Social Contract Pedagogy: A Dialogical and Deliberative Model for Global Citizenship Education (Background paper for the Futures of Education initiative)

We propose that together Social Contract Pedagogy (SCP) and Global Citizenship Education (GCE) offer a comprehensive vision including key principles and core elements that are important for rethinking education and shaping the future of the world. We introduce the novel concept of Social Contract Pedagogy (SCP) as a means to adapt the social contract in liberal democracies which has been (conceptually) located at the level of the state, to the level of the classroom and other pedagogically relevant contexts. A key feature of this pedagogy is the negotiation of values and norms in ways that maintain cohesion and inclusion and avoids too much power in the hands of sectarian extremes (of any kind) which tend to impose their views on others, oppress and exclude. This includes using fake news, denying scientific debates and/or any extremely politicized interpretations of evidence and facts to obfuscate or deny consequences of individual and group choices and behavior, but also ‘othering’ of any kind whether from the political right or the political left. In our view, this is an essential premise for the education of democratic citizens. Citizenship education of this kind is seen as essential for the survival and growth of liberal democracies in the future.