Teaching for Global Citizenship, Social Justice and Peace through International Partnerships: A Collaboration between students and faculty in Ethiopia and Canada

The decolonizing global citizenship education (GCE) collaboration between Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia) and Lakehead University (Canada) was established in 2021 to problematize and deepen student perspectives about GCE at both campuses. This partnership involves a merging of three courses, each with central, overlapping themes of GCE, in a synchronous, virtual sphere for four weeks. Together, from our separate global locations, students work in small groups across national contexts to reflect on the courses' key themes of global perspectives, global histories, global futures, and global actions.
Photovoice pedagogies anchor the class discussion, as students present their realities and visions of citizenship between institutions. In the research arm of our project, we ask, how can such an international, online collaboration between related teacher education courses affect participants’ perspectives on decolonizing GCE? Our DCMÉT symposium panel of faculty of students from this year’s collaboration will present our reflections from our 2022 pilot study and our 2023 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded research project in process.
Ultimately, our research examines how future teachers might be prepared to teach global citizenship in critical ways that embrace complex global histories in the service of peace and global social justice.