Improving Emirati students’ social responsibility competence through global citizenship education

Purpose The purpose of this study is twofold: to determine if implementing a global citizenship education curriculum can aid the development of Emirati students’ social responsibility competence and to experiment with different instructional strategies that aim to yield improvement in the social responsibility of students. Design/methodology/approach The intervention research study used a mixed-methods quasi-experimental approach to examine Emirati students’ social responsibility gains and overall perceptions of a global citizenship education curriculum. Conceptual frameworks for instructional design of service-learning were used as theoretical underpinnings. The data were collected from student reflections, field notes, questionnaires and interviews. Findings Both the quantitative and qualitative data indicated that the global citizenship curriculum advanced students' understanding of social responsibility and civic concepts, specifically civic awareness, social justice and diversity. Research limitations/implications For future studies, researchers are encouraged to expand the current study's five-week timeframe by exploring the implications of a global citizenship education curriculum over a full term or even a whole academic year. Practical implications The results of the present study indicate that educators should experiment with curriculum redesign to further facilitate the development of social responsibility in undergraduate students. The results also suggest that educators incorporate specific instructional strategies such as integrated reflections and intergroup dialogue on social issues. Originality/value Social responsibility and global citizenship education have broadly been based on Western paradigms. Few studies have explored the impact of global citizenship education on the development of students' social responsibility in the Gulf region. This study fills the gap in knowledge by lending evidence of the role of global citizenship education in undergraduate university programs in the Gulf.