Critical Global Citizenship Education in Practice: What we’ve learned about applications of the Ethical Global Issues Pedagogy Resource

A new study tracing the uptake of the Ethical Global Issues Pedagogy (EGIP) resource in Europe and beyond reveals growing interest in critical global citizenship education (CGCE) across diverse educational settings. Educators are making significant efforts to diffuse and adapt the resource in response to current gaps in global learning. This article outlines the origin of the resource and reports on two separate studies tracking its impact. It also presents the reflective work of Claire Grauer in applying EGIP with primary school student teachers. Taken together, these applications highlight EGIP’s adaptability across cultures, curricula, and both formal and non-formal educational sectors. The findings from the impact study and the accounts of application demonstrate the resource’s capacity to advance CGCE approaches at both national and international levels.

By Ana I. Benavides Lahnstein, Karen Pashby (School of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University), and Claire Grauer (Sustainability Education and Transdisciplinary Research Institute, Leuphana University Lüneburg)
 

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The Teaching for Sustainable Development Through Ethical Global Issues Pedagogy project (2018-2019) was funded by the British Academy. It brought together expertise in critical global citizenship education (CGCE), lead investigator Pashby, and environmental and sustainability education (ESE), co-investigator Sund, to respond to several key concerns raised in scholarship: 

• Mainstream GCE tends to reproduce rather than address ongoing colonial relations of power and inequalities through superficial ‘feel good’ approaches (Andreotti, 2012) 
• Scholars have been calling for critical approaches to GCE that are more reflexive and where ‘we are all both part of the problems and part of the solutions, albeit differently’ (Pashby 2011, Swanson & Pashby, 2016, among others), with similar calls in ESE (Sund, 2016)
• Very little research has explored the challenges of and possibilities for responding to this concern in practice (Goren & Yemini, 2017) 

The project involved 26 secondary and upper-secondary educators (teaching students aged 14-18, across subject areas) in England, Finland, and Sweden, combining participatory workshops, classroom observations, and reflexive interviews. Key research findings include:

• Teachers are both enabled and constrained by curriculum, and many find strategic ways to take a critical approach
• Teachers see the role of colonialism in global issues as both important to acknowledge and challenging in practice, and they could use further support and resourcing
• Teachers face an overwhelming number of relevant materials and want resources that can be adapted to deepen engagement (Pashby & Sund, 2019; see also Pashby et al., 2020a, 2020b; Pashby & Sund, 2020; Sund & Pashby, 2020).

Stemming from the research project, a co-produced resource named Ethical Global Issues Pedagogy (EGIP) was published online in 2019, with hard copies distributed at dissemination events. The resource was designed to support teachers in addressing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4, Target 4.7 (UNESCO, 2015), aiming to help learners question mainstream perspectives, consider those of marginalised groups, and respond to calls to decolonise global learning (Pashby & Sund, 2019).  EGIP adapts Andreotti’s (2012) CGCE tool, HEADSUP, which identifies patterns of oppression that tend to be reproduced in global learning: hegemony, ethnocentrism, ahistoricism, depolicisation, salvationism, uncomplicated solutions, and paternalism. EGIP includes an introduction with a rationale and a series of activities to use before, during, and after engaging with a global justice issue. EGIP was piloted with educators involved in the project who launched it and shared with wider communities. 

Tracking the application of the EGIP resource: The first impact study

Sixteen educators including teachers; school and curriculum development leaders; and NGO/CSO global learning coordinators participated in the impact study conducted in 2020 via a survey that combined open-ended and multiple-choice questions. It provided a snapshot of some of the ways EGIP is used. These respondents reported the resource was used with more than 200 students, 180 secondary school teachers (primarily upper secondary), and a group of primary school teachers. A global learning NGO also featured EGIP on their website and used it to inform one of their learning materials, which reached around 5,000 UK classrooms. EGIP also influenced a curriculum tool for the primary school programme of a transnational educational organisation known for developing and delivering globally recognised school curricula and assessments. 

Educators described being drawn to EGIP because it facilitated more in-depth and age-appropriate discussions on global issues while avoiding oversimplification (Wicker & Pashby, 2020). Overall, educators applied it across a range of subjects—including Geography, Philosophy, Citizenship, and Political Science—on issues such as climate change, migration, exploitative labour conditions, and informal settlements. This first study highlighted EGIP's broad influence on educational organisations across public (state-funded), private, and third sector organisations.

Initially available in English, Finnish, and Swedish, the resource has since been translated into Czech, Estonian, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Polish, with additional translations in progress. The translations were driven by requests from NGOs/CSOs to enhance teacher support as well as by individual educators and researchers interested in using EGIP in their own contexts.

The second impact study

Following the trajectory of the resource since the 2020 report, we know it is being shared widely. For example, in 2021, a project with educators in Canada used EGIP as a main tool for supporting anti-oppressive pedagogy. In 2025, we began an additional impact study. It continues to map the uptake and application of EGIP, and we have collected accounts from 30 participants across third-sector organisations and formal education contexts. Using an online survey followed by one-to-one and group interviews, we are examining: (1) the uptake of EGIP across different linguistic and cultural contexts, (2) its appeal and challenges in fostering CGCE, and (3) the mediation it helps facilitate.

The resource has gained interest in more countries, and the spread of its application has expanded in both formal and non-formal education. Educators in Australia, Austria, Belgium, China, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom already use the resource with colleagues in the Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, and Spain using it in their current planning. 

Based on our participants' responses, we know the resource has reached at least 367 educators directly, with participants stating that it was shared with hundreds more. A secondary school teacher praised its ‘simplicity that does not add burden to the already quite full curriculum’ and its ability to ‘open up spaces for exploration’ without requiring sequential use. The educators’ estimations suggest EGIP has been introduced to 624 students. EGIP was also at the centre of a European teacher education project led by CSOs and has been consulted to support engaging policy makers with global learning.

We have seen more educators not only using EGIP but also sharing it within and beyond their institutions, including subject departments, teacher training courses, professional networks, and NGO/CSO initiatives. The application and prospective use of the resource were similarly distributed among Higher Education (HE) institutions (30%), NGOs/CSOs (33%), lower and upper secondary education (30%), with policy making and primary education featuring in consultation. Using EGIP for teacher education, led by NGOs/CSOs or HE institutions, featured as the most popular practice setting (Fig. 1). 

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Participants provided candid accounts of using the resource for a range of applications, with the common denominator being a desire for deeper critical engagement with complex, global ethical issues. Below are accounts from educators in the third sector:

• ‘We used it in the field of development cooperation… to make [young colleagues] familiar with different glasses to look at projects, communication, posture... to regularly verify, check if there are visible/invisible logics of domination.’ 
• ‘Used in a 45-minute workshop to spark reflection and self-questioning. And as an inspiring resource to come back to when initiating partnerships with partner organisations, stakeholders, etc.... in partner countries.” 

Educators believe that the EGIP resource offers a pedagogical approach to addressing complex global ethical challenges, thereby creating space for applying decolonial theory and fostering critical self-reflection among both learners and educators. EGIP’s application of HEADSUP has been specifically valued as a way to surface and explore those dimensions. 

Sustaining the deeper, reflective aspects of CGCE remains a challenge due to time constraints, curriculum limitations, and the perceived level of conceptual complexity. However, as a mediating artefact that models CGCE in practice, EGIP becomes a strategic tool when educators persist in creatively adapting it in their own settings. The rich accounts shared by educators in the second study indicate that, despite persistent challenges, EGIP can foster critical reflexivity in ways that are both practical and generative.

From teacher training to the primary classroom: Claire’s adaptation of EGIP

EGIP was originally created with upper/secondary school educators; however, there have been promising applications in primary education. 

One of these adaptation stories comes from Claire, who applied EGIP in a teacher training course and presented her work at the ANGEL Conference 2025, where Professor Karen Pashby (lead researcher and co-creator of the resource) was in the audience. This was Claire’s first attempt to use the resource with 25 primary teacher education students, demonstrating the practical application of post- and decolonial theory. It guided them in thinking about how EGIP could help prepare schoolchildren to engage with issues of global justice. The students were all master students of “Sachunterricht”, a subject combining social and natural sciences, which is mandatory in all of Germany’s primary schools.

Claire and her students began with reading about post- and decolonial theory in a seminar. She made sure that her students first learned about Germany's history as a colonial power, as this is mostly not taught in schools. They had also been learning about Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and CGCE. During the second half of the semester, her students discussed various teaching and learning materials and used the resource to examine them critically. These materials included pages featuring children's rights from school books presently used in schools in the state of Lower Saxony. These also included learning resources on global issues created by German NGO/CSOs, for instance, a brochure with learning materials focusing on cocoa production or a box containing various materials aimed at teaching about water as a resource.

Finally, as part of their written assignments, students chose a teaching/learning material themselves (one not previously covered during the seminar) and analysed the material based on what they had learned during the seminar. It was not mandatory for them to use the EGIP resource for their assignment, but 15 out of 25 students who granted permission to have their assignments analysed responded that they found it very helpful.
Some key findings from Claire’s work include:

• High engagement with curriculum topics: Students showed strong interest in exploring how EGIP could enrich primary curricula themes such as child rights, maps of the world, access to water and other resources, and representations of Africa. They reported that the resource broadened their perspectives, not only on teaching content but also on how they perceive the world around them.
• Awareness of global injustice and colonial continuities: Students felt that their own schooling had rarely touched on these themes. They found engaging with EGIP somewhat revelatory and reported that it gave them perspectives they wanted to pass on to their pupils, recognising that connections to these issues are present in everyday life and can be discussed even with young children who mostly have a very strong sense of justice.
• Practical application in assignments: For their coursework, students applied EGIP to analyse teaching materials. Most reported that the framework was helpful and offered new ways of thinking, though some also expressed concerns about whether future workload pressures might limit how carefully they could use the resource in practice. Another concern was that colleagues, especially older ones, might not appreciate younger teachers introducing new resources such as EGIP into their school curricula. However, some students even added that they considered it important to open up conversations about these challenges in the staff room.

One of her postgraduate students has developed her own checklist based on the EGIP resource, among other resources, for her master’s thesis research. The checklist is specifically aimed at primary teachers and uses questions and exemplary suggestions that relate to the ‘Sachunterricht’ curriculum, aiming to offer teachers initial ideas on how to embed any topic they choose concerning global justice.

Claire believes the resource is very accessible and therefore easy to use for pre- and in-service teachers, as it provides a bit of background information and breaks down a seemingly difficult topic in a way that it allows even those learners who have not yet engaged with topics such as CGCE, ESD, or colonial continuities to join the conversation and try out the tools/checklists provided.

Despite the usual reservations around time management in the classroom and the potential for regular use, students appreciated the resource for its accessibility, and some explicitly wrote in their final assignments that they plan to use the checklist in the future. They found it helpful to assess teaching and learning materials from a decolonial perspective, especially questioning internalised Eurocentrist perspectives. And even if they might not always use the checklist with most materials, their assignments seem to indicate that the application of the resource during their teacher training has been beneficial to them. 

Concluding thoughts 

We are still processing and understanding the results of the second impact study. However, it is clear that since the 2020 study, more educators reported engaging with issues of power, privilege, and oppression via EGIP—things that are easy to acknowledge in theory but challenging to integrate into practice. Taken together, these applications highlight EGIP’s adaptability across languages, curricula, and educational sectors. They also point to its capacity to support CGCE and to advance decolonial and reflexive pedagogical approaches at both national and international levels. 

In this sense, EGIP can be seen as enabling a discursive disruption of mainstream and dominant perspectives, preparing educators to question and move beyond dominant frames, such as charity-based or technocratic logics that are sometimes found in learning about ethical global issues. It is clear thus far that this resource responds to a growing need to address critiques of the curricular dissemination of mainstream perspectives and the apolitical or overly simplified ways in which global issues are often presented in education. As one of our participants said in our second study, ‘You could mop up the floor, or you could really turn off the faucet—and we really need to turn off the faucet.’

We are currently working on understanding the implications and insights in their accounts, so keep an eye out for a future research publication on these valuable findings!

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References

• Andreotti, V. (2012). Editor's preface: HEADS UP. Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices, 6(1), 1–3.
• Goren, H., & Yemini, M. (2017). Global citizenship education redefined – A systematic review of empirical studies on global citizenship education. International Journal of Educational Research, 82, 170–183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2017.02.004
• Pashby, K. (2011). Cultivating global citizens: Planting new seeds or pruning the perennials? Looking for the citizen-subject in global citizenship education theory. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 9(3–4), 427–442. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2011.605326
• Pashby, K., & Sund, L. (2019). Bridging 4.7 with secondary teachers: Engaging critical scholarship in education for sustainable development and global citizenship. In P. Bamber (Ed.), Teacher education for sustainable development and global citizenship: Critical perspectives on values, curriculum and assessment (pp. 99–112). Routledge.
• Pashby, K., & Sund, L. (2020). Decolonial options and challenges for ethical global issues pedagogy in northern Europe secondary classrooms. Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education, 4(1), 66–83. https://doi.org/10.7577/njcie.3554
• Pashby, K., da Costa, M., Sund, L., & Corcoran, S. L. (2020a). Resourcing an ethical global issues pedagogy with secondary teachers in northern Europe. In S. Saúde, M. A. Raposo, N. Pereira, & A. I. Rodrigues (Eds.), Teaching and learning practices that promote sustainable development and active citizenship (pp. 47–66). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-4402-0
• Pashby, K., da Costa, M., & Sund, L. (2020b). Pluriversal possibilities for global education in northern Europe. Journal of Social Science Education, 12(4), 45–62. https://www.jsse.org/index.php/jsse/article/view/3463
• Sund, L. (2016). Facing global sustainability issues: Teachers’ experiences of their own practices in environmental and sustainability education. Environmental Education Research, 22(6), 788–805. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2015.1072800
• Sund, L., & Pashby, K. (2020). Delinking global issues in northern European classrooms. The Journal of Environmental Education, 51(2), 156–170. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2020.1726264
• Swanson, D., & Pashby, K. (2016). Towards a critical global citizenship? A comparative analysis of global citizenship education in Scotland and Alberta. Journal of Research in Curriculum and Instruction, 2(3), 184–195.
• Wicker, K., & Pashby, K. (2020). Impact study on the Ethical Global Issues Pedagogy (EGIP) resource. British Academy.
• UNESCO. (2015). Global citizenship education: Topics and learning objectives. UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232993

 

Short biographies 

• Prof Karen Pashby is Professor of Global Citizenship; Lead for Research; and Co-Lead of the Education, Policy, and Practice Research Group in the School of Education at Manchester Metropolitan University. An experienced secondary and tertiary level educator, her theoretical and empirical research aims to find and support reflexive approaches to global citizenship education.
• Dr Claire Grauer is a Research Associate in the Sustainability Education Research Group at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany. Her teaching and research focus on sustainability education and global citizenship education in teacher education with an emphasis on post- and decolonial approaches. She also focuses on educational organisation development through the Whole School Approach at both school and university-level institutions. 
• Dr Ana I. Benavides Lahnstein works as a Research Associate at Manchester Metropolitan University, contributing to global citizenship, environmental, and sustainability education. Her previous research focuses on Lucie Sauvé’s environmental education typology, youth learning through citizen science, and intersections with science education. She is also an Associate Lecturer at the Open University, teaching international comparative primary education and research with children and young people.