Global Citizenship Education for Development as Universality: Goals and Missions of South Korea and the UK compared

Abstract

the second set consists of transnational GCED discourse, and the third set consists of GCED discourse that has been produced in Korea. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with five Korean graduate students with experience in the field of GCED in various capacities and one expert in GCED who is a professor of Korean heritage using Thomas (2006) general inductive approach. The conclusions reached based on the research findings are that transnational GCED discourse and curricula reflect a one-size-fits-all approach that is inappropriate because it lacks the cultural specificity required to be effective in particular contexts. At the same time, the study shows that such discourse creates a common discursive space that allows nations to agree upon shared goals, while those nations are nonetheless free in practice to pursue their own political agendas in relation to development. The implications of the findings are that a more critically oriented form of GCED is required if researchers and educators are to help prevent official GCED discourse in both the UK and South Korea from becoming nothing more than a marketing tool for development projects by the governments of both nations and others, and cause it, instead, to become a critical tool for the empowerment of citizens. To this end, an approach to GCED based on Adornos theory of conceptual experience, which could promote empathy through mediation, or, a qualitative change in the perceiving subject (OConnor, 2004), is proposed.

This dissertation was motivated by one central research question: What are the implications of the UK and Korea Global Citizenship Education for Development (GCED) missions and goals for the future advancement of GCED discourse domestically and transnationally? In this context, the sub-questions for the research were: (1) What is the purpose or rationale of GCED discourse? (2) What are the implications of a GCED discourse which is produced by and for individual nations? and (3) Are transnational or national forms of GCED discourse informed by grassroots or bottom up activities? One of the methods used to produce data to address the research questions was Critical Discourse Analysis, which was used to examine three sets of documents: the first set is representative of GCED discourse produced in the UK