Citizenship and the challenge of global education - Audrey Osler

Teachers have the challenge of teaching for equity, justice and solidarity in plural and fast-changing societies where their students are well aware of inequality and injustice. How much does government policy encourage understanding of global interdependence and skills for democratic participation? How can schools integrate issues of citizenship, human rights and multiculturalism and what support do they recieve? Drawing on case studies from England, Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands, this text examines the institutional support provided in educating for global citizenship. It looks at the contradictions students and their teachers face when they compare what is learned in school with the messages from politicians and the media about refugees and asylum seekers, young poeple's rights, environmental issues and the impact of globalization.

Professor Audrey Osler is Director of the Centre for Citizenship Studies at the University of Leicester, where Kerry Vincent is Research Fellow. The Centre was a core partner in the EC-funded Global Education Thematic Network and the authors' study for the Network forms the basis of this book.

The voices of teachers, researchers and children from across the new Europe are compelling, and allow us to rethink our current understandings of important issues. Everyone will find something of interest here and it is to Trentham's great credit that they make such fascinating volumes available. Educational Review A book which will challenge the thinking of both teachers and student teachers, with its focus on human rights, cultural diversity and cosmopolitan citizenship in the 21st century. British Journal of Educational Studies