Abstract:
This paper will make an original contribution to debates surrounding global citizenship education by problematising some of the assumptions underlying the area in relation to children and young people. At a time when educational and political agendas are increasingly emphasising children's role in the development of a ‘better world', evident in the area of global citizenship education, this paper is particularly timely. Resources and publications in this area abound, from government and NGO funded reports to academic articles and books. Drawing on a poststructural discourse analysis of some key national and international examples from this literature, this paper argues that global citizenship education draws on a humanistic image of the child as responsible for themselves and the world around them. While ‘responsibility' itself is not necessarily ‘bad', as a malleable and political word it can serve a variety of competing agendas, some of which produce and constrain children. In contributing to policy and theoretical debates in particular, this paper argues that unquestionably adopting a vision of the ‘responsible child citizen' has a range of effects which are not always responsive to, or inclusive of, all children and their varying contexts.