Citizenship Teaching & Learning - Volume 11, Issue 2, 2016

The author of this article argues for using a comparative and international perspective to understand the role of pedagogy in civic education. Drawing on her own research in England, Germany and Denmark, the author demonstrates that pedagogical cultures vary. Next, she discusses what international researchers have learned about civic education pedagogy from the large cross-national assessments and what individual researchers have learned from small case studies within diverse countries, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Philippines and Singapore. She then discusses recent research programmes in the United States that have yielded important information related to pedagogy, including the use of discussion, simulations and digital/social media. The author concludes by proposing a list of needed comparative and international research on civic education pedagogy.

Conceptions of ‘good citizen’ have implications for defining the goals of civic education and formulating civic education programmes. In Mainland China, the concept of ‘good citizen’ is clearly defined by the authorities in official curriculum guidelines. Teachers’ perceptions of ‘good citizen’, however, may differ from any official definition and these perceptions may actually influence teachers’ approaches to the implementation of civic education in schools. The study reported here employs qualitative methods to compare how ‘good citizen’ is defined in the China’s official civics curriculum and junior high school teachers’ perceptions of ‘good citizen’. The purpose of the study is to investigate the extent of congruence between these two levels and to identify strategies for designing an effective civic education curriculum in China. This article argues that an effective civic education curriculum must consider teachers’ conceptions of ‘good citizen’ and teachers’ awareness of citizenship alongside ‘official’ statements.

This article is a report on part of a larger research on student participation in school governance in the Hong Kong context. It addresses the question ‘Is the Student Union a tokenism of student participation in school governance in the context of Hong Kong?’. The research adopts a mixed methodology comprising both quantitative and qualitative methods. For the quantitative study, 3209 valid student questionnaires from 51 secondary schools of different backgrounds were collected. For the qualitative study, four schools of different levels of student participation were involved in in-depth case studies. Semi-structured interviews and field observations with teachers and students were conducted to collect qualitative data. The study revealed that from the questionnaire, the ‘one student, one vote’ policy was an apparently fair, transparent and democratic procedure for Student Union elections, and gave the Student Union a positive image in relation to student participation. However, the in-depth case studies revealed that these were superficial perceptions. Instead, it was found that schools shared very limited powers with their Student Unions, where the Student Union would have power only in trivial school operational matters. The ultimate, real power was in the hands of school authorities, seriously limiting the influence of student participation. Our studies further revealed that whether students were satisfied with this disempowering situation or not, most of them had become ‘positive and passive’. This was because they had been socialized to accept the status quo, without expressing dissident voices, as they did not want to oppose the caring school ethos that they valued. In summary, Student Unions in Hong Kong are, in general, close to tokenism, a representative mechanism that cannot take meaningful action to bring forth genuine changes in important school matters. This may have negative impacts on students’ citizenship development, and ends up with cultivating students to be non-questioning, non-participatory, cynical, passive and docile citizens.

At the same time when civic engagement is gaining increased recognition as a key learning competency within many colleges and universities, numerous studies suggest declines in student involvement in communities and political affairs. These differences may be due, in part, to different understandings among students and scholars with regard to the goals and activities that comprise civic engagement. This review of pedagogical design uses two case studies to examine the importance of making implicit notions of civic engagement explicit in classroom discussions. The authors build upon Battistoni’s finding that distinct conceptual frameworks of civic engagement exist across academic disciplines and offer recommendations on how to apply Battistoni’s conceptual models to clarify pedagogical designs and communication with students.

With relatively few comparative studies of civics curricula in diverse democratic contexts and world regions, this article considers how civic values are negotiated in national curricular policy texts. To explore the purposes of education and the construction of citizens in curricular documents, we layer two theoretical frameworks together – Biesta’s framework examining the purposes of education and Westheimer and Kahne’s framework examining the types of civic education. Looking at curricular frameworks from Sweden, India and the United States, we engaged qualitative content analysis to identify common themes of civic values across these nations: workforce preparation, positioning in society and democratic questioning. We found growing commonality of how ‘citizenry’ is increasingly being defined in terms of individual contributions to the larger enterprises of the nation and the global economy.

As children and families from around the world arrive in Canadian communities, school leaders and teachers are responsible for welcoming them into their schools and for providing appropriate educational programming for all students. However, many educational leaders struggle supporting their colleagues, as well as engaging and working with diverse students, their families and communities; instead many default to educational and leadership strategies that they have relied upon throughout their careers. In this article, we argue that leaders must support all stakeholders they serve and be proactive to engage Canada’s newcomer citizens in/with authentic and meaningful approaches. Drawing from a study on changing demographics in a western province in Canada, and a developing study in New Brunswick as well as on our own teaching experiences, the authors discuss several leadership strategies that principals and teachers may find beneficial in diverse schools and communities as Canada’s population and schools continue to welcome people from all over the world.

What Kind of Citizen? Educating Our Children for the Common Good, Joel Westheimer (2015) New York: Teachers College Press, 122 pp., ISBN: 0807756350, p/bk, $24.95

Aristotleian Character Education, Kristjan Kristjansson (2015) London and NewYork: Routledge, 185 pp., ISBN: 9781138804753, h/bk, $100.29

The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education, Diana E. Hess and Paula Mcavoy (2015) New York, NY: Routledge, 247 pp., ISBN: 9780415880992, p/bk, $38.95