Unpacking Chinese primary school English teachers’ perceptions: personal blockers and enablers in global citizenship education

Abstract

ABSTRACT Citizenship education has been transcending from traditional national boundaries to Global Citizenship Education (GCE) as an innovative educational response to ever-intensifying globalization. However, GCE remains an under-researched area in the field of English language teaching (ELT), and few efforts in China have been made to explore how primary school English teachers perceive GCE. To address the gap, a qualitative study was conducted to capture Chinese primary school English teachers’ perceptions of GCE and to explore their personal blockers and enablers of GCE in ELT. A qualitative content analysis of the data from semi-structured interviews was conducted with respect to three themes: teachers’ awareness of GCE in ELT, ELT implementation regarding GCE, and challenges in ELT regarding GCE, the findings of which revealed a broad range of blockers and enablers of GCE in ELT. The insufficient awareness of critical GCE among teachers and the dominance of soft GCE in ELT may be serious blockers to critical GCE. This study argues that teachers should re-think the value of GCE and facilitate their personal enablers by integrating critical GCE into ELT. The findings could provide some implications for educators to contribute to China’s context-specific GCE through English language education.