Global Citizenship Education in North America

To begin to consider the context of global citizenship education in North America, it is important to look at some key characteristics of the continent. In this chapter, we will emphasize the relationship between North America’s multicultural population and multicultural policies and the content and pedagogy connected to global education. We will start with some key characteristics of the North American context and will link the history of multiculturalism and global education. Then we will look specifically at global citizenship education (GCE) trends within North America. Our focus in this chapter is on the theoretical and empirical literature on global citizenship education in elementary and high schools (and not including higher education) in Canada and the USA as well as some reflections on some of the issues arising principally from English-language literature from Mexico. We conclude with an argument for the importance of mobilizing around a critical approach which is already occurring but that requires more work in curriculum, pedagogy, and research.