L\u27Enracinement et L\u27Ouverture: A Relevant Global Citizenship Education in Senegal

As the international community strives to work together to respond to globalization implications in education, global citizenship education (GCE) has become more prominent in the educational agenda of the international community. While much literature has critiqued GCE’s potential neo-imperialist effects in postcolonial context, there have been very few studies that have sought out the voices of key stakeholders, such as students, parents, teachers, and school leaders. A total of nineteen school leaders, teachers, parents, and students were interviewed to examine whether they found global citizenship education relevant to students in Senegal. The study found that global citizenship education was perceived unanimously as relevant, only if it were adapted to fit the Senegalese context. Given the participants rejected the neutral universalist aspect of GCE, their definition of GCE did not match the definition found in the literature on GCE. Therefore, international scholarship on GCE should make room for its contextualization in order to avoid the potential neo-imperialist effects it may have in postcolonial contexts. Keywords: global citizen; global citizenship education; citizen; citizenship education; Senegal; postcolonial; elite schoo