Global citizenship education in school curricula. A Polish perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to present global citizenship education from a Polish perspective. Analyzing this issue, in the first part of the paper I am presenting the development of citizenship education, followed by the current status of global citizenship education in Polish schools. In the second part of the study I draw attention to national curricula and other supporting documents published after 1945, trying to verify whether the issues related to global citizenship education in Poland are included in the curricula, if so what do they highlight. In what follows, I argue that global citizenship education in Poland contains a framework based on world-centred perspective with a national context. In this understanding, global citizenship education aims to create a citizen that is a member of the world community, without giving up their own national identity. Polish perspective of global citizenship education urges pupils to consider the global problems as part of challenges of their own country, and offers perception of local and global problems being linked and complementary to each other.