Becoming global: Global Citizenship Education in Chinese middle schools in a second-tier city

Global citizenship education (GCE) is an emerging while poorly explored area. Its contested definition has prevented it from making a more progressive influence. Little is known regarding what and how GCE is developing like in China today. This thesis aims to study whether middle schools in China have the potential and willingness to develop a GCE curriculum based on their principals’ and teachers’ own conceptions and judgement of this concept. This thesis utilises curriculum development theory as a conceptual framework and involved Chinese academics, school principals, and classroom teachers in collecting empirical data. With an overall design of grounded theory, the thesis encouraged principals and teachers across six middle schools in a selected second-tier city to think broadly regarding the possibilities of GCE in their own schools. They participated in interviews that were scheduled before and after a Policy Delphi method, a forecasting and consensus drawing method which engaged academics to spark creative thinking and communication. These sources of data were amplified by analysis of documents of textbooks and school websites that contributed to the interpretations of participants’ responses. Results indicate that GCE has been interpreted as an approach to developing elites based on Chinese identity. GCE was seen as largely irrelevant to curriculum intent authorized by the Chinese centralised education system, principals and teachers, who with restricted autonomy, were less likely to take the risk of making specific changes to introduce GCE into their current school curriculum. Instead, participants preferred integrating the parts of GCE which were identified as consistent with the education system as a long-term development goal and optimizing current GCE related practices as strategies for promoting GCE. This thesis identifies an unpromising future trend of GCE development in Chinese middle schools