Critical global citizenship of high school students in Indonesia and Japan

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a review of global citizenship and education to tackle global injustices. This study investigates the impact of school education and the national curriculums on students’ attitudes towards global citizenship and examines the features of critical global citizenship among Indonesian and Japanese students. According to a questionnaire survey, students in both countries had high levels of altruism, empathy and non-violent aspirations of the collective and low levels of fairness of rewards and non-violent aspirations of the personal. Indonesian students had a higher sense of personal and national responsibility; however, they did not recognize the structural violence of poverty. Japanese students recognized poverty as structural violence; however, they were uninformed about global human rights and lacked a sense of personal responsibility in global issues. Online international education and curricula should be improved to enable students to understand global issues and adopt a sense of responsibility towards them.