Going Glocal: A qualitative and quantitative analysis of global citizenship education at a Dutch liberal arts and sciences college

Abstract

Over the past decades, more and more institutions of higher learning have developed programs destined to educate students for global citizenship. Such efforts pose considerable challenges: conceptually, pedagogically and from the perspective of impact assessment. Conceptually, it is of utmost importance to pay attention to both structural inequalities and intercultural competencies, to emphasize both differences and similarities. In addition, there is the need to increase awareness of the dialectics between the global and the local. Pedagogically, this calls for transformative learning, with an emphasis on attitudes and skills, in addition to knowledge alone. Once objectives have been defined and translated pedagogically, such programs call for an assessment of the degree to which they have been met. In this light, this article describes the conceptualization and pedagogics of an innovative project, Going Glocal, designed at a Dutch liberal arts and sciences college on the basis of these premises and its impact on the university students concerned.