Citizenship Teaching & Learning - Volume 17, Issue 2, 2022

Experiential learning has an important role to play in education; the typologies of experiential learning for civic education was employed to examine two case studies. One case study involves a teacher guiding Hong Kong students in experiential learning, which took place at a national level in mainland China. His approaches aligned with justice oriented and charity oriented. The second case study concerns a teacher who personally undertook experiential learning at a global level in Africa. Her approaches aligned with these typologies of experiential learning (personal development and justice oriented). Their journeys illustrated that different types of experiential learning have various influences on the perceived civic learning outcomes of learners. We suggest adding facilitating and hindering factors into the typologies of experiential learning, which would provide a more comprehensive conceptual framework to guide educators and researchers in organizing and conducting experiential learning activities and studies.

When experiential learning emphasizes student participation and voice, experiential learning can be an effective form of political socialization to facilitate learning processes by enhancing knowledge construction and developing civic competency. Employing qualitative research, this study examined how meaningful and significant experiential learning could not only allow students to co-construct the meaning of citizenship but also contribute to civic development and further participation. The results revealed that teachers stressed civic engagement as an important attitude of ‘good citizens’ which could have affected how they viewed and organized learning activities (such as experiential learning) for their students. Experiential learning that provided space for student participation and voice helped nurture students to become ‘good citizens’ and contributed to students’ further civic engagement despite many challenges. The findings of this study suggest that governments need to rethink their policies on integrating youth engagement to accommodate the voices and interests of young people and expand on theories of citizenship and highlights cultivating active participation as important aims of civic education.

English textbooks in Pakistan are an important tool used by the state to construct pupils’ imagination of the time and space of the Indian sub-continent, Islam, Muslims and non-Muslims. This study used the qualitative content analysis method and analysed fifteen English textbooks produced by the state-managed institutions and provincial textbook boards. The analysis revealed Islam as the foundation of the imagination of time and space of Pakistan. This imagination of Pakistan found in textbooks negated the plurality of Pakistani society as the textbook authorities did not give any space to the minority groups (religious, ethnic and cultural) living in Pakistan. This study recommends that the textbook authorities include the often-ignored minority groups in the textbook discourses because the majority of pupils form their world-views and construct their imagination of Pakistan, its people and the world through these textbooks, which contribute to pupils’ construction of their national and cultural identity.

There are two main paradigms regarding political socialization. The early-years-of-life hypothesis emphasizes the importance of political socialization in the early years, while the life-long hypothesis argues that political socialization is shaped continuously throughout life. The literature on the topic concentrates on seminal events and their impact on political socialization. In this study, we examined these hypotheses in the unique context of Arab teachers in Jewish schools in Israel. The teachers spoke about the culture of silence about politics that characterized their childhood and their inhibitions regarding engaging in politics. Entering work in a predominantly Jewish environment highlighted the social mechanisms and minority–majority power relations that preserve Arab citizens’ political oppression. The teachers all indicated a process by which they become more politically aware, while their willingness to be politically active varies. The political dialogue between the Jewish and Arab teachers begins hesitantly but increases with time. The findings demonstrate political socialization as a life-long process that is shaped by everyday contact with the majority group and not only by historical/seminal events. It is demonstrated that schools cannot be sterilized from political influences, and the potential of Arab teachers in Jewish schools in defusing the polarization in Israeli society is emphasized.

In addition to its dual role of research and teaching, the academic world has assumed a third role – social involvement. This is a common phenomenon all over the world and has become stronger in Israel in the last decade. This research addresses students of education’s views on this role and the implications of their studies in a change-leading campus to their self-perception as future educators. Three hundred and eighty-three questionnaires were distributed to Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Jewish students at a teacher-training college. The findings indicate that the students support the college’s social involvement and see their experiences on campus as important to their future role as educators in a divided society. The Jewish students, more than their Palestinian classmates, prefer to deal with interpersonal relationships, thus preserving the status of the social power structure. The Palestinian students, inexperienced in critical political debate, request tools that train them to become involved and critical educators. The findings point to the power of a campus with a critical-social agenda to help its graduates form an educational world-view that is aware of the social–political context.

The National Charter for Education and Training and the Strategic Vision (2015–30) constitutes the government’s most recent efforts to reform education in Morocco. These initiatives have underscored the potential of raising citizenship awareness and reinforcing social responsibility. The reforms that were implemented fell far short of this aim. Despite the fierce struggle, the gap between the stated goals of citizenship education curricula and their realistic and effective implementation still persists. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to explore school-based factors which facilitate or constrain teachers and schools from a meaningful engagement in citizenship issues. This research is framed within Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological system theory (2006). This framework provides a holistic perspective to consider the potential of the dynamic interaction of diverse stakeholders and their contributions for increased citizenship education. Using a qualitative approach, this study allows for a rich description of the context of citizenship education in Moroccan high schools. Findings indicated the existence of numerous constraining factors which worked against the mainstreaming of this process. Teachers and principals reported that citizenship education occupied a marginal status in high schools. Further, the competitive national examination system, lack of professional development in the field and absence of citizenship-oriented activities involving parents and students were found to be the main factors affecting the development of citizenship education.

This study explores the extent to which global citizenship knowledge is addressed in Jordanian textbooks on Arabic and English languages, science and social education across grades from KG2 to twelfth grade. A phenomenological design ‘content analysis’, which is a kind of qualitative study studies, was used. Fifty-seven textbooks were analysed. A matrix of the main concepts of global citizenship education (GCED) in the domains of knowledge, skills and values was conducted in light of the presence of these concepts. The results revealed that GCED concepts were superficially integrated into the analysed textbooks and this was done in a limited, unsystematic and inconsistent way with a reference to national or regional meanings rather than to a global one. Secondary stage, values and social education textbooks revealed that having the highest dominance among other components. Based on the results, it is recommended that the Ministry of Education reconsider and revise the current textbooks in light of the main requirements that UNESCO has asked its members to embed in its curricula and textbooks. It is also recommended to improve textbooks to engage learners with international issues that they are capable of mitigating the global risks like that posed by COVID-19. Additionally, the study recommends conducting further studies using other variables such as teachers’ awareness and comparative studies on which the current textbooks should be developed.