Lonely Business or Mutual Concern: The Role of Comparative Education in the Cosmopolitan Citizenship Debates

Oct 15, 2026

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A comparative education research paper examines how cosmopolitan and global discourses shape citizenship debates, while highlighting U.S. resistance to integrating these perspectives into citizenship education. It analyzes three central challenges: terminological and theoretical divergence, limited educator awareness, and curricula oriented toward patriotism. The study also identifies research areas in comparative education that can support cosmopolitan and global education agendas, especially for advancing a broader worldview in citizenship teaching.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages10

Reading Time25 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Citizenship as a contested concept

Challenges to cosmopolitan and global citizenship education

Theoretical background and discourses

Competing models of citizenship

Public education and citizenship education

Globalization and implications for citizenship

Weakening national citizenship

Global citizenship and cosmopolitanism

Lonely Business or Mutual Concern: The Role of Comparative Education in the Cosmopolitan Citizenship Debates Anatoli Rapoport Purdue University Cosmopolitan and global discourses are more and more often used for conceptualization and interpretation of citizenship. However, in the United States, the majority of schools are still resistant to incorporating cosmopolitan and global perspectives into citizenship education curriculum. This paper addresses challenges of cosmopolitan and global citizenship education in the United States. Three major challenges, namely (a) terminological and theoretical divergence,(b) lack of awareness among educators, and (c) patriotism-focused curricula are discussed. Also, the perspective areas of comparative education research to advance cosmopolitan and global education agendas are identified. Citizenship is one of the most contested concepts in social sciences. education since the very beginning of public schooling has been and Hence, citizenship still remains at the focal point of political and educational debates. The intensification of debates in the last decades was mostly the result of belated attempts to coordinate curricular development in citizenship education with the rationalization of numerous emerging facets of citizenship. Marshall’s (1950) theory of the historical progression of citizenship based on the development of civil, political, and social rights has been challenged by a rising number of competing models of citizenship (Carter, 2006) . These models are usually conceptualized and interpreted through various discourses. Abowitz and Harnish (2006) identified seven such discourses: civic republican, liberal, feminist, reconstructionist, cultural, queer, and transnational. Urry (1999) categorized models of citizenship as cultural, minority, ecological, cosmopolitan, consumer, and mobility (in Adalbjarnardottir, 2002) . The purpose of this article is to explore the relations between comparative education research and the two most controversial models of citizenship education, namely cosmopolitan and global citizenship. I begin by summarizing conditions that make various forms of supra-national citizenship, including cosmopolitan and global, a significant part in citizenship education discourses. I will then analyze the main problems that cosmopolitan and global citizenship education face in the United States, and, finally, I will suggest how comparative education research can contribute to the development and advancement of a cosmopolitan and global worldview in citizenship education, particularly in the United States. Throughout its history, citizenship has been interpreted as an individual relationship with a nation state in which loyalty to the state and building a common identity were at the core of citizenship education (Lawson and Scott, 2002) . Since the rise of a nation state, nationality and citizenship have been almost synonymous (Davies, Evans, & Reid, 2005; Heater, 1999) . To be a citizen implied that a person at minimum had a number of responsibilities to the state and other members of the community and, at the same time, enjoyed rights that the state awarded him or her as a compensation for entrusted responsibilities. Shared legal rights and responsibilities inevitably required that all those who possessed those rights and accepted responsibilities also shared values and beliefs. Hence, to become a citizen a person had to be socialized through the system directly or indirectly controlled by the society or community. This system is called a public © 2009 Current Issues in Comparative Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Current Issues in Comparative Education, Vol. 12(1): 23-32. A. Rapoport education, and citizenship education is one ofits most important components. The development of a national system of education was one of the first tasks of a polity usually called a nation state and concurrently one of the fi

FAQs

What is the paper’s main focus regarding citizenship education?

It explores how comparative education research relates to cosmopolitan and global citizenship education, especially the challenges these approaches face in the United States.

What three major challenges are discussed for cosmopolitan and global citizenship education in the U.S.?

The paper discusses terminological and theoretical divergence, lack of awareness among educators, and patriotism-focused curricula.

Why does the author argue that citizenship remains central to political and educational debates?

Because citizenship is one of the most contested concepts in the social sciences, and education systems have long treated citizenship as a core concern.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by OmBimo