Global Citizenship in Local Communities and the Academy at The Forum in Tokyo

In an effort to reimagine academia’s role, and resituate it along the communities it is asked to serve, IAFOR invites delegates to join The Forum at ACE2024 to discuss community-assisted education, the university’s role within the local community, and how local communities and the Academy can work together to make a difference in the world.

Global citizenship education seeks to rectify the disconnect between institutions and society, discover where and how formal policies can meet practical demands, and connect the local with the global. However, the practical application of global citizenship education remains one of the most complex issues facing education today. The ambitious and idealistic views of policymakers and educators sometimes seem too grand and risk becoming discussions held within their own echo chambers. Students learn about how global institutions work, are taught history, and are made aware of contemporary issues in foreign lands. Yet, these courses are often seen as just another stepping stone to receiving a diploma, without its intended effect of turning students into critical thinkers and active citizens of the world, sensitive to the plight of others.

At our previous Forum session in London, participants argued that students will hardly care about global issues if they remain disconnected from their own local communities. Further discussion had participants agreeing that this lack of attachment to the local community desensitises people to the plight of others, especially when one feels little sense of belonging. Off-campus experiences, such as service learning, can improve their capacity for empathy towards other people’s suffering and get them in touch with local issues. One delegate concluded that ‘once they learn empathy, they can imagine other people’s suffering. So, citizenship first, and then global citizenship’. This view posits a conundrum against what Professor García-Osuna suggested in his keynote speech at the London conference, about nationalism or tribalism being the main issue of why people do not care about the world. He argued that too much focus on the local subtracts from the bigger picture of global issues. If people remain preoccupied with their localities, the interconnectedness between all local communities is lost. Balancing the local and the global is a hot topic for debate at the moment, to which there has been no resolution. Bridging the gap between the local and global world could be key to fostering conscious global citizens.

Educators have identified this issue and tackled it from various angles inside and outside the classroom, developing community-assisted curricula, including projects around welfare, town planning, festivals, and other hands-on activities. Through these activities, students can develop life skills they hardly learn in standard school curricula, such as active listening, finding one’s talents and passions, self-reflection, teamwork, time management, social interaction skills, and a sense of responsibility. According to SOS Children’s Villages, a foster care organisation that supports community development, societal well-being owes much to the existence of communities: stable and inclusive communities can create thriving citizens to the benefit of the whole society (Reynard, 2024). ‘Standardised education - often characterised by a high number of students per one teacher - cannot meet the level of individualised learning necessary to meet the needs of all students. What's more, lower-income areas do not often have the same available resources as higher-income areas, even for public education’, writes Reynard. According to the capability approach developed by Amartya Sen (1992), what an individual is able to do or be is a more accurate reflection of societal well-being than commodities or mental reactions. Sen illustrates his point with the example of using a bicycle, which ‘has the characteristics of “transportation” but whether it will actually provide transportation will depend on the characteristics of those who try to use it’ (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Public education teaches academic subjects that are relevant to those who have the opportunity to do something with what they learn. Many students in impoverished communities have trouble relating to those subjects and often do not have the means to proceed to a higher level of education.

In its stead, community education focuses on success in overall life, how to view oneself, and the impact of one's own skills and abilities, thereby providing all students with abundant opportunities. A good example of curricula like this is offered by the Learning Friends programme, which offers hands-on projects on literacy development, time management, social interaction, and responsibility (Reynard, 2024). Such projects include teaching creative art, video editing, and storytelling through the construction of small-town sets, towers and various toy vehicles, and gardening, animal care and outdoor team games. ‘While there are always other ideas and knowledge and skills to learn that are more global and important to understand as life continues to unfold’, notes Reynard, ‘learning how to work with those in your own community and with what is most familiar to you will enhance the likelihood of overall success and offer lasting life benefits’.

In Japan, 58.3% (or 16,131) of public elementary and junior high schools have adopted community school systems since the initial reform in the 1990s (also known as ‘the quiet revolution’), according to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (The Japan News, 2024). In the official curriculum, the concept is introduced as ‘Integrated Studies’, which teaches problem-solving skills by working on real-life issues related to learning support, library, physical and verbal expression, town planning, welfare, and sports and health. In these programmes, ‘more than 200 local adults, such as store owners, dance instructors, and craftsmen serve as community teachers’, allowing for the whole community to become part of the learning process. ‘The children are gaining the ability to listen to and summarise a broad range of others’ opinions, to find what they love, and to immerse themselves in it’, explained Hirohisa Nagaya, 54, chairman of the school management council in the Gosho-Minami district of Kyoto City.

According to Manabu Sato, who led the initial stages of the reform, ‘school reform of the learning community is a reform to realise the 21st century school’, which was ‘established against the backdrop of four common characteristics: responses to a knowledge-based society, a multicultural society, a disparity risk society, and a mature civil society’ (Suzuki, 2022: 211). His definition of the ‘21st century school’ as a ‘learning community’ where students, teachers, parents, and the whole community come together in the learning process, ‘corresponds to the public mission for the human rights of learning and professional autonomy’, writes Sato (2018). This approach has since spread to several Asian countries and is considered a powerful innovation in school reform.

These developments highlight spaces where education can make a difference in local and global communities, but until now has struggled to do so. With a broader vision of the world, higher education is in an advantageous position to bridge the gap between the local and the global. However, even though embedded within local realities, universities today face the risk of turning into ivory towers – secluded, privileged spaces that avoid local issues with an escapist attitude. In the United States alone, more than 10,000 books were banned in public schools this past academic year, including stories of enslaved Africans in America and books on LGBTQ+ issues (The Guardian, 2024). How to reconcile the so-called ‘towns and gowns’ separation of the Academy and the communities next door, and foster a sense of shared responsibility between higher educational institutions and the local community can be the key to implementing global citizenship education effectively.

Global Citizenship: Local Communities and the Academy

Moderators: Professor Laura Bronstein and Dr Melina Neophytou

We invite delegates at The 16th Asian Conference on Education (ACE2024) in Tokyo to this Forum discussion titled ‘Global Citizenship: Local Communities and the Academy’ to discuss the following questions:

Posted by IAFOR

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