This book argues that global education has largely been silent on the key issues driving inequality and injustice, reflecting a creeping deradicalisation of the field and an abandonment of its radical origins, particularly the Freirean pedagogy of reflective action toward positive social change.

McCloskey suggests that global education is too detached from the social movements such as Schools’ Strike for Climate, Black Lives Matter, Indigenous land rights, and the Tax Justice Network. He shows how and why global education can engage more with climate justice, the rise of the far-right and racialized violence, neoliberalism, class conflict, extreme poverty and political disconnection by connecting with wider social movements, arguing that a pedagogy of renewal is needed to position the sector in the urgent debates that are central to our future and go beyond the sustainable development goals. The book includes chapters on topics and crises including the conflict in Gaza, climate change, class, decolonization, race, migration and neoliberalism. By applying global education’s radical pedagogy to the causes of democratic drift and creating new civil society partnerships with movements that share our values and aims, the sector can renew itself.

Stephen McCloskey is Director of the Centre for Global Education, Ireland, and editor of the Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review Journal.