Cosmopolitanism or imperialism? A Southern perspective on global citizenship education in post-colonial Algeria

Abstract

This article uses English as a Foreign Language education as a lens to bring a post-colonial perspective to the conceptualisation and application of global citizenship education in Global South contexts. To achieve this objective, four standardised English as a Foreign Language textbooks that are currently used in public middle schools in Algeria are analysed. Multimodal critical discourse analysis is used as an analytical framework to deconstruct the linguistic and visual structures of the textbooks. The findings indicate that despite the inclusion of the neoliberal and liberal dimensions of global citizenship education, there is a set of conundrums which validates the complexity of global citizenship education in post-colonial contexts. This set of conundrums, which centres on the themes of colonialism, nationalism, neoconservatism and patriotism, adds to the ongoing discussion and critique of the Western-centric discourses on global citizenship education and complicates its implementation in post-colonial contexts with strong nationalism.