Abstract: This doctoral research explores the ideological and practical dimensions of Global Citizenship Education (GCED) in South Korea, with a particular focus on how teachers act as agents of change. GCED has been widely promoted by UNESCO and other international bodies as a transformative educational project aimed at addressing inequality, conflict, and sustainability.
Yet, the way this is understood in different national contexts often reflects tensions between emancipatory and neoliberal strands in education. South Korea offers a compelling case: it is both a UNESCO hub for GCED (through APCEIU) and a society marked by a competitive, exam-driven education culture (Yang & Tan, 2019). This makes South Korea a particularly interesting case to explore how teachers navigate this conflict between two seemingly opposed understandings of GCED, or two components of GCED pulling in different directions.
Moreover, as responsible for fostering the global citizens of the future, what role do teachers, and teachers' professional expertise, play in interpreting and conveying the attitudes, values, knowledge and skills constitutive of global citizenship? And how can and does teacher education prepare future teachers for this role? These will be the guiding questions of this dissertation.
Opponents: Professor Geir K. Almlid and Associate Professor Wenche Hammer Johansen, both from Faculty of Education and Arts
Supervisors: Associate Professor Julius Risberg, Faculty of Education and Arts, and Associate Professor Knut Vesterdal, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Date and time for midway seminar: 15 January 2026, 12.30 - 15.30
Place: Campus Levanger, Seminar Room 2.106 Nylåna