Global Citizenship in Initial Teacher Education (ITE)

Nuffic is the Dutch organisation for internationalisation in education for all levels of education. Over seven decades Nuffic has built an ecosystem around Global Citizenship Education due to the fact that it hosts different networks, events, funding (Erasmus+), digital collaboration (eTwinning & Coil) and develops research and products. For primary education, secondary education, vocational education and training (VET), and higher education. Within higher education, Nuffic specifically supports ITE with its own network: the Centre for Internationalisation of Teacher Education (Cilo). Professional development takes place through inspiration sessions, masterclasses, study visits and other forms of knowledge sharing.

By training students effectively, they gain the knowledge and tools needed to implement global citizenship education in practice. In this way, global citizenship can become better embedded within primary education and help pupils develop into global citizens.

The National Ministry of Education in the Netherlands implemented a law in 2021 that made it obligatory for Dutch primary schools to address topics such as migration, climate change, conflict, the economy and digitalisation through citizenship education. Primary schools do have the autonomy, though, to decide how they incorporate citizenship education in the curriculum. However, teachers and schools struggle with this. First of all, it shows that almost half the schools do not seem to be able to create a coherent curriculum on citizenship education. The Dutch Inspectorate of Education (2026) gave a lot of negative reports on this over the last years without seeing much improvement since the law of 2021. In addition, around 40% of school leaders and teachers (Van Schooten, Krepel & Van Binsbergen, 2022) report not having the self-efficacy in their ability to provide citizenship education. International studies show that the Dutch are not alone in this, the lack of self efficacy in teaching citizenship education is a common phenomenon in other countries (Talis, 2018). On top of that a large proportion of both experienced and novice teachers in the Netherlands and across countries report that their teacher education programme did not adequately prepare them to teach in multicultural and multilingual settings (TALIS, 2018). In the Dutch context we see that the shortage of teaching staff is specifically problematic in the schools located in the bigger cities with multicultural and multilingual communities. It makes sense that teacher do not want to work within schools where they do not feel capable, but when it comes to inclusion and equal opportunities this makes it even more urgent.

The same applies to ITE institutes. There is a national knowledge assessment and there are mandatory competencies that student should develop. However, also here the frameworks provided and the governance leaves the autonomy at the ITE institute and according to Nuffic’s own research (2024) also here reasonable amount of teacher trainers lack the knowledge and skills on citizenship education. The same research shows that there are high quality initiatives, classes, projects and courses in the ITE programmes. The potential is that in the future this could lead to an aligned curriculum, but at the moment the institutes state themselves that these bits of citizenship education could easily be removed from the program in case of curriculum reform, educational innovation process, staff turnover or new management.

Due to the lack of knowledge and skills of teacher trainers, many ITE institutes have global citizenship education in the periphery of the curriculum whilst it has the potential of being at the heart of the curriculum. Often citizenship education is the responsibility of a small group of lecturers. A shared and widely supported continuous learning pathway throughout the curriculum is rarely present.

The Nuffic Quality standard on Global Citizenship education aims to contribute purposefully and efficiently to a coherent and sustainable curriculum in ITE. It focuses on curriculum content on the one side and secondly on the organisational structures, management, and policy so that global citizenship education is sustainably embedded within the institution. The quality standard is an instrument based on a peer-review approach. Institutions are assessed, but more importantly, they receive constructive feedback to improve the curriculum and the organisation. It can be a valuable tool both for institutions engaged in educational innovation and for those that already have a well-developed global citizenship curriculum

Nuffic developed a framework in which Global Citizenship education is operationalised into a list of different criteria. The framework is a co-creation with 3 ITE institutes and several researchers which makes the Quality Standard both practice informed as well as scientific robust. More on the development of the instrument on this page.

The process is that an ITE institute reflects on their curriculum and organisation with this framework. A review committee evaluates this reflection on paper and visits the institute to see and discuss more on the different criteria. In the end the committee makes a report containing feedback and recommendations for the institute.

The themes that are covered in the frame work are global themes that extend beyond current affairs, including:

• Digital transitions;
• Ecological transitions;
• Social transitions – EDI (Equity, Diversity & Inclusion) Governance transitions relating to democracy, politics and the rule of law.
  

At Nuffic, we continue to invest in the global citizenship education ecosystem. We keep exploring ways to support teacher education institutions In this matter. So we are always open to questions, feedback, ideas and tips.

Please feel free to contact Koen de Jonge at kdejonge@nuffic.nl.