From Local to Global: How Pakistani Teacher Candidates Conceptualize Citizenship Beyond National Borders

Abstract

This phenomenographic research study explores qualitatively distinct conceptualisations of citizenship among Pakistani teacher candidates. As the globalisation process defines the traditional nation-state structures, the process of how teachers negotiate the conflicting aspects of the three dimensions of citizenship–local, national, and global–becomes of paramount importance in educational reform. The phenomenographic approach is used in this study, where the collective differences between citizenship conceptions among 32 teacher candidates at public sector universities in Punjab, Pakistan, are analysed. Semi-structured interviews found that there were five different conceptions of citizenship, including Citizenship as National Loyalty, Citizenship as Religious Identity, Citizenship as Democratic Participation, Citizenship as Cultural Awareness, and Citizenship as Transformative Global Agency. The results reveal the manner in which Pakistani teacher candidates mediate between the competing discourses of Islamic nationalism, democratic pluralism, and cosmopolitanism in postcolonial settings. This paper unveils the persistent tensions between the cultural-religious systems inherited in the past and the new global consciousness, including the implications of curriculum design in teacher education. The findings suggest that the process of shifting future teachers to critical global citizenship requires pedagogical strategies that disrupt assumed notions of belonging and develop transformative agency to address structural inequalities at both the local and global levels.