Global education and critical thinking: a necessary symbiosis to educate for critical global citizenship

Abstract

Global Citizenship Education (GCE) is a topic of relevance in current international educational debates, which increasingly focus on the formation of critical citizenship. This makes it necessary to discover from a critical pedagogical perspective the relationships between this pedagogical approach, Critical Thinking (CT), and GCE. Throughout this study, through an extensive theoretical review of the literature, we try to show the characteristics in which critical pedagogy, GCE, and CT converge, giving rise to the Critical GCE towards which we must move today. Therefore, this study is revealing for discovering the path towards which GCE is currently heading by clearly showing the symbiosis between CT and GCE. In conclusion, if we want to educate global citizens, it is necessary not only to have a strong background in GCE but also to develop CT to understand global society critically and the need to act to try to transform the world into one free from oppression and injustice.