Critical Global Citizenship in Practice: Insights from adapting the Ethical Global Issues Pedagogy for German primary teachers

Global inequality is a topic that is slowly but steadily finding its way into schools. Many teachers report an interest in both learning  about and bringing matters of global inequality  into their classrooms as discussion topics with children of varying ages.  At the same time, teachers often indicate that they feel uncertain about how to approach these issues sensitively because it was mostly absent from their own schooling and teacher training.

In a recent blog on this site, Lahnstein et al. (2025) provided some insights into the application of the Ethical Global Issues Pedagogy (EGIP) (Pashby & Sund, 2022)), which was developed for this purpose. Now, in this post, we are going to present some insights into how EGIP – co-created by and aimed at secondary school teachers – served as one main starting points for developing a checklist for German primary school teachers. The checklist is intended to support teachers in assessing existing teaching and learning materials and develop new ones while sensitively dealing with matters related to global inequalities.

By Claire Grauer and Alisa Walenziak (Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany)

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As described in Lahnstein et al. (2025), Claire, one of the authors, used the EGIP resource in a university seminar aimed at postgraduate students in a primary education study course. The seminar focused on how issues of global injustice may be addressed sensitively in the interdiscipliary subject of Sachunterricht, a compulsory subject in all German primary schools combining social sciences and natural sciences. Alisa, a student in the seminar, was inspired by the EGIP toolkit. She decided to adapt its contents to make it more easily accessible for the target group of German-speaking primary school teachers. She then took this as the research topic for her masters‘ thesis in educational science.

In the following, we first introduce Alisa’s approach to developing her own resource based on EGIP, followed by presenting some of the main insights she gained through her research. The data Alisa gathered was obtained through interviewing teachers using the think aloud method while they were applying the newly-developed checklist.

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Fig 1: Cover page of the checklist developed by Alisa. Translation of titles: Global Connections in Sachunterricht. Checklist to address more global topics and connections in Sachunterricht.

Research approach 

Inspired by Claire's seminar on de- and postcolonial theories and Pashby and Sund's participatory research with teachers for secondary schools (Sund and Pashby, 2022), the thought arose to adapt these ideas and present them in a way that makes them applicable for German speaking primary teachers. It is also motivated by the consensus among field experts in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) that one core question has been almost completely neglected in primary education: How can we integrate the complexity represented by global inequality, postcolonial thinking, and dealing with an increasing awareness of diversifying bases of knowledge bases in a global society into teaching as a well-rounded and cross-cutting approach (see e.g. Pashby et al., 2019; Taube, 2022)?

The first step of Alisa’s approach included a theory-based comparison between the educational concepts that have influenced EGIP, including Global Citizenship Education (GCE), Critical Global Citizenship Education (CGED) and global learning and outlining their relation to the concept of ESD. Since the latter is a key cross-cutting topic in the two core curricular frameworks for the subject of Sachunterricht in Germany, using ESD as an entry point for the checklist rather than any of the other concepts seemed most feasible*. 

Despite different nuances, all the concepts – GCE, GCED, global learning, and ESD as an umbrella concept – share a basic idea which is the assumption that children constantly encounter global inequalities in their daily lives: They  consume products from all over the world, see and hear global news, and experience international cultural and sporting events, while at the same time being confronted with relevant global challenges such as the climate crisis (Geisz & Schmitt, 2016; Junge & Schomaker, 2024; Lang-Wojtasik & Schönborn, 2020; OECD, 2025). Children thus are growing up in a globalized world with all its opportunities and therefore need to develop the skills and competencies to navigate this world. 
Through a comparison of the similarities and differences between the above-mentioned concepts and the mandatory requirements for the subject of Sachunterricht as defined in the curricular frameworks, five areas of focus were identified for a check list intended for primary teachers’ use:

1. The presentation of subject content
2. The change of perspective and the associated exchange with others
3. Sensitivity to discrimination
4. The connection to the students' everyday lives
5. And dealing with rapidly changing knowledge and „Nicht-Wissen“, which means that students should not memorize factual knowledge – instead they must understand that knowledge can change in global settings

Based on these findings and the work of Pashby et al. (2019) Alisa then developed a checklist designed for German primary school teachers, which she tested and adapted by using the think-aloud method (Ericsson, 1998; Konrad, 2020; Sandmann, 2014). This checklist is intended to demonstrate to teachers that even small changes or adaptations to existing materials might suffice to create more understanding of our globalized world and, at the same time, interact with other people in a more open and unbiased manner. 

The development happened in two rounds: A first version of the checklist was initially tested with three Sachunterricht teachers, then adapted based on their feedback. The final version was then given to two different Sachunterricht teachers. During the interviews, all participants were given the checklist and the same example page from a Sachunterricht book on the topic of “How families live”, showing images of family life, e.g. a female person helping a child learning to ride a bike, a family picnic, or an elderly lady reading together with a young girl next to some questions addressed to students. 

Teachers were asked to read the instructions on the learning material and then go through the checklist by voicing their thoughts (“thinking aloud”). All verbal communication was recorded and transcribed for analysis. 

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Fig 2: Short Instructions on how to use the checklist (Title: Checklist for more global relations in Sachunterricht. What is most important – short and compact). The titles in the boxes are, from top to bottom: Discovering new perspectives; being sensitive to discrimination, finding new ways and allowing not-knowing; using methods and media.
 

Main findings I: Lessons learnt from developing a resource for teachers 

Regarding the development of the checklist, the initial interviews showed that in the first version of the resource, teachers found it unclear in what context the checklist could be used. One of the teachers asked if the resource was meant to guide preparing a lesson, a concrete learning material, or, rather, any teaching and learning resource in general. Alisa then adapted and specified the instructions on how to use the checklist. 

A second finding was that the initial version of the checklist included an element which all participants equally found difficult to understand: Drawing the connection between the given topic and existing current or historical global connections. One example included a question targeting the impact of consumer behaviour in countries of the Global North on the environment and working conditions in countries of the Global South. The participants all had to read the question several times before they understood its purpose. Alisa then decided to delete the question and rephrase it as an example illustrating the goal of other existing questions.

Finally, all participants emphasized the importance of length and scope of the checklist, i.e. keeping it as short as possible while trying not to compromise too much on the depth of its content. To make it easier to use in everyday teaching, Alisa therefore developed an overview page with prompt questions that can be consulted quickly and easily. 

Main findings II: Insights into teachers’ use of a check list addressing global inequalities 

Alisa’s research found that German primary school teachers generally consider addressing the global dimension of any topic that is part of the Sachunterricht curriculum to be meaningful and important. This is exemplarily illustrated by the following statement of one teacher: “I think that in today's world, it is absolutely essential that we look beyond Germany and Europe.” 

All teachers who participated in the study reported their willingness to consider this kind of checklist into their lesson preparation. Some reported that prior to participating in the research they had not been aware of how Eurocentric many of the existing teaching/learning materials are. Most participants also added that they had not given this much thought about addressing matters of global inequality in their teaching before – even though all are teaching classes that include children with very diverse backgrounds including family migration histories from a wide variety of countries and cultures. Likewise, most interviewees emphasized how much their young students are interested in “taking a look at other parts of the world” and welcomed that the checklist supports their efforts at approaching the curriculum with increased multi-perspectivity, which is an integral goal of Sachunterricht anyway. 

Statements such as “But how exciting it would be to look beyond the horizon” show that the teachers considered the checklist to be relevant, interesting, and feasible. 

The checklist also led two teachers discover that most materials they regularly use in their teaching practice seemingly present topics with global perspectives in a way one respondend describe as “looking from the same perspective in the same perspective”. By this they meant that teaching and learning materials in German schools almost exclusively are developed by actors from the Global North for an audience situated in the Global North. Analyzing this according to Vanessa Andreotti’s approach to Critical Global Citizenship Education (CGCE) (Andreotti, 2006, 2016), this implies that when individuals from the Global South are shown in these materials, they are almost always depicted as less privileged, less civilized, or in need of help compared to individuals seemingly situated in the Global North (see e.g Taube, 2023; Gomis, 2021 or Marmer & Ziai, 2021).

All teachers who took part in the study believed that using the checklist during lesson preparation might help them take a more critical look at their existing materials. They pointed out that they found the short version particularly suitable for everyday teaching. The longer version, with more detailed examples, was found to be a tool offering good support, especially for teachers who have had little contact with approaching issues of global inequality with the intention shared by EGIP. 

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Fig 3: Exemplary excerpt from the checklist addressing he topics “Sensitivity to discrimination” (Sensibilität für Diskriminierungen) and “Relevance to children’s own lives” (Bezug zur eigenen Lebenswelt).
 

Summing up, Alisa’s findings thus show that primary school teachers are highly interested in preparing their students for growing up in a globalized world and appreciate support in systematically anchoring both sensitivity to discrimination and the handling of changing global knowledge bases in their teaching. Supporting materials, such as the EGIP resource and subsequently adapted checklists like the one introduced here, are therefore perceived as useful resources for their everyday lesson preparation and teaching practice, and support teachers‘ roles as lifelong learners. 

*There are two curricular frameworks relevant for teaching the subject of Sachunterricht in all primary schools in the German federal state of lower saxony where the research took place. These are the Kerncurriculum Sachunterricht („core curriculum Sachunterricht“) issued by the Ministry of Education of the Federal State of Lower Saxony) (Niedersächsisches Kultusministerium, 2017)), and the Perspektivrahmen Sachunterricht (perspective framework Sachunterricht, issued by the German Society for the Didactics of Sachunterricht (Gesellschaft für Didaktik des Sachunterrichts, 2013)). 

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References

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Short biographies 

• 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. 

• Alisa Walenziak completed her Master of Education at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany, in 2025, where she studied German and Sachunterricht. She is currently working in a teaching assignment at Leuphana College in the field of language acquisition until she begins her teaching practice at a German primary school in January 2026.