Understanding Global Citizenship Levels of Turkish Erasmus Students in Poland from Different Variables

Global citizenship has been a phenomenon at presence since Kant’s Perpetual Peace (1795) though it is seemed nascent. The concept defined as “world citizen by Kant, has been widely used as “post national citizenship”, “cosmopolitan citizenship” and “global citizenship” as a solution to the problems of the global age. Sociology, International Relations and Educational Sciences emphasizes different aspects of global citizenship while all of them champion the effect of study abroad experience on global citizenship. In other words, study abroad experience helps awareness of the global problems, produce solutions for these problems and finally take actions at the global level. Hence forth, Erasmus program which is one of the most extensive study abroad programs is considered to contribute to personal awareness process for responsibilities beyond his own society. From this point of view this study conducted through descriptive survey model aims to understand the effect of different variables on the global citizenship levels of Turkish Erasmus students in Poland. In line with this aim, 201 Turkish Erasmus students in Poland were conducted “global citizenship scale” developed by Morais & Ogden (2010). Findings suggest that Turkish Erasmus students have an intermediate level of global citizenship, and get the lowest level from global civic engagement sub dimension. Also it is understood that some variables have an impact on global citizenship.


Introduction
If we need to define one phenomena for world history and international relations in recent era, it will be globalization.The shrinking of the world, appearance of supra national institutions like the EU and the extending borders of money and trade circulation are both causes and outcomes of this still working process.With the rise of globalization the global citizenship concept have started to be discussed.Global citizenship definition covers the awareness of one's role as a citizen of this wide world, respecting diversity, understanding how the world works, being reactionary against social injustice, being engaged in different communities ranging from local to global, being ready for any kind of action that aims to make world more equal and sustainable and feeling the responsibility of one's actions (Oxfam, 2006).Thought in this context, Erasmus program with its diversity, scope and aims can be considered as an effort to educate global citizens.
Turkey sees the EU as a way of adapting and integrating to globalization.EU membership policy has been one of the main pillars of Turkish Foreign Policy.Turkey's EU experience has a long history dating back to 1959.Since then Turkey has been aiming to be a full member of the EU.And there have been official accession negotiations since 2005.But Turkey's involvement in Erasmus program had started in 2004.After 2004 starting from big universities in Turkey, almost all universities began to benefit from this exchange program.
Increasing number of outgoing Turkish Erasmus students has opened the way for various studies focusing on different perspectives; the efficiency of the program for Turkey's integration to the EU, the outcomes of Erasmus experience of Turkish students, the comparison of Turkish students with the host country's students, etc.The majority of the studies have focused on those students who have just completed their Erasmus experience.This study aims to understand Turkish Erasmus students' global citizenship level.What makes this study different from previous studies is that the data collected through fieldwork and Morais and Ogden's global citizenship scale was carried out during Turkish students' Erasmus experience in Poland.The Turkish version of the scale was already used by doing validity and reliability tests by Şahin and Çermik (2011).Looking through the literature, it will be the first study carried out with Turkish Erasmus students during their experience.
To uncover what kind of variables have an impact on Turkish Erasmus students' level of global citizenship, these hypotheses will be tested: H1: There is a positive correlation between being a membership of a NGO, being interested in politics and global citizenship level.
H2: Those proving Turkey's membership to the EU have a higher level of global citizenship.
H3: Gender makes a difference in global citizenship level.H4: The more family income a student have, the better s/he has a global citizenship level.

Method Research Model
In this study survey model, one of the quantitative research methods is used to understand global citizenship levels of Turkish Erasmus students in Poland in terms of various variables.Survey model is a quantitative research method that helps to reveal the opinion, behavior or attitude of a sample about an issue or situation (Creswell,2012)

Study Group
The study group is composed of 201 Turkish Erasmus students in Poland at University of Warsaw in Warsaw (the biggest and the capital city of Poland), Tischner European University in Krakow (the second biggest city of Poland) and Universit y of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow.Some demographic information of the study group is given the tables below 208 The biggest majority of the participants (55,2 % ) belongs to 20-22 ages while the lowest participation belongs to 18-19 ages (7,8 % ).There are 8 students whose mother is illiterate and majority of students' mother is high school graduate (34,3 % ).There is no student whose father is illiterate and majority of students' father is university graduate (34,3 % ).When Table 3. and Table 4. taken into consideration, it can be seen that more than half of the students' parents are not university graduate.This finding emphasizes the importance of Erasmus for Turkish students.The number of Turkish Erasmus students who are a member of a NGO is only 41 (20,4 % ).The majority of Turkish Erasmus students feel interested in politics ("some" = 79 and "much "= 58) while 10,9 % of them has no interest in politics.The rate of those students who supports Turkey's EU membership is 63,2 % while that of who doesn't support Turkey's EU membership is 25,9 % and 10,9 % of the students has no idea about the process.

Data Collection Tool
A personal information form consisting variables considered to be influential on global citizenship level, and Global Citizenship Scale developed by Morais and Ogden (2010) were used to understand Turkish Erasmus students' global citizenship level.The Turkish version of the Global Citizenship Scale was adapted by Akın, A., Sarıçam, H., Akın, Ü., Yıldız, B., Demir, T., and Kaya, M. (2014).The Global Citizenship Scale has three subdimensions : Social responsibility, Global competence and Global civic engagement.The coefficients of internal consistency reliability of the scale are as follows for the subdimensions: .60 for global responsibility, .69 for global competence and .86 for global civic engagement.It can be said that these results proves the scale to be reliable.

Data Analysis
Data obtained from the study was analyzed via SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) program.The answers to the 5 point likert scale have been interpreted as seen in the table below.It is seen from Table 10.that Turkish Erasmus students have an average (3,34) global citizenship score from the overall of the scale.Also, Turkish Erasmus students' social responsibility score is average (3,72) and it is higher than their global competence score (3,50).This finding suggests that Turkish Erasmus students have enough faith in taking responsibility but they don't see themselves competent enough to go into action.What is also important to note that the lowest score of Turkish Erasmus students belongs to global civic engagement dimension (3,10), which implies that they don't have strong belief in actions requiring engagements to solve global problems.No significance has been found between income level of Turkish Erasmus student and their global citizenship overall scores and other subdimensions scores (Table 12.).This means that income level has no influence on students' global citizenship levels.As seen in Table 14.except from social responsibility dimension, there is a significance between student's education experience in Poland and their global citizenship levels.In other words, it can be emphasized that the Erasmus education they get in Poland have a positive impact on Turkish Erasmus students' global citizenship levels.It should also be highlighted that the big majority (145 out of 201) believes that the education they get in Poland have an impact on their global citizenship.Table 14.shows that there is no significance between subdimensions of global citizenship and Turkish Erasmus students' global citizenship levels.However it is also seen that those students who are a member of a NGO have higher overall global citizenship score that those who aren't.It has been found that there is a significance between overall global citizenship and global civic engagement scores and students' interest in politics (Table 15).In other words, those students who are interested in politics tend to hav e a better sense of global citizenship and feel more globally competent.Table 16.gives us that significance is only seen between social responsibility dimension and those students who prove the Turkey's EU membership.In other words students who wish Turkey to be a member country feel more socially responsible than those who don't.

Results, Discussion And Recommendations
In this study these hypotheses have been tested; H1: There is a positive correlation between being a membership of a NGO, being interested in politics and global citizenship level.
H2: Those proving Turkey's membership to the EU have a higher level of global citizenship.
H3: Gender makes a difference in global citizenship level.
H4: The more family income a student has, the better s/he has a global citizenship level H1: There is a positive correlation between being a membership of a NGO, being interested in politics and global citizenship level: True It has been found in Table 15.that there is a significance between overall global citizenship and global civic engagement scores and students' interest in politics In other words, those students who are interested in politics tend to have a better sense of global citizenship and feel more globally competent.Have an interest in politics can be said to be one of the perquisites of global citizenship.In other words, someone who is interested in politics to some degree will also be aware of global problems.
As for being a member of NGO, Table 14.shows that there is no significance between subdimensions of global citizenship and Turkish Erasmus students' global citizenship levels.However it is also seen that those students who are a member of a NGO have higher overall global citizenship score that those who aren't.There many NGOs that have different functions and scope ranging from local districts to global.The type of NGOs that Turkish young people tend to be a member and those who don't tend to be a member may be analyzed in further studies.This way it will be better to understand Turkish young peoples' attitude towards NGOs.
H2: Those proving Turkey's membership to the EU have a higher level of global citizenship: Partially True.).Here it can be explained that the Turkish Erasmus students have known "the other", tried to understand Europe and embrace European values to some extent.Indeed, many Europeans see the EU as "free circulation", "education and work freedom" while it is considered by many Turks as "economic welfare", social protection", "influence in the world" (EU Commission Standard Eurobarometer EB 81 2014).At this point, it is worth studying in detail exactly which rights, freedoms or privileges influenced Turkish Erasmus students.
H3: Gender makes a difference in global citizenship level: Partially True Table 11.shows that female Turkish Erasmus students feel more social responsibility while male Turkish Erasmus students feel more globally competent.As for global citizenship overall score and global civic engagement dimension, not any significant difference has been found.These findings tell us that though gender seems to make some difference in global competence and social responsibility dimensions, there is not a big difference that make us think that gender is an important variable for global citizenship level.
H4: The more family income a student has, the better s/he has a global citizenship level: False No significance has been found between income level of Turkish Erasmus student and their global citizenship overall scores and other subdimensions scores (Table 12.).This means that income level has no influence on students' global citizenship levels.To put in a different way, the income level which is one of the most important determinant of socio cultural level has no direct correlation with global citizenship.The wide scope of globalism is felt by almost every income groups.At least this is valid for our study group, Turkish Erasmus students To elaborate this finding, those students who are studying in private universities outside Turkey should be targeted in terms of global citizenship.This will help to understand those students who are in the top of income level and compare them to the others.
Yagci et al. have, for ex ample, carried out satisfaction survey (daily life, academic life, student affairs etc.) with Hacettepe University students who have Erasmus experience.Şahin (2007) similarly has looked into the questions whether students have achieved their goals set before the Erasmus experience and what kind of changes have occurred after the experience.Bulut (2008) also has studied the efficiency of the Erasmus program in terms of Turkish students.Demir and Demir (2009) have focused on the contribution of the program to the students at Erciyes University Faculty of Education.They have highlighted the benefits of the program to students' personal development and problem solving skills.Sarı and Aktan (2010) and Onder and Balci (2010) have also tried to uncover opinions of students about Erasmus program.

Table 2 .
Age distribution of the study group.

Table 3 .
Distribution of the study group by mother's education level

Table 4 .
Distribution of the study group by father's education level

Table 5 .
Distribution of the study group by monthly family incomeThere is a homogeny distribution in income level for Turkish Erasmus students: 21,9 % of the study group has 1001-2000 TL monthly income; 27,4 % has 2001-3000 TL monthly income; 22,4 % has 3001-4000 TL monthly income and 28,4 % has 4001 + TL monthly income.

Table 6 .
Distribution of the study group by being a member of a nongovernmental organization

Table 7 .
Distribution of the study group by the level of interest in politics

Table 8 .
Distribution of the study group by proving Turkey's EU membership.

Table 9 .
Score intervals used to interpret the averages.

Table 10 .
Global citizenship levels of Turkish Erasmus students.

Table 11 .
t-test results of Turkish Erasmus students' global citizenship levels by gender variable

Table 11 .
shows that female Turkish Erasmus students feel more social responsibility while male Turkish Erasmus students feel more globally competent.As for global citizenship overall score and global civic engagement dimension, not any significant difference has been found.

Table 12 .
One way variant analysis of Turkish Erasmus students' global citizenship scores in terms of income level

Table 13 .
t test results of the impact of university education on students' global citizenship level.

Table 14 .
t test results of the impact of being a member of a NGO on students' global citizenship level

Table 15 .
One way variant analysis of Turkish Erasmus students' global citizenship scores in terms of interest in politics.

Table 16 .
One way variant analysis of Turkish Erasmus students' global citizenship scores in terms of proving Turkey's EU membership.

Table 16 .
gives us that significance is only seen between social responsibility dimension and those students who prove the Turkey's EU membership.In other words students who wish Turkey to be a member country feel more socially responsible than those who don't.Normally, it is expected that there would be a strong correlation between those who proves Turkey's membership and global citizenship levels.But correlation only exists in social responsibility dimension.Other dimensions (global competence and global civic engagement) and overall global citizenship score have no correlation with wish to Turkey's membership.On the other hand, the rate of Turkish Erasmus students who proves Turkey's membership (127 out of 201 , 63,2% ) i s higher than Turkish public opinion (in 2010 42% , in 2012 36% , in 2013 38% )(EU Commission Standard Eurobarometer 74,2010, EU Commission Standard Eurobarometer 79, 2013