Cultivating Global Citizens in the Global South: A Phenomenological Exploration of Undergraduate Experiences in a Civics and Community Engagement Course

Abstract

This study examines the Global Citizenship Education (GCE) experiences and understanding of undergraduate students in Punjab in the compulsory Course on Civics and Community Engagement (GCCE-101) within its context. Twenty-two students were interviewed using semi-structured interviews that were then analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) with NVivo 15 software. The following three themes emerged from the analysis of the Group Experiential Observations: (1) From Passive Recipients to Active Civic Agents is about students' transition from passive receivers to active civic agents; (2) Navigating Local Belonging and Global Responsibility is about tensions between national, community, and global belonging; and (3) Caring Ethics and Humanity Empowerment in Practice is about the enactment of care, empathy, and collective wellbeing in the communities to which students belong. Findings expand on GCE scholarship by foregrounding the voices of undergraduates in the Global South, providing empirically rooted readings of GCE and how they are lived, interpreted, and embodied in a higher-education space in Pakistan. There are implications for pedagogy and policy in the field of civics/citizenship education.