Citizenship Teaching & Learning - Volume 16, Issue 2, 2021

Undoubtedly, the global COVID-19 pandemic ruptured life as we knew it. Globally, citizens’ freedom of movement, socialization needs and economic activity ground to a halt as governments around the world introduced stringent measures in response to the ravaging spread of the virus. In South Africa, a national lockdown was announced in March 2020, and the campuses of institutions of higher learning became lifeless and barren. The aftermath of the pandemic will surely be a time of mourning when considering losses in terms of life and socio-economic well-being. Despite these devastating realities, this moment could also be one of promise and hope. Considering commonplace resistance to change, the pandemic is forcing leaders and citizens to reflect on habitual behaviour and decisions. This period in time could become a moment of true transformation that could meaningfully address matters of inequality and injustice. All sectors and industries have to think anew about operational matters, inclusive of the higher education sector. South African higher education residential institutions were not prepared for the sudden transition from face-to-face lecturing to online teaching; from invigilated examinations to take-home online assessment. Further, the South African educational landscape is marred with disparity between the previously disadvantaged and advantaged institutions. These remnant realties from the country’s apartheid past continue to find expression in signifiers of inequality and found poignant expression in measurables such as students’ access to devices, data and a conducive learning environment. This inequality, compounded by the current pandemic, warrants a particular response from the educator to ensure meaningful education continues. In this contribution, we argue that educators need to assume a different role and position, which demands more than merely transitioning to online teaching platforms. The time is now for the educator in becoming to lead vulnerably in the nurturing of confidence through connection and to demonstrate equality in teaching and learning.

Twenty-first century teachers are expected to have a holistic approach to teaching including addressing students’ self-determination, interpersonal awareness, cultural sensitivity, empathy and self-regulation. Discussions of controversial political issues (CPI) provide opportunities to examine the interplay between emotional and cognitive components, the former having rarely been studied. As part of a larger study, teachers were asked to provide a description of a CPI discussion in class. The 387 valid responses were analysed qualitatively, and the model that emerged connected triggers, motivations, responses and outcomes. The students and teachers were found to have different motivations and needs: while students were concerned with emotional needs, teachers had educational goals in mind. Teachers wanted to quell the emotional unease, to prevent racist remarks, to keep control of the classroom, and to tie the discussions to the curriculum. Teachers mainly used cognitive responses and somewhat allowed students to ventilate, or used moderating responses, all of which produced partial results. Some teachers avoided the discussion altogether, which was the least useful. The smallest proportion used a mixture of responses, which met both educational and emotional needs. Implications to teacher training, including the importance of training in social-emotional aspects of teaching, are discussed.

Chile, unlike other countries in the region, is facing two major crises: one of a large social nature and the other in public health, which is in its form of the pandemic that is currently affecting the entire world. In October 2019, secondary-school and university students organized a massive evasion of the Santiago metro fare. The reason was to protest the 30 pesos increase in the cost of the ticket. This apparently small issue detonated the greatest protest movement of the last 30 years. By January 2019, the uprising had left 31 dead and 5,558 people who reported human rights violations, including 331 with ocular trauma or injury to their eyes and 21 suffered damage or loss of the eyeball. In March 2019, protests were eradicated from the streets and the development of the movement was slowed down by the powerful action of the Coronavirus. This article explores the impact that the COVID-19 crisis had on citizen movement, and the functionality of the health crisis to establish the de facto authoritarian hyper-controlled state in order to freeze the social crisis. Also, this work identifies the strategy that the Chilean citizen movement developed to survive during 2020, applying Pleyers’s (2020) model of analysis of activism under pandemic as a starting point.

In Ireland, civic, social and political education (CSPE) is a compulsory subject for all students in the first three years of post-primary education. CSPE is generally taught for one class period per week, which limits the ability to develop participatory or justice-oriented citizenship – it gives time for exposure to, but perhaps not practice of, these types of citizenship. Digital citizenship is a recently developed dimension of citizenship and is often focused only on safety and ethical elements. The changed teaching practices resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have provided a unique opportunity to use flipped learning to develop participatory and justice-oriented digital citizenship. This article outlines examples of how two topics, promoting media literacy and conducting a survey of young people, can be taught moving from a personally responsible to a participatory and justice-oriented focus. Challenges are discussed and future research areas are suggested.

The assumption that teaching and learning can only manifest with face-to-face encounters and that virtual teaching and learning only occurs through digitization and technology is perhaps indefensible. Teaching‒learning does not happen only through physical encounters, and virtual teaching‒learning does not need relevant forms of technology. Teaching‒learning is an autonomous pedagogical act before it even transcends into acts of deliberative engagement. Unless teachers and students internalize forms of self-directed teaching and learning – that is, they learn what it means to act autonomously, teaching–learning in itself would not become the transformative space many teachers and students perhaps expect it to be.

Before COVID-19, universal demand for distance education was increasing. During the pandemic, the virtual delivery of public education surged. In turbulent times, citizenship, teaching and learning can present a creative opportunity for fostering online development, high-quality interaction and academic progress. The purpose of this conceptual article is to imagine online learning as a space of possibility for learners in pandemic-burdened societies. The well-known community of inquiry (CoI) framework is described along with its elements of presence – cognitive, social and teaching. In particular, the cognitive element is illustrated with curricular examples attuned to citizenship education. Robust online CoIs allow people to collaborate in a social learning context through dialogue and critical reflection on pivotal issues. The CoI framework offers meaningful learning supported by each of its ‘presences’, which deepen reflection and propel success. Anchored in the CoI model, this original treatment is applicable in theory to participants of all ages.

This article reports on a project that asked pre-service teachers to use science fictional and speculative storytelling to imagine the future of education. I explore the importance of making space for narrativizing and imagining educational and societal change with pre-service teachers, who are forming their pedagogical identities and perspectives, within the context of the current COVID-19 global pandemic. Various narrative approaches to future educational and pedagogical possibility are examined through thematic analysis of pre-service teachers’ future-based stories. This article signals the importance of using speculative storytelling to dismantle singular notions of what education might look like and the role that education might play in a changing society, particularly in the context of citizenship, community, and collective responsibility.

The research presented in this article explores how young people in New Zealand exercised their citizenship during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Building upon the theoretical concepts of ‘actions’ and ‘acts of citizenship’, this qualitative study draws on data from the experiences of 30 young people aged over 16 in the city of Auckland. Data included classroom observations, focus group interviews, individual interviews and the sharing of student artefacts (e.g. posters and videos). The experiences of the participants covered a wide range of engagement in citizenship rights, sites, scales and acts. Our findings offered an alternative to prevailing portrayals of young people as either passive victims or self-centred troublemakers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lessons for citizenship education are discussed at the end of the article.

This study examines newspaper articles about education published in a reference daily newspaper in Portugal during the measure taken to close schools as a way of containing the COVID-19 epidemic. During this three-month period, a total of 105 news items were collected involving several educational and political actors: government representatives from the areas of education, health and work, parents, teachers, school principals, union representatives and, on rare occasions, even students. A qualitative analysis of these news items based on thematic analysis revealed themes that appear at the core of schools – i.e. that are essential and should be resumed as soon as possible. Amid the ‘state of exception’, ‘neurotic citizenship’ is reinforced and managed by the government. Within this context, participation and inclusion seem to disappear from the discourse of education and are captured by work and economic issues that go beyond education itself.

Hong Kong society became the site of active self-mobilization when there was a virus outbreak in early 2020. Hong Kong residents quickly adopted voluntary protective measures such as minimizing social contacts and buying personal protective equipment. After the presence of a new Coronavirus was confirmed, medical and health care workers went on strike in early February, clamouring for the Hong Kong SAR government to close border crossings with China. They feared the medical and health care system would not be able to bear the rising numbers of infection. The government responded with a pronouncement that the strike was endangering lives, and that a complete closure of border checkpoints was unfeasible. Generally, Hong Kong residents exercised self-protection and self-restraint, voluntarily choosing to stay home except to go to work or buy daily necessities. As a result, Hong Kong did not adopt a citywide lockdown. More people began to leave their homes when infection rates slowed, but this led to further waves of infection. The Hong Kong experience raises a number of questions about society that are relevant to education and citizenship. What are individuals’ responsibilities during a pandemic? Does a state of pandemic make it acceptable to limit freedom of movement and freedom of expression, and if so, how can this principle be applied in relation to the right to strike for the purpose of compelling the government to take stronger public health measures? Specific to education, how can young people be taught to follow safety advice amid the temptation to go outdoors for exercise under restrictive measures? There is a need for engaging students in social compassion and dialogues to face a persistent pandemic.

Review of: Educating for Empathy: Literacy Learning and Civic Engagement, Nicole Mirra (2018)

New York: Teachers College Press, 147 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-80775-914-1, $29.95 USD

Review of: Adult Education and the Formation of Citizens: A Critical Interrogation, Andreas Fejes, Magnus Dahlstedt, Maria Olson and Fredrik Sandberg (2018)

New York: Routledge, 150 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-81536-280-7, $199.35 USD