Creative and Critical Studies

This thesis examines the role of literary studies in critical global citizenship education (GCE) within a Canadian high school context. Grounded in recent educational literature, which argues for more critical approaches of GCE (Andreotti 2006; Andreotti et al. 2010; Marshall 2009; Pashby 2011; Pike 2008; Richardson 2008; Schultz 2007; Tallon 2012; Taylor 2011), I will explore how to implement critical GCE within the concrete lessons and practices of English literature classrooms. Drawing primarily on Stone-Mediatore’s literary theory of reading for enlarged thought, I will propose a new framework of reading for critical global citizenship through critical and reflexive engagement with marginalized narratives. A critique of curriculum materials for Craig Kielburger’s Free the Children and Robin Wiszowaty’s My Maasai Life, developed by Me to We and Free the Children, reveals how Western-oriented texts and safe, traditional reading practices contribute to a form of global citizenship that perpetuates Western hegemony and limits expressions of citizenship to benevolent actions.  By contrast, by helping students engage critically and reflexively with marginalized experience narratives, educators may guide their students through a difficult and cyclical process, introduced by Andreotti and de Souza’s Through Other Eyes project (2008), of learning to unlearn, learning to listen, learning to learn, and learning to reach out. Through this process, students may begin to recognize their situatedness within mainstream frameworks that limit their abilities to consider alternative possibilities and futures. To demonstrate possibilities for implementing this fourfold reading process in the classroom, I will provide example reading activities for Chris Abani's novel, Song for Night, David Alexander Robertson and Madison Blackstone’s graphic novel, The Life of Helen Betty Osborne, and the documentary film, Dear Mandela.

This case study explores how, through curriculum, programming and community-building that is co-created with students, an extra-curricular Intercultural Development Program (IDP) aspires to shape intercultural education towards social justice and equity, opening spaces for engagement with non-dominant epistemologies, and promoting the critical thinking necessary for evaluating the historical, economic, political, social, and ethical implications of students’ own and others’ positions.

Karsgaard, C. & Sanford, L. Case Study: Intercultural Development Program. In Darla Deardorff and Lily Arasaratnam-Smith (Eds.), Intercultural Competence in International Higher Education (pp. 209-213). New York: Routledge.

Our roundtable paper discusses our experiences attempting to instigate a public pedagogical discussion around our calls for a curatorial project that addressed a colonial exhibit space at the University of Alberta. Our discussion focuses on the responses we received and what our experiences meant for how we understand decolonization and adult learning on a university campus that is concurrently informed by both decolonial efforts and persistent settler colonial structures.

Grounded in recent educational literature, which argues for more critical approaches of global citizenship education (GCE) (Andreotti 2006; Marshall 2009; Pashby 2011; Schultz 2007; Tallon 2012; Taylor 2011), this paper explores how to implement critical GCE within the concrete practices of literature classrooms. To begin, this paper explores how Stone-Mediatore’s literary theory of reading for enlarged thought provides a foundation for critical GCE through literary study, as she calls readers to engage critically and reflexively with marginalized experience narratives. Next, drawing upon critical approaches to global citizenship pedagogy, particularly those introduced by Andreotti and de Souza’s Through Other Eyes (2008) project, this paper provides recommendations for selecting marginalized experience narratives for classroom study and practical examples of reading activities, using Chris Abani’s novel, Song for Night, as a sample text. Rather than directing students towards particular expressions of citizenship within a humanitarian framework, the demonstrated reading activities may help students begin to recognize their subject positions, consider their relations to others, and imagine alternative futures.

Published in Global citizenship, common wealth and uncommon citizens. Lynette Shultz & Thashika Pillay, Eds. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

For a copy, please email karsgaar@ualberta.ca.

The International Youth White Paper on Global Citizenship is a result of work done by over 1300 students from 11 countries, in partnership with the Centre for Global Citizenship Education and Research, The Centre for Global Education, Canadian Commission for UNESCO, TakingITGlobal, and the Global Centre for Pluralism. Students came together to collaborate, through the use of technology, in a Virtual Town Hall to discuss the youths’ vision for Global Citizenship Education. Representing five continents, youth exchanged ideas, debated alternatives, and ultimately created a document that represents their voice on the relationship education should have with global citizenship. The final paper is the culmination of months of online teamwork, 10,000 hours of student collaboration, over 500 hours of teacher facilitation, and the passion of these youth to engage in an international conversation and have their voices heard.

Researchers at the Centre for Global Citizenship Education and Research have built upon the work of these youth to develop a syllabus for educators who aspire to educate for global citizenship.

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