Professor Fazal Rizvi
Professor of Global Studies in Education at University of Melbourne and Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The idea that in an era of globalization we are globally interconnected has become a common refrain. Global citizenship education is often assumed to be a response to the recognition that we connected to each other, beyond the particular cultural and national differences that might divide us. It is not difficult to show empirically how this is indeed the case, and is becoming ever more so. In this paper, I will discuss how might we help our students to think about the nature and scope of global connectivity not only empirically but also in ethical and political terms. I will argue that Global Citizenship Education should involve encouraging students to consider additionally which cases of connectivity matter more than others, to which they have a greater sense of moral obligation and why and how might they should view the entire world as their moral universe, beyond the abstraction that such an idea clearly represents.
Biography:
Fazal Rizvi is a Professor of Global Studies in Education at the University of Melbourne, as well as an Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Between 1998 and 2001, he served as Pro Vice Chancellor (International) at RMIT University, and in 1996 established and directed Monash Center for Research in International Education. Fazal has written extensively on issues of identity and culture in transnational contexts, globalization and education policy and Australia-Asia relations. His book, Globalizing Education Policy (Routledge 2010) has been widely used in courses around the world. A collection of his essays is published in: Encountering Education in the Global: Selected Writings of Fazal Rizvi (Routledge 2014). Fazal is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences and a past Editor of the journal, Discourse: Studies in Cultural Politics of Education, and past President of the Australian Association of Research in Education.