Citizenship Teaching & Learning - Volume 13, Issue 1, 2018

Large-scale international databases provide valuable resources for scholars, educators and policy-makers interested in civic engagement and education in nations that are democracies or striving towards democracy. However, the multidisciplinary nature of secondary analysis of these data has created a fragmentary picture that limits educators’ awareness of relevant findings. We present a summary of research conducted across disciplines using datasets from two large-scale cross-national studies of civic education conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (CIVED:99 and ICCS:09). The IEA studies were conducted in more than 40 countries with nationally representative samples of 14–15 year olds. In a review of over 100 published articles reporting secondary analyses of these data, we identified four themes especially salient for citizenship educators: open classroom climates; teaching and learning approaches; student identity; and profiles of citizenship norms and attitudes. The review summarizes sample relevant articles to illustrate themes, emphasizes connections between education and civic engagement and suggests opportunities for future research.

This article presents a discussion based primarily upon the findings of the second stage of an ongoing research into school students’ perceptions of ‘the citizen’. The first stage was an analysis of images in textbooks intended for GCSE citizenship studies students aged 14–16, the second stage – a year later – involved interviews with A Level citizenship studies students aged 16–18 and with teachers of citizenship. It was found that the images present a particular and unrepresentative image of ‘being British’, a part of which students appear to absorb into their own perceptions, irrespective of their personal experiences. The homogeneity of responses, across class, ethnicity, gender and professional role struck the researcher as notable and similarities and differences are examined. The images represent a highly selective and distorted version of the reality of being English, one that promotes a false consciousness and acceptance of the status quo, uncovering whether or to what extent that version of reality is accepted by those involved is the purpose of this study. Responses in interviews showed that neither the students nor their teachers subscribed to the message behind the images, and that they had their own versions of the reality of ‘the citizen’.

Inclusive education is described as an ‘apprenticeship in democracy’ as it is concerned with the identification and dismantling of exclusionary practices in schools. One such practice is grade repetition, which is known to result in school disaffection and early school leaving. In South Africa, grade repetition is disproportionately experienced by black and poor learners, resulting in the unequal realization of the democratic right to education. The rate of grade repetition in this country is high, but little is known about teachers’ beliefs about the practice. This article presents the results of a self-administered questionnaire in which Johannesburg teachers described what they regarded as the benefits and drawbacks of grade repetition. The data showed that teachers believe that the additional time spent in a repeated year compensates for immaturity, allows learners to ‘catch up’ and be better prepared for the subsequent grade. Teachers do acknowledge negative emotional and behavioural consequences of grade repetition, but many see no drawbacks to the practice. These beliefs are discussed with reference to the context in which they are engendered, with particular focus on the strong teacher and curriculum control over the pace at which knowledge acquisition is expected. It is argued that addressing the high levels of grade repetition will need critical examination of both the teacher beliefs that sustain the practice and the habits of schools that make failure inevitable for some learners.

In 2016, rumours began to spread that the Ontario Ministry of Education was quietly considering cutting its mandatory high school civics course in order to expand another mandatory course on career preparation. While the Ontario Ministry of Education ultimately backed down from this controversial position, the resulting public dialogue raised important questions regarding what Ontario hopes to accomplish through citizenship education. In this article, I engage this debate primarily from a theoretical perspective, arguing that the ambiguous role of citizenship education stems in a large part from a lack of clarity regarding how we use the term ‘citizenship’. In the first and second section, I review the existing literature, with particular emphasis on educational scholarship and political philosophy, to illustrate the incongruity between the complex and multi-layered ways in which citizenship is enacted in Canada and the superficial and homogeneous manner in which it is portrayed in Ontario curricula and educational policies. This incongruity, I suggest, illustrates the need for greater analytic clarity regarding the meaning(s) of citizenship. In the following section, I propose a typology of citizenship, featuring five dimensions along which citizenship is primarily enacted – political, legal, public, economic and cultural. Finally, I illustrate this typology through a brief empirical analysis of the Ontario civics curriculum – a comparative keyword content analysis of the 1999, 2005 and 2013 versions of the curriculum policy document. In conclusion, I suggest that there has been a historical shift in Ontario educational policy towards economic expressions of citizenship at the expense of other dimensions. In this sense, the brief controversy over cutting the Ontario civics course to expand the careers curriculum can be seen as just one manifestation of a larger policy trajectory.

We present how working with text in the classroom can promote civic literacy aims by adapting and studying a well-known instructional method in Social Studies classrooms called Structured Academic Controversy (SAC). Not only do SACs give students an opportunity to engage in this form of deliberation, it also requires students to first become well informed on the topic (an important aspect of civic literacy) through close reading of text. Such text-based discussion is even more important in promoting comprehension when the texts are dense and complex (e.g. the US Constitution, SCOTUS decisions). In this paper, we propose that to obtain civic literacy, students need to gain a deeper understanding of crucial civic knowledge and information through texts and to evaluate how the information might best serve a democratic society.

The social justice teaching theory describes how teachers can transfer equality attitudes to their students. According to this theory, teachers are important role models in the political socialization process. Starting from an unequal disposition of equality attitudes between boys and girls, this article analyses how teachers can bring equality to the classroom by compensating for different attitudes on the topic of gender equality. We first discuss how teachers can influence equality attitudes, comparable to the influence by parents’ socialization. Second, we assess whether teachers can compensate for differences in equality attitudes. Parallel to the evidence from studies on parental socialization, we expect teachers with better student–teacher relationships in particular to be able to transfer equality attitudes better. For the analyses, we use the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS), an important study of 14-year-olds’ civic knowledge, attitudes and engagement. We use data from seven European countries and the Greek part of Cyprus (1160 schools and 24,087 students). To take the multilevel structure of this data into account, the analysis included a multilevel analysis (MLwiN). As expected we found a positive association between student–teacher relationships and equality attitudes. We also find that a good student–teacher relationship can compensate for attitudinal differences. By assessing adolescents’ equality attitudes, we conclude that teachers can close an attitudinal gender gap.

In response to literature documenting the purported disengagement of youth in the civic sphere and the increasing impact of neo-liberal ideologies and policies on the post-secondary education landscape, this article furthers discussion about the civic potential of university education and explores how specific pedagogies can help foster the civic engagement of university students and graduates. Drawing from data collected at Renaissance College (RC), at the University of New Brunswick, this article documents the collaborative and experiential pedagogies used in that programme to support civic learning. Overall, this study demonstrates that the approaches taken at RC are challenging but worthwhile pedagogies that can enhance students’ abilities to become engaged citizens and challenge neo-liberal doctrine at post-secondary institutions. This study also demonstrates how appreciative inquiry (AI) contributes to the development of a methodological framework for studying citizenship education by connecting the epistemological foundations of AI and citizenship education.

Young People, Citizenship and Political Participation: Combating Civic Deficit, Mark Chou, Jean-Paul Gagnon, Catherine Hartung and Lesley Pruitt (2017) London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 147 pp., ISBN: 9781783489954, p/bk, £24.95

Teaching Social Studies for Critical, Active Citizenship in Aotearoa New Zealand, Michael Harcourt, Andrea Miligan and Bronwyn Wood (2016) Wellington, New Zealand: NZCER Press, 173 pp., ISBN: 9780947509415, p/bk, NZD $45.00

Revisiting Multiculturalism in Canada: Theories, Policies and Debates, Shibao Gui and Lloyd Wong (eds) (2015) Rotterdam, Boston and Taipei: Sense Publishers, 345 pp., ISBN: 9789463002066, p/bk, CAN $72.25