| dc.description.abstract | This study explores the lived student experience of undertaking global citizenship education (GCE) programmes in higher education settings, and the role these types of programmes play in the development of students’ citizenship identities. The study invited undergraduate students (n=21) attending two Australasian institutions to reflect on their experience of developing an interest in, entering, and progressing through a GCE-focused programme (offered on the home campus of each university selected for the study) in the context of their life transitions from late adolescence to early adulthood. Of particular interest are: young people’s motivations for undertaking higher education programmes with a strong GCE dimension; any significant changes (or continuities) in their conceptualisation of global citizenship, in their notions of civic engagement, and the subsequent development of their (global) citizenship identities during this period of transition; as well as how they describe the influence of entering their post-secondary educational contexts, and specifically their GCE-related programmes, alongside other life experiences and informal interactions. A comparative case study analysis has been conducted based on data gathered from interviews with undergraduate students undertaking either a non-formal co-curricular ‘International Leadership’ programme (Case ‘A’ - n=11) or a formal ‘Global Studies’ bachelor’s degree programme (‘Case B’ - n=10), offered by two universities located in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia respectively. Both programmes explicitly invoke the creation of ‘global citizens’ as a core objective. Supplementary data was sourced from interviews with key programme staff involved in the design and delivery of these programmes, as well as university and programme documentation. The analysis of the student accounts along with the supplementary data from programme staff interviews, are foregrounded against the prevailing societal anxiety regarding youth civic engagement and the role of citizenship education. The integration of GCE into higher education itself represents an interesting response to this anxiety. The analysis undertaken is framed theoretically through the related fields of GCE and identity, notions of ‘everyday citizenship’, and holistic approaches to the development of youth citizenship identity in transition (especially Harris, 2015 and Wood, 2017). A key finding at the programme level was way in which staff were able to reinterpret institutional global citizenship discourse to create the space to implement their GCE programmes in more critical ways. The students’ recounted new, globalised, and entangled forms of civic engagement they had already participated in pre-university, which illustrated the de-standardised patterns of transition they were encountering (Harris, 2015; Wood, 2016; Wyn, 2013). Many of the themes discernible in these transitions were evident across both groups of students despite slightly differing programme structures and geographic contexts. It was notable that the specific combinations and timing of the relevant experiences were highly individualised - even amongst the small samples taken from each programme. Both points represent significant findings in themselves. It is suggestive of the variety of experiences likely to be found across bigger and more diverse samples of young university students, and young people more generally, and the need for educators to recognise these to improve programme design (Ratnam, 2013; Wyn, 2013). The ways the students were each required to navigate their own pathways of globally-inflected civic engagement as they moved into their GCE programmes underscores the agency they were already displaying in responding to similar forces and educational structures. | eng |