a qualitative study of global citizenship education and elf in iran

a qualitative study of global citizenship education and elf in iran

the setting of a globalized world needs pedagogic thought and action, and requires a new comprehension of training that goes beyond the teaching of factual knowledge. the educational concept of global citizenship education (gce), which should be an interdisciplinary consideration in all areas of education, centers on an increasing growth of complexity and development towards a global society.

the main purpose of modern education is to enable individuals to understand these complex developments and reflect critically on them mainly via english language as lingua franca (elf). accordingly, related parties all need to face elf in the postmodern age. the focus of this qualitative study has been to investigate the globalization process and role of elf in gce, as well as how the awareness of gce goals is related to english language proficiency of individuals in iran. to this end, ten phd candidates of iau tehran branches with high and low english language knowledge were selected in a purposive sampling process.

twelve open ended questions were developed based on the existing questionnaire on gce by morais and ogden (2011) in semi-structured interview format. thematic analysis was employed to analyze the interview transcripts. the findings indicate that english language learning and the related contents can play a significant role in raising awareness regarding global challenges in the world, and that participants showed high degree of interest in expressing their views on global issues, giving main role to social networks regarding actions they can take, but unable to participate in global processes due to their financial status and government policies.