Educating for ‘glocal’ perspectives at Sultan Qaboos University: Studying students’ perceptions after studying a global citizenship education course

Abstract

Today, globalisation expands the affiliation of the individual from a national level to an international level. Global citizenship has been regarded as an important outcome for students in major universities around the world, yet there is little literature about how it is integrated at universities in the Arab world, although some of them emphasise it in their policies. This article reports on how one Omani University, namely Sultan Qaboos University, interpreted and implemented global citizenship education in their undergraduate programmes. Particularly, this study seeks to identify the perceptions of students who studied a course entitled Global Citizenship Education in the academic year 2018–2019. The data were collected using two tools: a questionnaire which was administered to a sample consisting of 49 students and semi-structured interviews with 10 students. The data analysis was conducted by calculating the medium for the questionnaire and by employing an inductive process where the data were coded and then the themes that emerged from the data were highlighted. The results indicated that Omani University students had different perceptions of global citizenship and their perspectives tended to be more cosmopolitan and humanistic. In addition, they highlighted the impact of the course on developing three dimensions of global citizenship education: the cognitive, socioemotional and behavioural dimensions.