Outcomes of global citizenship education for Korean students

Abstract

Set against the backdrop of increasing international discussion on importance of global citizenship education (GCE) in recent years, the significance attributed to development of measurement tools for global citizenship has markedly increased. However, there is no international consensus regarding guidelines for measurement of global citizenship; as a consequence, research assessing learning outcomes of GCE is lacking. Based on the results of a comprehensive survey of 122 Korean students in 5 schools, located in South Korea, this paper measures the learning outcome of GCE by comparing differences in students' global citizenship levels before and after receiving this education. The goal of this paper is to determine whether Korean students' global citizenship levels increased after they participated in GCE provided by the International Development Education Academy (IDEA) of the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA). This paper will also assist educators and practitioners in designing an appropriate GCE system by sharing with them the current status of Korean students' global citizenship levels. The results of measuring students' global citizenship level before participating in GCE show that the subdimension of global citizenship, “political voice,” received the lowest score for all levels of students, and the subdimensions related to dimension, global civic engagement have lower ranking for elementary school students in comparison with middle and high school students. Furthermore, students are more likely to be involved in activities of global citizenship at local level than global level. The course provided by KOICA IDEA appears to be contributive in fostering global citizenship: the students' levels of global citizenship after taking the course were in general significantly higher than before taking the course.