Constructing Global Citizenship Education: An analysis of OECD discourse on global competence

Abstract: Global Citizenship Education (GCE) has gained increasing conceptual popularity in recent years. The term has been used by governments, NGO’s and international agencies alike to promote a larger inclusion of global skills, values and attitudes in curricula across the world. However, GCE as practice is not a clearly defined framework and may involve many distinct themes and rationalities in its different expressions. A recent development has seen the OECD decide to include global competences as a field for testing in the 2018 round of PISA. As the largest scale attempt yet to measure the outcome of GCE, this decision will have implications for how GCE is conceptualized and approached in the more than seventy countries currently participating in PISA. This thesis therefore examines how the OECD discursively determines GCE by employing discourse theory as developed by Laclau & Mouffe. On the basis of this analysis, the implication of OECD’s discursive articulations for educational practice are discussed. The thesis concludes that the OECD constitutes GCE as an enhancer of global competitiveness, which creates an antagonistic relationship to the cosmopolitan conception of GCE as fostering global community.