A global citizen is someone who understands that their life and community are highly valuable. They simultaneously learn to  constantly draw connections between their experiences and perspective and the experiences and perspectives of other people in other parts of the world.  They understand the lives of others to be just as rich and profound and complex as their own . Finally, global citizens take their responsibility to care for the world (stewardship) seriously.

 The uniqueness of GCE lies in its focus on breaking the barriers of assigned place created by many educational systems to enable freedom of thought and movement throughout the global community. A framework rooted in Anti-colonial theory is what differentiates global citizenship education from an education that is purely multicultural. Teaching that is anti-colonial relies on teaching within a context that acknowledges that colonialism exists in the present as an ongoing phenomenon (Childs & Williams, 1997). Curricula that speak to the unique histories and cultures of marginalized children just as much as they do to more dominant voices is powerful because they provide perspectives which challenge the unique type of colonialism present in more traditional classroom settings and referred to by Ladson-Billings (2009) as a White supremacist master script.

 Too often, multicultural education teaches diversity while sometimes encouraging or privileging of dominant perspectives (so often straight, white and upper class) while marginalizing other voices (queer, of color, girls and women, other socio-economic classes, etc.). This does nothing to disrupt the master script. Global education, on the other hand, encourages relationship building. This means that children of color are taught that their lives, communities and perspectives are equally vibrant, valuable and worthy of an honored place in the classroom and the world beyond. Simultaneously, White children are taught that their perspectives are some of many as opposed to primary and that they exist in a world with many varied and equally valuable perspectives. This counters early lessons of superiority that so often grow into a world view where genuine love, care and empathy cannot exist.