We cannot teach what we don't know: Indiana teachers talk about global citizenship education

Globalization significantly influences the very notion of citizenship by challenging the key principle of citizenship as idiosyncratically nation or nation-state related concept. Therefore, the discourse of global citizenship is getting more attention in programmatic educational texts and curricula. However, unlike their colleagues in Europe, Canada or South-East Asia, US educators are still less enthusiastic about introducing the concept of global citizenship in their classrooms. This study investigates how Indiana teachers conceptualize global citizenship and what in their opinions is impeding global perspectives on citizenship education in schools. In general, this research supports the findings of other studies that (1) teachers tend to rationalize the unfamiliar concept of global citizenship through more familiar concepts and discourses and (2) educators need more rigorous assistance to teach emerging types of citizenship. The study demonstrates that despite the fact that participants rarely use the term global citizenship in their instruction, they provide rationales that correspond to the notion of global citizenship.