A comparison of ethnocentrism and global citizenship attitudes among Kuwaiti education students

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study examined the level of and relationship between ethnocentrism and global citizenship attitudes among 346 undergraduate education students at a university in Kuwait. Ethnocentrism was measured using the General Ethnocentrism Scale (GENE) developed by (Neuliep, J. W., and J. C. McCroskey. 1998. “The Development of a U.S. and Generalized Ethnocentrism Scale.” Communication Research Reports 14 (4): 385–398; Neuliep, J. W., and J. C. McCroskey. 2013. “Ethnocentrism Scale.” Measurement Instrument Database for the Social Sciences. https://www.midss.org/sites/default/files/ethnocentrism_scale.pdf) and global citizenship was measured using the Global Citizenship Scale by (Morais, D. B., and A. C. Ogden. 2011. “Initial Development and Validation of the Global Citizenship Scale.” Journal of Studies in International Education 15 (5): 445–466), both of which were translated into Arabic. No significant correlation was found between the two scales overall, but there were significant correlations between some of the subscales. Specifically, ingroup preference was negatively correlated with intercultural communication while ingroup superiority was positively correlated with global self-awareness. These findings suggest that the relationship between ethnocentrism and global citizenship is multifaceted, with some aspects of ethnocentrism working against some aspects of global citizenship, while others may work together. In pursuit of developing sustainable global citizenship education (GCE) programmes, it is imperative to keep the complexity of the relationship between ethnocentrism and global citizenship in mind.KEYWORDS: Global citizenshipglobal citizenship educationethnocentrismeducationKuwaitGulf Cooperation Council AcknowledgmentsWe would like to acknowledge the help of Clayton Chiarelott with the editing and formatting of the final manuscript.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).