Global citizenship education as a reflexive dialogic pedagogy

This article examines how senior educators (n = 5) located in Japan perceive global citizenship education (GCE) as a reflexive dialogic pedagogy in the university undergraduate course ‘Dialogues on Global Citizenship Education’. Reflexive dialogue is a form of guided and interactive introspection by which educators encourage learners to speak about their needs and values as viewed interactively through the prism of the topics discussed with their peers. It encompasses educators supporting learners by encouraging them to critically examine the assumptions underlying their actions and the impact of those actions (praxis). It fosters students’ ability to examine systems of inequality and the commitment to take action against these systems (critical consciousness). From this perspective, the GCE course presented the educators with an opportunity to engage learners in reflexive dialogue in relation to the most important social issues of our time (e.g. climate change, COVID-19, refugee crisis, immigration, gender inequality, civil rights, racial discrimination). Data were collected by means of questionnaires and responsive interviews with the educators co-teaching the course, then analysed with the use of grounded theory and the constant comparative method. The educators expressed the opinion that the type of reflexive dialogic GCE developed in the course (1) fostered students’ conviction in common values, (2) developed students’ intellectual humility, (3) nurtured students’ appreciation of ‘Otherness’, (4) advanced students’ multiple perspectives and (5) encouraged students’ understanding of the complex dynamics related to immigration. Based on the findings, this article concludes by making a proposal for a reflexive dialogic GCE framework informed by the values and knowledge of Freirean critical pedagogy ingrained in praxis and students’ critical consciousness development to implement principles of GCE in Japanese and international universities.