Learn From and Act With: The Global Citizen Attitude

“Learn from and act with.” That’s the motto of the Critical Global Citizenship course at ISK. It’s not a phrase that I personally coined; versions of it are common in the literature related to participatory action-research. Nonetheless, this phrase is one that I’ve come to embrace as the essence of GCED. It’s more than a slogan; “learn from and act with” represents a mindset, and GCED is largely about supporting the growth of this mindset.

GCED is included in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Target 4.7 of the Quality Education goal (SDG #4) focuses on Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship. UNESCO defines GCED as an approach that “aims to empower learners to engage and assume active roles both locally and globally to face and resolve global challenges and ultimately to become productive contributors to a more just, peaceful, tolerant, inclusive and sustainable world” (UNESCO, 2014, p. 15). UNESCO’s framework for GCED includes three conceptual domains: the cognitive, the socio-emotional, and the behavioral (UNESCO, 2015). The cognitive is about gaining the knowledge and competencies to engage global Issues; the socio-emotional focuses on building empathy for people and planet; the behavioral refers to responsible action, both locally and globally.

The Critical Global Citizenship course at ISK is meant to be the capstone of the larger GCED mission of the school. Students are required to take it as a one-semester course in their senior year; it’s a final opportunity for students to wrestle with the ideas and practices of global citizenship before they leave ISK and head out into the world. The course immerses students in theoretical texts and theories debating the question, “What does it mean to be a global citizen?” At the same time, students engage in participatory action-research with two community partner organizations. Students practice active-listening and non-judgmental observing; they conduct qualitative interviews and observations. Their focus is on the perspectives, expertise, and lived experiences of the members of the two community partner groups. The students go into their interviews and observations saying, “these individuals are the experts on their own experience in this community; I want to learn from that expertise.” It’s from this stance that partnership actions have arisen. It’s about learning from and only then, acting with. 

The power of this “learn from and act with” motto is perhaps best understood in the way that it flips-the-script on many typical approaches to global citizenship. Tied to GCED, schools sometimes pursue community service or service-learning initiatives that take a form more like learn about and act for. Students often learn about global issues detached from the lived experience of the communities impacted by them (and often removed from the local context in which the school is situated). They then propose and enact what they determine is a way to fix the problems and help the affected communities. This is not an approach that fosters a global citizen mindset; instead, it promotes a mindset of superiority and us-versus-them. Furthermore, from a purely practical perspective, it’s an approach that often fails to actually fix anything or help anyone, which risks fostering in students a mindset of frustration and apathy.

I have described “learn from and act with” as a mindset, but I increasingly prefer the term attitude. In everyday language, attitude is often used to describe a temporary mood or disposition. In social psychology, however, an attitude refers to something much deeper: the underlying beliefs, values, emotions, and motivations that shape how individuals interpret the world and decide how to act within it. These internal orientations are powerful because they consistently guide behavior over time. Social psychologists also describe a related concept known as cognitive dissonance, the discomfort that arises when actions and attitudes are misaligned. When this tension occurs, people are compelled to make adjustments, either by changing their behavior or by reexamining their beliefs. In this way, a shift in attitude often leads to meaningful and sustained changes in action.

From a social psychology perspective, “learn from and act with” represents an attitude. It’s an attitude that inclines students to go out into the world and engage with global issues and in the local communities in which they end up living. It’s an attitude that impels them to consider the lived experience and expertise that already resides within those local communities. It’s an attitude where the students approach their neighbors with humility, as listeners and learners, prioritizing relationships with them. It’s an attitude where students take responsibility for their actions in the world, both at local and global scales. It’s an attitude that prompts students to act with others around them on common concerns, connecting those concerns to broader global issues.

The social psychology concept of cognitive dissonance also points to methods for encouraging the development of this “learn from and act with” global citizenship attitude. According to the cognitive dissonance concept, attitudes drive actions, but the reverse is also true. One’s actions can force a realignment of one’s attitudes. In other words, to develop a “learn from and act with” attitude students need to actually practice learning from and acting with others, including others different from themselves, others in the community outside of the school, and others elsewhere in the world. In the Critical Global Citizenship course at ISK, student attitudes are shaped partly through the theoretical readings, debates and discussion, but also as the students actually practice learning from and acting with through a participatory action-research process with community partner organizations. As students undertake this exercise, focused first on learning from the community partners, practicing non-judgmental observation and active listening, they develop relationships. Sometimes meaningful actions arise from those relationships, but more importantly, through this process, the students begin to adopt the “learn from and act with” attitude beyond the research exercise, outside of the class, further than the school, and into their post-high school selves. I think that’s the mindset of a global citizen; that’s the global citizenship attitude.

References

UNESCO (2014). Global citizenship education: Preparing learners for the challenges of the 21st century. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000227729 

UNESCO (2015). Global citizenship education: Topics and learning objectives. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232993