"Global Citizenship Education"

Carlos Alberto Torres

Distinguished Professor of Social Sciences and Comparative Education
UNESCO Chair in Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education
Director, Paulo Freire Institute
UCLA

Multiple globalizations are slowly but surely altering the way we understand education and learning in the 21st century. What is “global citizenship education” for our age?

Citizenship education has traditionally been associated with “civic education,” which teaches citizens about constitutional democracy and obedience to the nation-state. It includes civic knowledge, basic concepts that inform the practice of democracy in civil society; civic skills, which include intellectual and participatory skills that facilitate citizens’ judgment and actions; and civic virtues, usually defined in Western societies around liberal principles such as self-discipline, compassion, civility, tolerance, and respect.

How will citizenship building be defined in the future? How has the concept of global citizenship education been incorporated in the contemporary discourses circulating and competing in the international system, governments, and academia?
Torres will present themes from his new book, exploring controversies around citizenship building, diversity, and the dilemmas of multiculturalism as well as the responsibilities of universities and adult learning systems in promoting citizenship building.

Carlos Alberto Torres is distinguished professor of social sciences and comparative education at UCLA, where he holds the inaugural UNESCO Chair in Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education and directs the university’s Paulo Freire Institute.

Widely published, Torres recently coauthored, with Massimiliano Tarozzi, Global Citizenship Education and the Crises of Multiculturalism (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016), which argues that global citizenship education offers a new educational perspective for making sense of dilemmas of multiculturalism and national citizenship deficits in diverse societies, taking into account equality, human rights, and social justice. His new book, in press with Routledge, is entitled Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Critical Global Citizenship Education.

His empirical work focuses on the impact of globalization in Latin America, especially on higher education in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, and in Asia including work on Global Citizenship Education in Vietnam and Taiwan. 

He holds a PhD in international development education from Stanford University, and a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Universidade Lusofona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Lisbon, Portugal. He is also a corresponding member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, a Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and has received several Fulbright grants.