Enacting Global Citizenship: Designing, Implementing, and Testing a Curricular Approach to Address Students’ Uncertain Response to the Notion of Global Citizenship.

Institutions of higher education purport to prepare students for international understanding and for engaged citizenship. Students are increasingly thrust into international contexts and expected to intellectually and socially navigate relationships that span traditional state borders. Simultaneously, universities have ramped up institutional commitment to service-learning and community-based scholarship. These two trends are brought together through the development of Intercultural Service-Learning Courses at the Amizade Global Service-Learning Center at the University of Pittsburgh. Quantitative and qualitative reviews of student outcomes for 2003 Amizade Center courses suggested students were moved to action through their experiences integrating academics and service in foreign communities, but they had little understanding of how to enact their newfound intensity. The disjuncture between rootless secular ethical principles of global citizenship and students’ ability to enact those tendencies in a meaningful way led the staff and faculty of the Amizade Center to develop new curriculum that integrates applicable discussion of global citizenship into the course experiences. The curriculum includes traditional academics, reflection, service through community partnership, intercultural immersion and exchange, and exploration of global citizenship. Over 100 students on courses in diverse disciplines in various settings around the world were exposed to this curriculum during the summer of 2004. This paper quantitatively and qualitatively assesses the impact of a particular methodological and curricular approach of intercultural service-learning on students’ understanding of and ability to apply global citizenship. It will clarify the effects of one institutional approach for integrating the university goals of developing citizens and encouraging international awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]