As European political and economic systems become more globalized, education systems have become more and more competitive and have established standardized curricula for most school subjects. The same goes for civics and for global citizenship education. Contrasting curricular choices have motivated the evolution of different basic models for global education: Grounded in human capital models citizenship education is seen as a means for preparing interculturally skilled individuals for a globalized workforce; the world systems model focuses on educating young citizens for cosmopolitan citizenship. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: presenting (1) a longitudinal analysis of the social studies curriculum standards on globalization of the German Länder and of selected educational systems (1994-2014), and (2) framing and interpreting the results using the critical theory of educational knowledge and curricular change on which this analysis is essentially based (Bernstein, Maton).
