A Conceptual Study on ‘After-Critical’ Global Citizenship: A New Perspective of Interconnected Society Based on Critical Realism

This paper explores the critical realist approach to global citizenship education (GCED) by reviewing con-temporary discussions of GCED, primarily addressing the most relevant concepts of global citizenship from post-colonial/critical perspectives. In particular, this paper aims to discuss the distinctiveness of critical re-alist GCED in comparison with the preceding approach. While critical GCED has advanced important im-plications towards theory and practice in the field, and it is one of the most intensively accepted among the most recent scholarly discussions, it still encounters challenges such as a binary standpoint, a lack of deeper ontological consideration, and a failure to involve generative mechanisms to judge and achieve social justice. This necessitates a new or an alternative conceptualization of GCED. In response to the arguments, this paper suggests ‘after-critical’ global citizenship education that offers theoretical and methodological im-plications in developing a balanced analysis of the complex globalization and education. Calling for trans-formative praxis and reflexivity, it promotes relational engagement with concerns that situate oneself within and beyond a mode of being as global citizen. It envisages reconfiguring and responding the possibility of self and collective ontology, grounded in a deeper recognition of our essential totality in the social world in globalized community.