Indigenous Storytelling as a Pathway to Global Citizenship: Evidence from Urban and Rural Primary Schools

Global Citizenship Education (GCE) faces a persistent challenge: preparing children to engage with an interconnected world without detaching them from the cultural knowledge, identities, and communities that shape their lives. Indigenous storytelling offers a culturally grounded means of connecting these local foundations with broader civic responsibilities, yet its underlying learning mechanisms and sensitivity to educational context remain insufficiently understood. This study investigated how Indigenous storytelling relates to global citizenship competencies and whether these relationships differ between urban and rural primary schools. An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design involved 500 Grade 5–6 students from ten public primary schools (five urban and five rural). Quantitative relationships were examined using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM), Measurement Invariance of Composite Models (MICOM), and Partial Least Squares Multi-Group Analysis (PLS-MGA). Semi-structured interviews and classroom observations with purposively selected students, teachers, and principals were subsequently analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis. Both strands were integrated using joint displays and meta-inference. All hypothesized structural relationships were significant ( p < 0.001), revealing interconnected pathways from cultural authenticity, narrative engagement, community participation, and reflective learning toward global awareness, cultural respect, social responsibility, civic participation, and sustainability awareness. Urban students showed stronger narrative engagement–reflective learning (β = 0.712 vs. 0.618, p = 0.036) and reflective learning–global awareness relationships (β = 0.514 vs. 0.432, p = 0.028). Qualitative evidence explained these differences: rural schools embedded storytelling in community participation and cultural immersion, whereas urban schools relied more on teacher facilitation, collaborative reflection, and technology-supported storytelling. Indigenous storytelling connects cultural rootedness with global responsibility through context-sensitive learning pathways. Rather than positioning local identity and global citizenship as competing educational aims, the findings demonstrate how culturally grounded pedagogy can support reflective, socially responsible, and sustainability-oriented citizenship while requiring different enactment strategies across urban and rural primary education.