Katrina Perkins

With education disruption catalysed globally by Covid-19 and as barriers between nations and people continue to fade, it has become increasingly important to prepare learners to understand global challenges and perspectives.

Whilst students face unprecedented opportunities and challenges in coming to terms with globalization, my research aims to provide insight into global competency or lack thereof whilst using findings to build conceptual clarity and highlight strategies for students, teachers and higher education institutions to overcome existing and potential barriers, thereby helping to deal with the free-ranging, unpredictable and contentious nature of much of global citizenship. 

Based on cosmopolitan ideals expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, global citizenship is a key factor in promoting more freedom and democracy in today’s globalized world. Widening participation policies allege to help increase social mobility, an outcome which is encouraged by UK Government to see a society which is less stratified by socioeconomic class and instead based on notions of upward social mobility and gap closing discourses. Given the highly complex and inter-related myriad of human and environmental processes, this need to prepare learners and teachers to understand global challenges and perspectives has increased. Despite higher education providers having an obligation to use their knowledge capacities to advance social life and develop more critically conscious students, research suggests that efforts are falling short.