Book Review: Maureen Ellis, The Critical Global Educator: Global Citizenship Education as Sustainable Development
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929917712145 |
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsGeneral Politics |
650 Political Studies Review 15(4)
those interested in what is unfolding at the
forefront of computational social science.
Gokhan Ciflikli
(London School of Economics and
Political Science)
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929917712143
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The Critical Global Educator: Global
Citizenship Education as Sustainable
Development by Maureen Ellis. Abingdon:
Routledge, 2015. 262pp., £80.00 (h/b), ISBN
9781138887800
This book aims to provide educators, stake-
holders and policy-makers with a perspective
on how global citizenship education can be
promoted and how critical global educators
committed to social justice and development
can be produced. In this sense, the book is
based on a criticism of traditional and technical
teacher training that ignores the importance of
developmental aspects and an understanding
of democratic values and inequalities within
education.
The first chapter offers a rich conceptual and
theoretical framework drawing from Bourdieu’s
habitus, Meziworan and O’Sullivan’s trans-
formative learning, critical realist framing and
cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) to
offer hermeneutic lenses. Although the chapter
is written with rich insights and includes high
intellectual debates and justifications of theory,
the author generates little resonance in terms of
how all these lenses complement and connect
with each other.
The second chapter focuses on theories of
globalisation to highlight potentialities and
opportunities as well as the threats globalisa-
tion may cause to educational institutions, and
it portrays how the global system contextual-
ises global education. Drawing on a number of
rich philosophical ideas and principles, in
chapter 3 the author seeks to conceptualise the
critical global educator and to explain the fun-
damental pillars of global education.
Chapter 4 provides a rationale for meth-
odology based on CHAT as embodied criti-
cal realism in order to evaluate global educators.
In so doing, Maureen Ellis carries out a number
of surveys with trainee teachers as well as
interviews and focus group discussions with
practitioners and academics. Chapter 5 criti-
cises nationalist policies and guidelines and
presents a political reform movement arguing
that education policies which ignore theoreti-
cal premises cannot tackle the political–ethical
contradiction which lies at the heart of globali-
sation. It therefore demands that professional
education be based on political and multimedi-
ated literacies.
Chapter 6 presents a thematic analysis of
the interviews and focuses on the political,
economic and cultural factors which play a role
in the professional development of critical
global educators. The last chapter provides
eight recommendations for global citizenship
education as sustainable development, based
on the theoretical discussion and empirical
evidence presented in the preceding chapters.
The book touches on the highly significant
topic of the transformation of global education
that is rooted in rich philosophical and theoreti-
cal frames. However, the structure and the text
are at times difficult to follow and often fall into
a repetition of ideas. This makes it challenging
to process and to elicit key arguments, espe-
cially for those who are not familiar with CHAT.
Firdevs Melis Cin
(Istanbul Ticaret Universitesi)
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929917712145
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Measuring Regional Authority: A
Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance,
Volume I by Liesbet Hooghe, Gary Marks,
Arjan H Schakel et al. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2016. 687pp., £95.00 (h/b), ISBN
9780198728870
Community, Scale, and Regional
Governance: A Postfunctionalist Theory
of Governance, Volume II by Liesbet
Hooghe and Gary Marks. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2016. 195pp., £25.00 (h/b), ISBN
9780198766971
In these volumes, which are capable of stand-
ing independently of each other but are best
used together, Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks
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