Global citizenship education in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms: views of the Algerian university oral expression teachers and their students

Our world is suffering from serious ills including poverty, climate change, and
infectious diseases. Global citizenship education (GCE) has emerged to empower
students with knowledge, skills, values and attitude to take actions against global
issues. Researchers strongly advocated the potential place of GCE in English as a
foreign language (EFL) classroom, but very few studies have been conducted to
examine EFL teachers’ and students’ perspectives on incorporating GCE in their
classes. Besides, previous research on GCE in EFL contexts paid little attention to
theorizing learning and differentiating between soft and critical notions of GCE.
Accordingly, this study contributed to the research literature by applying experiential-existential
theory and soft versus critical conceptions of GCE to explore Algerian EFL
university teachers’ and students’ views on integrating GCE in their oral expression
sessions (OES), which seemed to have opportunities for tackling GCE.
The findings generated from unstructured observations, eight teachers’ semistructured
interviews and fourteen students’ group-interviews demonstrated their
positive views on GCE. Influenced by their biographies including faith, the
participants (the teachers and the students) understood GCE as knowledge, skills,
values and attitudes, and only the minority of the students mentioned benevolent acts.
They saw themselves to have potential roles in addressing global issues, developing
communication skills, nurturing values and attitudes, as well as encouraging actions.
The teachers believed GCE should be taught in OES through communicative and
intercultural approaches. The participants suggested various strategies and materials
for including GCE in OES. Interestingly, they reported their classes were already
addressing some aspects of GCE. However, their responses aligned with experiencing
disjuncture (a gap between learner’s biographies and the real-world) of soft GCE
(simplifying complex issues) which might tend to reinforce the status quo by
producing personally responsible citizens and/or participatory citizens rather than
critical GCE (dialoguing the root causes of problems) which aims to transform the
prevailing world conditions by generating justice-oriented citizens. It was therefore
suggested for the Algerian ministry of higher education and scientific research to
include critical GCE in teacher education programmes for enabling its integration in
EFL classrooms.