Gender Differences in Transnational Youth’s Perceptions of Global Citizenship Education

Abstract

An increasing number of K-12 schools and educational organizations in the U.S. emphasize Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in their curricula. As a kind of social studies education, GCE is often marketed as an effective means to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to succeed in our unpredictable, challenging future. However, there is little research on how students, the target audience, perceive and may be influenced by GCE. As such, this study explores how transnational high school students in the U.S. respond to the GCE to which they are exposed and whether and how these views differ by their gender, racial, and socioeconomic identities. Through descriptive statistics, the data show that when students engaged with GCE, they 1) perceived themselves to learn more skills and conceptual understandings rather than factual knowledge, 2) perceived their schools’ formal curricula and diversity at school to contribute most to their learning, and 3) were influenced to change more in their thinking, not actions. These findings raise questions about how to balance teaching skills and knowledge, as well as GCE’s challenge in promoting critical action. Further, based on t-tests and ANOVA, the data show that girls perceived themselves to learn more global citizenship at school, that more aspects of school contributed to their GCE, and that GCE influenced their lives more significantly, compared with boys. While the study did not find statistically significant differences in participant perspectives based on socioeconomic status, it did show that in terms of racial differences, Asian transnational students saw themselves as being the least influenced by GCE, compared with White and other students of Color. Given these findings, further research is required to explore how GCE may be implemented more equitably for diverse students.