The Place of History Lessons in Global Citizenship Education: The Views of The Teacher

Abstract

When historical development of history teaching is analyzed, it is seen that one of the reasons for the emergence of this field is to train good citizens. In a period of gobal developments, the definition of traditional citizenship is not enough. Instead, a new concept of global citizenship has come up. The global citizen is the responsible citizen of both his own country and the global world. Changes in the world have necessitated the individuals to be trained as more active, responsible, democratic and being aware of the world and the geography in which they live. The global developments happened in the world necessitates to raise citizens who can seize the distinctnesses and who can look the events from the other’s point of view. It should be learned to the students that each of them is a citizen of the world. In this context, the students should analyse the events from a different perspective rather than looking from the same perspective. The purpose of this study is to show the views of history teachers who works at high schools in Izmir about the place of history lessons in global citizenship education. As a means of data collection, a questionnaire consisting of open-ended questions has been applied and ten history teachers have participated in the survey. Open-ended questions are analyzed and divided into categories. In the light of the data obtained it is understood that history teachers do not have sufficient information about global citizenship education.