“Global citizenship means different things to different people” Visions and implementation of global citizenship education in Dutch secondary education

Many countries have recently called for educating global citizens, suggesting that global citizenship education (GCE) can contribute usefully to individuals and the greater world. However, so far there is no clear definition of how best to teach GCE. Educators in the Netherlands have recently given attention to citizenship education but not to GCE. This article investigates Dutch GCE, regarding the visions schools develop and their translation into pedagogical practice. In a mixed-method design, 15 teachers, 25 coordinators, and 11 school leaders from 47 Dutch secondary schools completed a survey. The results show that Dutch schools mainly operationalized GCE in terms of socialization and cultural GCE. School-level implementation of GCE occurred mostly by integrating it into the teaching of other subjects. Implementation on a class level was mainly focused on group conversations, group assignments, and excursions.