Social studies education in Argentina: Hacia Una Ciudadania global?

Abstract

The purpose of our article is to investigate and report on a document analysis study of social studies education in Argentina. In particular, our focus is on the progression of citizenship education and the inclusion of global perspectives in social studies education within Argentina’s elementary schools. Like many other countries in the world, Argentina has followed a growing trend to include global perspectives in their national curricula. We investigate the contours of what this entails for Argentina’s elementary schools. We begin the article by situating our purpose in the larger field of global citizenship education. Next, we review the literature and describe Argentina’s socio-historical context and report on how that context informs Argentina’s education system. We then move to the study’s methodology, which is grounded in the following research questions: (1) How is social studies organized in Argentina and how has the purpose of social studies evolved over time? (2) To what degree, if any, are global perspectives represented in Argentina’s elementary social studies curricula? To address these questions, we employ document analysis research design (Bowen, 2009). In this analysis, we review Argentina’s education policy documents and social studies curricular documents. We follow Fereday and Muir-Cochrane’s (2006) three-prong approach for data analysis of documents. We share the findings of the research based on the aforementioned questions. We conclude the article with a discussion of how environmental awareness, human rights, and global competencies are included in the initiative to increase global citizenship education within Argentina’s social studies curricula.