Exploring Current Issues in Global Citizenship Education

Abstract

This chapter presents, analyses and discusses empirical interview and focus group data collected from six Australian secondary schools in order to examine senior leader, teacher and student perspectives on exploring current issues as part of global citizenship education. In line with the previous two chapters, this chapter contains two main sections that present the perspectives of (1) senior leaders and teachers and (2) students respectively. These sections each cover two themes: current issues and religion. Analysis of the data shows significant variation between senior leaders and teachers regarding how they conceived and included (or not) current global issues and religious themes within their classrooms. Such variation was noticed by students, often in thoughtful and reflective ways, many of whom reported their desire to have more opportunity than was presently the case to engage in discussion about both current issues and religions as part of their global citizenship education.