rooted in their education curricula. However, the interviews show that the perception of teachers in Cambodia and Thailand is low due to the lack of a national education budget and excessive workload of teachers. By contrast, the teachers in Singapore do not find much difficulty in accepting and implementing global citizenship education