Futures and hope of global citizenship education

Abstract

This article provides a conceptual discussion of the role of hope in promoting global citizenship education (GCED) and argues that a global perspective in education requires a hopeful imaginative ethos to lay the foundations for a new transformative pedagogy. After introducing UNESCO’s recent report Reimagining Our Futures Together, which addresses urgent global challenges and assigns a major role to a global perspective in education, the article discusses the meaning of GCED as a non-neutral transformative approach in education. While this report, as well as previous ones, has been criticised for its visionary over-idealism and lack of attention to the power dynamics governing education, it will be argued that hope has transformational power and can play a political role in education. The article will then highlight contrasting ideas in envisioning different images of the future promoted by international organisations that have a significant impact on global educational policies and the construction of the global discourse on education. Finally, drawing especially on the legacy of Freire’s vision of critical education, radical hope is reviewed by comparing it with two related issues: utopia and optimism.