Abstract: | Over the last 25 years many educators have stressed the need for students to learn about global issues and have often taken this to be a relatively unproblematic area of pedagogy. An important Canadian study on the impact of teaching about such issues, however, suggests that the learning process may be much more complex than was previously assumed. This article reports on a pilot research project in the UK which monitored student responses to learning about global futures and found much more going on beneath the surface than meets the eye. It would seem that strong cognitive, affective and existential responses need to be recognised and acknowledged as part of any journey towards personal and political change. |