Intercultural understanding via local and global educational citizenship: A contribution to international education via a lived-in substantiation of multilingualism and cosmopolitanism

Abstract

This article attempts to enhance intercultural understanding, and thereby contribute to international education, by substantiating local and global educational citizenship via a critical examination of the author’s educational life against the framework of cosmopolitanism as a cultural identity form that combines local and global citizenship. Educational developmental stages across four continents and culturally diverse areas (Western Europe, Central America, East Asia and the Middle East) are examined against this framework. The purpose is twofold: first, to enrich and enlarge the development of a personal identity and mindset, namely to provide international students, teachers, interested parents and administrators with a personal identity or developmental model for their own professional or private lives. Second, to open up the institutional arena for a new type of individual aspiration, namely to let personal identity forms that are local and global in spirit enrich educational citizenship programmes that are local and global in setting. En route, a scientific background consisting of a theoretical framework and empirical evidence consisting of an in-depth investigation of young multilingual students is made even more accessible and transparent by self-critical evaluations of the author’s personal and professional educational pathways. This three-pronged approach of theory, empirical evidence, and autobiographical experience and example is open for revelation, comparison and criticism, but also for identification, imitation and inspiration.