Drawing on Fairclough’s three-dimensional critical discourse analysis (CDA) model, this study investigates how South Korean newspapers represent institution-led Global Citizenship Education (GCE) initiatives in terms of genres, styles, and discourses. By analyzing discursive strategies employed in articles from eleven national daily newspapers, the paper reveals how language and discourse are interconnected in constructing and negotiating the significance of institution-led GCE in the South Korean context. The findings highlight the following key features and their implications. First, the genre analysis shows a predominance of straight news reporting, where headlines and leads emphasize institutional agency while backgrounding participants’ roles, thus perpetuating power imbalances in the GCE field. Second, the style analysis reveals contrasting quotation patterns and strategic language use by authoritative figures to legitimize GCE initiatives, which potentially narrows the understanding of GCE and diverts attention from its complex contexts. Finally, the discourse analysis uncovers contrasting strategies that reflect divergent priorities and power dynamics in the perception and implementation of GCE across institutional contexts. This study provides insights into how media representations can reshape and reinforce the implementation and outcomes of GCE programs in South Korea.

This paper aims to investigate how and to what extent ‘critical’ global citizenship is reflected in middle school English textbooks in Korea. Framed within Freire’s concept of critical literacy, the study is concerned with analyzing the written texts in two English textbooks, with a focus on the issue of representations. Using critical content analysis, the research centers on unpacking how race, racism, or racialization, especially in the United States, is represented, and to what extent these representations may be associated with global citizenship education in English language learning. The major findings indicate a notable absence of sufficient sociohistorical and cultural contexts of race in the United States as presented in the concerned English textbooks. Based on the analysis, this paper calls for an expansion of the dimensions of critical global citizenship in English language learning settings, aiming to provide students with broader opportunities to question colonial discourse and challenge issues related to power and systemic oppression.