Citizenship Teaching & Learning - Volume 10, Issue 1, 2014

This article is made up of a set of interrelated pieces of work that emerge from the 9th citizED conference that was held in Tokyo in 2013. A symposium at that conference was organized on the theme of ‘Comparative approaches on citizenship education: East and west’. We present here four individual contributions from Daehoon Jho, Shigeo Kodama, Walter Parker and Libby Tudball as well as an introduction and concluding remarks by Mitsuharu Mizuyama and Ian Davies. Throughout we have been keen not to present stereotypical reflections and are struck as much by the similarities and overlaps between authors as well as the differences. We hope that by sharing these ideas we will celebrate diversity and contribute to thinking and practice in specific countries, as well as raising the possibility of cross national collaboration and perhaps generating further reflections about the possibility of global standards for citizenship education.

We explore how young Hungarians construct active citizenship in a context of political discontent and social and economic uncertainty. From research conducted in the autumn of 2012, we link up young Hungarians voices to the much debated theoretical models of citizenship. We find that while these young people’s abstract and normative constructions of active citizenship tend to resonate with a duty-based ‘communitarian’ model of citizenship, their opinions on social and political issues echo a more ‘critical’ model of citizenship, which lays emphasis on equality and social justice. Additional themes to emerge, and of which may be a hindrance to political participation, include: the view that demonstrating is ‘bad’; and, that young people construct themselves and their peers as ‘non-citizens’. We argue that in order to help overcome this passive and non-agentic perception of democratic citizenship, citizenship education in schools should be combined with purposely reflective youth debates on what it means to be a young person in Hungary now.

Researchers increasingly call for examination of the potential of participatory new media technologies to reframe practices of citizenship teaching and learning and civic action. We draw upon a qualitative, interpretive case study of nineteen second- and 1.5-generation African immigrant youths to examine multiple, shifting conceptualizations of citizenship and negotiations of civic identities across diverse local/global, on/offline participatory new media technologies. We point to ‘social–civic’ literacies as emerging and complicating spaces of political literacy, civic identity constructions, and formal/informal citizenship teaching and learning opportunities. We draw implications for productive debate across shifting notions of citizenship, democratic education and participatory new media technologies in English and Social Studies classrooms.

Citizenship and citizenship education have been traditionally bounded to either a geographically bound nation-state or a historically shared culture. In this article we argue that it is no longer enough to explore the complexity of what we term becoming-citizen in today’s information-based society where multiple national and cultural connections and affiliations are a mouse click away. We make the case for the importance of understanding how developing literacies affect how citizenship is transformed in pedagogical settings, particularly in terms of how Information and Communication technologies (ICT), the curriculum and teaching intersect and affect each other as complex systems. To do this, we use Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of agencement and Multiple Literacies Theory (MLT) to map how citizenship emerges in a group of young newcomer students’ texts (broadly defined) as filmed with pocket size digital video cameras. The research reported here comprises part of a three-year research project on the interrelationships between citizenship, technology and pop culture in a French secondary inner-city Ottawa schools. We begin with an outline of the concepts of agencement and MLT. We then briefly summarize the current literature on citizenship education before proceeding to an account of how our research has been guided by rhizoanalysis. We then proceed to three vignettes associated with the curriculum used in the particular school under study and two video clips shot by two newcomer students. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our study in terms of theory and practice.

In 1965 Singapore became independent after a two-year merger with Malaysia and over 100 years of British colonization. Since then, the government has been inculcating patriotism in its citizens through educational policies such as the introduction of Social Studies at secondary school. This process of education for patriotism is interesting in the case of Singapore in two respects: how teachers understand the link between patriotism and loyalty to the government; and whether teachers dare to cross boundaries to engage students in discussions that may challenge pro-government views. This study explores the perceptions and practices of three Social Studies teachers to address two issues. First, how do Social Studies teachers understand ‘patriotism’? Second, how do they teach it within or beyond boundaries? The findings show that teachers did not think that patriotism meant loyalty to the government; instead it meant loyalty to one another as Singapore citizens. Though the translation of teachers’ understandings of patriotism into the classroom differed from teacher to teacher, in terms of helping students think critically, there were elements of crossing the boundaries set by the ruling party.

At present, there are seven main citizenship concepts in general – namely, classical citizenship (Athen’s citizenship as office-bearer), liberal citizenship (human right to be citizens), social citizenship (citizens’ right for social welfare), national citizenship (citizens in nation states), multiple citizenship, post-national citizenship and global citizenship. What is reflected in the development of these concepts is the historical progress from seeing citizenship as a privilege to regarding it as a political and social right, and from citizenship restricted to nations to one that is global. What is also shown is that the concept of citizenship is rather fluid and dynamic. Thus, it is sometimes understood as flexible citizenship today. Despite these different names and conceptualizations, the understanding of citizenship education is still confined to the socialization framework. That is, the purpose of citizenship education is to teach young people about the ‘here and now’ and about how they can participate properly in the localities of various citizenship contexts. However, as we move into the twenty first century, citizens are facing a highly mobile and changing society. A particularly urgent and important task for twenty first-century education is to equip people with twenty first-century competence, which they need to survive and thrive in the uncertain and unpredicatable world. Therefore, educating citizens for the future becomes an essential issue. In this regard some important questions need to be answered, such as ‘Is it possible to socialize for the future unknown world that is full of uncertainty?’ ‘What would be the unique features of citizenship education that focuses on becoming rather than being?’ ‘What would be the future modes of interactions between the government and citizens while they are both unsure about the future?’ Rather than trying to find definite answers for these questions, this article would like to provide some observations starting from the Singapore context, which is attempting to prepare citizens for the future.

Case Studies on Diversity and Social Justice Education, Paul C. Gorski and Seema G. Pothini (2014) New York and London: Routledge and Frances, 160 pp., ISBN: 9780415658256, p/bk

Diversity in Youth Literature: Opening Doors through Reading, Jamie Campbell Naidoo and Sarah Park Dahlen (eds) (2013) Chicago: American Library Association, 219 pp., ISBN 9780838911433, p/bk, £43.50

Learner-Centred Education in International Perspective: Whose Pedagogy for Whose Development?, Michele Schweisfurth (2013) London: Routledge, 192 pp., ISBN: 9780415600729, h/bk, £85.00

G is for Genes, Kathryn Asbury and Robert Plomin (2014) Wiley, 197 pp., ISBN: 9781118482810, p/bk £60.00