This study explored how global citizenship as an overarching aim of social
studies can be realized and meaningfully delivered to students in a high school
social studies classroom. Using a case study of an exemplary social studies
teacher, Julia, this study focused on her curricular meaning making and
pedagogical decision making as ways to promote global citizenship in a 9th grade
social studies classroom in the United States. The findings of this study
demonstrate that Julia's curricular decisions and pedagogical practices largely
advocated world justice and governance and cosmopolitan notions of global
citizenship, and emphasized a cooperative nature and dialogic understanding of
the world. Specific pedagogical approaches Julia used are as follows: (1) global
history and culture as interpretation and analysis, (2) from local to global,
(3) cultural diversity, tolerance, and respect, (4) stay tuned for current events,
and (5) visual texts. in-class activity, primary sources, student work sample, and
homework/assignment guidelines are presented as examples of her actual
teaching practices. This study, based upon a real-world classroom observation and
interview data, seeks to provide implications for global citizenship education in
Korea that goes beyond the narrowly defined nationalist and overly competitive
neoliberal discourses and pursues more cooperative and justice-oriented visions of
the world, and to contribute to the generation of more classroom-based empirical
studies that would move the field forward.