These six capacities provided a framework for the choice of independent and dependent variables that were analyzed, as discussed below.
Data
As noted, to analyze our research question quantitatively, we used data from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). In particular, we used the 2016 dataset from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS), a large-scale international comparative study that investigates the ways in which young people, specifically lower-secondary school students (mainly in Grade 8), are prepared to undertake their roles as citizens. ICCS reports on levels of students’ civic knowledge, their understanding of concepts and issues related to civics and citizenship, as well as their civic attitudes and engagement. The survey gathers information about the implementation of Civic and Citizenship Education (CCE) as well as other relevant
variables (Schultz, 2016; ICCS, 2016) 1 (see Chapter 2 for a critical discussion of this data and its relevance to our study). Although the focus of ICCS is on CCE rather than GCE, the 2009 and 2016 ICCS datasets have been identified as a “primary source of data for comparable citizenship-related learning outcomes” (UNESCO, 2019,
p.191) and a valuable source for measuring most dimensions of GCE (Hoskins, 2016; UNESCO, 2017b).
In total we considered 23 countries, but here we only report on the results for a subset of these countries. The countries included in this study are:
Belgium (Flemish region), Bulgaria, Chile, Chinese Taipei, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Russia, Slovenia, South Korea, and Sweden.
Although we analyzed data from all 23 countries, in the interest of brevity, we decided to include a narrower set of countries in our reporting. We selected twelve countries, with the aim of presenting a sample of the most significant results from different parts of the world included in the ICCS 2016 survey. The map in Figure 1 provides a visual representation of the countries we considered in our sample.
1 Source: ICCS 2016. Copyright © 2016 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). Publisher: IEA, Amsterdam
Figure 1. Map of countries represented in our empirical analysis Source: ICCS 2016 .2
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Figure 2. Percentage of students taking part in multicultural or intercultural activities in the local community and in human rights projects.
Source: ICCS 2016.
For each of the above countries, we have databases (from surveys) containing information about students, teachers, the school, and the nation as a whole. The surveys were completed by students and teachers themselves, while the schools questionnaire was completed by school principals, and the national context survey was completed by the national research coordinators; see more details in Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti (2016).
The samples in each country were designed as two-stage cluster
samples. In the first stage, probability proportional to size procedures were used to select schools within each country. In the second stage, within each sampled school, an intact class from the target grade was selected at random, with all the students in this class participating in the study.
Therefore, for each participating country, the 2016 ICCS data have a multilevel structure [see Snijders &
Bosker (2012)], with students nested within classes/schools. The surveyed students are representative samples of the population of Grade 8 students in each country. Each national sample satisfying the participation standards set by the IEA is equally weighted (Schulz, Carstens, Losito & Fraillon, 2018).
The students surveyed had access to many classes and activities that were related to global citizenship. For example, as shown in Figure 2 many of them had the opportunity to take part in multicultural and intercultural activities, and human rights projects.
However, Figure 2 also shows that a significant percentage of these students did not participate in these activities because they did not want to do so or because the school did not offer them.
Using the school dataset, we
obtained information about school’s neighborhood [e.g. share of affluent students, social problems around the school, etc.], teacher’s preparation to teach CCE subjects and how CCE was taught; i.e. whether it was an extra-curricular class, the experience of the school as a whole, an independent subject, etc. Figure 3 shows who taught CCE. From this we see that in general these subjects were taught by the head of department of human/
social sciences, followed by non-specialized teachers, then by the teacher responsible for cross-curricular projects and the civic and citizenship education coordinator.
Framed by the six capacities that our study identified as central to Global Citizenship Education (Table 6), we used relevant survey information on CCE as a proxy for GCE at different schools. This meant that we identified variables that could be considered attributes of GCE (attitudes to diversity, tolerance, respect, political participation in supranational
institutions). This approach has been adopted by UNESCO, who integrated ICCS data on CCE into their analysis of GCED (UNESCO, 2019). Thus, in this analysis section, we refer to CCE to stay close to the items of the ICCS survey, but in subsequent chapters we refer, to GCE in our discussion of results when appropriate. This decision is premised upon the notion that there are strong areas of convergence or overlap between CCE and GCE, and on the fact that the CCE variables chosen for this analysis were matched to the six capacities that our study identified for GCE (Table 6). However, we do not assume that CCE and GCE are one and the same. In particular, responses from the ICCS include limited information on global identity and interconnectedness. They do, however, include attitudes towards global issues, diversity, migration and tolerance, central to GCE (see Table 6). Furthermore, in each student’s questionnaire, there are questions related to student’s background [e.g. language spoken at home,
parents’ studies, number of books at home, etc.] as well as their opinion on topics related to immigration, ethnic groups, nationalistic feeling, attitudes towards diversity, tolerance, equality and men and women rights.
We use the responses to these questions and the above proxies of Global Citizenship Education from the school datasets to assess the impact of GCE on young people’s attitudes, (community involvement, identity, living in diversity) and their wider implications for forms of conflict in society (ethnic, gender). Other information about school and teachers is used as control variables to assess the impact of Global Citizenship Education in different schools. We had to rely on the questions included in each questionnaire since schools could not be located due to their anonymity on the available datasets.
For each country we have more than 2,500 observations, indicating that our results are robust.
Figure 3. Who teaches Civic and Citizenship Education in the school?
. Source: ICCS 2016.
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Figure 4. Most important aims of CCE, identified by schools.
This figure shows the percentage of schools which implemented certain strategies Source: ICCS
2016.
Finally, Figure 4 shows the percentage of schools in the countries under consideration which implemented strategies to reduce racism, to promote the knowledge of citizens’
rights and responsibilities, and promote student critical and independent thinking. Except for the strategies that aim to reduce racism, the majority of the schools in our sample worked to promote the knowledge of citizens’ rights and responsibilities and critical and independent thinking.