On becoming a global citizen: Critical pedagogy and crossing borders in and out of the university classroom

The scope and complexity of global initiatives have dramatically increased at institutions of higher education (Altbach & Knight, 2007). Many colleges and universities conceptualize their programmatic and curricular responses to these calls for internationalization around global citizenship education (Deardorff, 2006; Morais & Ogden, 2011; Musil, 2006; Nussbaum, 2006). However, despite the increasing focus on internationalization in education policy and programming, neither university nor high school curricula have been sufficiently able to address how to prepare students to participate in their communities as active and engaged citizens. Moreover, there is little consensus on what “global citizenship education” actually is or should be and how students should experience it (Green, 2012), especially outside of study abroad programming (Lewin, 2010).