Match or mismatch in policy and practice: Exploring global citizenship as a graduate attribute in an English university

Comrie, Christine

Abstract

Global citizenship is widely used in English university mission statements as a key graduate outcome, yet the extant literature suggests the concept is poorly defined and is not understood by those tasked with embedding it in the curriculum. My thesis explored the understanding of, and value attributed to the concept in two departments (nursing and business) and across three levels of the university hierarchy (senior managers, lecturers and students) in a large teaching-intensive Alliance Group university in England.

I paired critical realist philosophy with Yin’s (2018) case study approach to answer my two research questions and to explore three propositions that emerged from the literature review. The Shultz (2007) conceptualisation of global citizenship as a trichotomy of world views (radical, transformational and neoliberal) was used as the conceptual model against which to explore these propositions. My case was framed by a university-level strategy document and my data was collected by carrying out an analysis of departmental documents, websites and marketing and triangulating these against the analysis of thirty-five semi-structured interviews across the two departments and the three groups of participants. The pattern matching analytical technique was used to compare my propositions with the empirical data emanating from my analysis of the documents and the interview transcripts.

My findings provide a unique addition to the extant literature by suggesting that keeping top-level policy ‘purposefully indeterminate’ empowers and entrusts a range of policy actors within individual departments to translate and reify that policy in a way which is relevant to and understood by discrete disciplines. This in turn is likely to reduce barriers to implementation and allow more abstract concepts to take on a locally relevant meaning. Thus, my research rejects the thinking that an unclear top-level definition of policy is problematic.

My research further confirms that, while discrete departments might translate global citizenship differently and may be more aligned generally to one of the three Shultz (2007) conceptualisations of global citizenship, that these are in fact tendencies and more nuanced than the Shultz (2007) thinking that they are mutually exclusive. Therefore, my research rejects the idea that universities are either neoliberal or transformational and rather supports the view that they can exhibit both conceptualisations.

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Apr 14, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 5, 2021
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/7259378
• Award Date: Nov 5, 2021