Global citizenship education in emergencies: a comparative analysis of curriculum materials for migrant students in Thailand

Abstract

ABSTRACT Global Citizenship Education (GCE) has increased significantly over the past several decades, though little attention has been paid to GCE in emergency contexts in the Global South. This study seeks to address this gap by comparing how GCE is represented in curriculum materials at public and private schools with migrant and refugee students in emergency contexts on the Thailand/Myanmar border. We employed a modified version of Oxley and Morris’s (2013. “Global Citizenship: A Typology for Distinguishing Its Multiple Conceptions.”) conceptual framework to conduct this mixed-methods study that applied content and critical discourse analysis to curriculum materials to explore how GCE representation differs between school types. Curriculum materials were found to differ significantly by school type and publisher, where internationally produced curriculum materials used in private Migrant Learning Centers (MLCs) were more oriented towards advocacy based GCE and recent global issues compared to those used in Thai Formal Public Schools (TFPS) which were more oriented towards conservative formulations of national Thai citizenship. Findings also suggest that multicultural representations were common, but presented without important sociopolitical context.