GCGL

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Nussbaum (1997) identifies three capacities requisite for global citizenship education: 1. critical examination; 2. empathy; and 3. narrative imagination. All three – albeit with definitional liberty – have relevance to the teaching of global citizenship (hereafter “GC”) as applied in the specific context of business studies. The three capacities are here interpreted thus:

  1. A lens of “critical examination” opens this essay. The values and premises of business as academic discipline and practice are presented.
  2. Discussed in the second and third section is a particular curriculum within this discipline. “Empathy” here is the teacher’s understanding of students’ needs as inflected by GC issues, current globalizing trends, the requirements of employers, and the activities of multinational businesses.
  3. “Imagination” describes the possibilities that an intellect, informed by the curriculum and methods described, can bring to bear on business-relevant problems.[1]

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Roger’s trinity (1983) of congruence, empathy, and unconditional positive regard influenced this design. Congruence has a three-fold integrity (pedagogic alignment, cognitive structuring, theoretical and practical alignment, i.e. praxis). Triadic empathy occurs when business studies teachers successfully match the needs of employers with the needs of students with the needs of sustainability and global awareness (the last being particularly relevant for MNEs[1]). Unconditional positive regard reflects the anthropophilic and aspirational optimism inherited from the supporting philosophies.

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Operations management exists to fulfil the promises of business by providing manufactured items to customers; supply chains deliver those items. To attain Rogerian “congruence”, teachers and the teaching of operations management must be aligned with the ethos of practice or at least able to articulate the main philosophies behind it. ...continue reading →

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Falk (1994) identified five categories of global citizens:

  1. global reformers
  2. elite global business people
  3. global environmental managers
  4. politically conscious regionalists
  5. transnational activists

Boltanski and Chiapello (2007) argue that global participants is a more accurate term than global citizens, since production and consumption are globally diffuse, national identity-eroding activities, and flows of resources and labour are increasingly transnational. Thus, global participation is both the result and product of a “new spirit of capitalism”.

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Andreotti, V. (2006) ‘Soft versus critical global citizenship education’, Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, 3 (Autumn), pp. 40-51.

Beck, U. (2000) What is globalisation? Cambridge: Polity Press.

Berlant, L. (2011) Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Bhagwati, J. (2004) In defence of globalisation. Oxford: Oxford University press.

Biggs, J. (1996) ‘Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment’, Higher Education, 32(3), pp. 347-364.

Biggs, J. and Tang, C. (2007) Teaching for quality learning at university. 3rd edn.

Blommaert, J. (2010) The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Boltanski, L. and Chiapello. E. (2007) The new spirit of capitalism. London and New York: Verso Press.

Bolton, G. (2006) Reflective practice: writing and professional development. 2nd edn. London: Sage.

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Peterson and Warwick (2015) argue that global technologies represent a major form (and, by implication, force) of globalisation, so are indispensable to global learning. Because constructivist, student-centred notions of learning dominate global citizenship education, the learning environment has attracted scrutiny: alongside physical spaces, “specialist spaces” have been suggested (Rudd et al, 2009). These are digital technologies, typically social media resources that allow diffusely located students to interact.

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