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- Volume 9, Issue 3, 2014
Citizenship Teaching & Learning - Volume 9, Issue 3, 2014
Volume 9, Issue 3, 2014
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Critical civic consciousness: Exploring the US civic opportunity gap with Giroux and Freire
More LessAbstractThis conceptual article describes critical civic consciousness, a new theoretical framework suitable for engaging in research on school-based civic engagement opportunities when they occur. The framework incorporates elements of Giroux’s critical citizenship and Freire’s conscientização to critically examine existing descriptions of the civic opportunity gap in the United States. Critical civic consciousness offers a means of conceptualizing civic engagement opportunities that moves beyond the common sense correlation between in-school experiences and later ‘real-world’ applications that permeates existing research on the topic. Teachers, students and researchers can link classroom experiences to desired outcomes by focusing on the interactions between classroom members. This framework is specifically concerned with the civic opportunity gap associated with civic and social studies education in the United States but has implications for civic education in other contexts.
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Citizenship education in Canada: ‘Democratic’ engagement with differences, conflicts and equity issues?
More LessAbstractRecent research on multi-faceted citizenship education policy and practice in Canada illustrates five enduring themes of interest to educators around the world. First, citizenship education policy mandates reveal diverse goals for ‘good’ or ‘active’ citizen engagement, critical and inclusive awareness, and skills. Students from different social identity and status locations tend to have unequal citizenship learning experiences, and school education is often disconnected from their lived experiences and concerns. Second, intersecting questions of national and ethno-cultural identity and social justice are prominent in Canadian curricular rhetoric, although achievement of inter-group equity, mutual understanding and justice is elusive. Third, although transnational issues and perspectives are increasingly included, some Canadian curricula seem to reinforce ignorance and stereotypes about other nations and peoples and about the causes of global problems such as war. Much of the global citizenship education activity in Canadian schools seems to be focused on co-curricular activities, often emphasizing charity fundraising, leaving the causes of human misery largely uninterrogated. Fourth, curriculum policy discourse in civics, social sciences, language and media literacy emphasizes the importance of student-centred pedagogy for development of critical thinking skills, while typical classroom practice seems often to retain teacher-centred transmission approaches. Last, implicit citizenship education is embedded in day-to-day school-related activities and relationships: patterns of discipline and conflict management, community service activities, and student voice and leadership roles. Thus active, engaged citizenship, attentive to multicultural diversity, is a prominent goal in recent Canadian citizenship education policy and programming – yet in practice, Canadian students (especially those from less privileged backgrounds) have few opportunities to practice democratically relevant citizenship learning in school.
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Personal Responsible, Participatory or Justice-Oriented Citizen: The case of Hong Kong
Authors: Yan Wing Leung, Timothy Wai Wa Yuen and George Siu Keung NgaiAbstractThis article starts off with a discussion of Westheimer and Kahne’s typologies of citizens followed by brief discussions of civic education in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia with reference to the typologies. Then it moves on to an analysis of the development of the civic education in Hong Kong by comparing the six official policy documents in civic education, with reference to the typologies. It points out that the conceptions of ‘good citizen’ portrayed in the official documents, as in many countries, are just hovering between the Personal Responsible Citizen and Participatory Citizen and seldom attain the Justice-Oriented Citizen. It also argues that, in addressing the political demands of the society, the cultivation of Personal Responsible Citizen and Participatory Citizen is the result of conservative politicization of civic education, either through depoliticizing the teaching content or teaching politics in a conservative tone in the civic education curriculum. However, civic education deprived of Justice-Oriented Citizen may not be adequate in equipping youths to address the pressing social and political issues and concerns triggered by the global Jasmine Revolutions, Occupy Movements, and struggles against the rapid widening of gaps between rich and poor and the demand for a genuine democratization for the society. Therefore we contest that cultivating Justice-Oriented Citizen should be seriously explored with immediate urgency and propose that liberal civic education programmes aiming at cultivating Justice-Oriented Citizen should be included in school for an all round development of citizenship in the youths.
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Mapping the civic education policy community in Canada: A study of policy actors’ attitudes
Authors: Stephanie Bell and J. P. LewisAbstractAlthough civic education in Canada is typically seen as the responsibility of the provincial public school system and despite the fact that youth disengagement is widely accepted as a problem, civic education is a policy area that does not receive sustained attention from either the public or government. However, attention to the problem of political apathy and ignorance in Canada continues to grow and the number of policy actors in both governmental and non-governmental settings is increasing. The growing civic education policy network and community is occurring in a vacuum of policy ambiguity and ambivalence. In an attempt to better understand the civic education policy network in Canada we surveyed both federal and provincial government and non-governmental actors. In our survey, we asked policy actors to rank other policy actors in terms of collaboration, trust, influence and reliance in the policy network. In addition to this we asked the actors about their attitudes on the policy outcomes of civic education policy in relation to political behaviour and political knowledge. Our findings suggest that the policy network is highly centralized with federal government actors and a handful of national non-government actors. Also, we found that civic education policy actors in Canada generally agree on both political knowledge and political behaviour policy outcomes.
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Service or service-learning? A review of recent educational policies in England
Authors: Andrew Peterson and Paul WarwickAbstractThis article presents a critique of recent state educational policy provision in England that has aimed at young people’s (14–19 years of age) learning through active citizenship. We argue that whilst the statutory introduction of Citizenship education within English secondary schools has helped to advance the links between ‘service’ and ‘learning’ there is clear evidence that the quality and depth of such educational opportunities remains inconsistent across schools. Recent educational initiatives such as the Youth Community Action (YCA) programme and the National Citizen Service (NCS) have once again raised the possibility of young people learning through participating in their communities. We argue that despite their intentions these programmes have failed to integrate the pedagogical processes necessary for meaningful education for active citizenship. In critiquing these policy initiatives we make a case for a greater integration of ‘service-learning’ theory and practice within policies that relate to active citizenship. Service-learning provides a more cohesive framework for a critical, creative and collaborative pedagogy to accompany young people’s experiences of community engagement; a central requirement in developing responsible and active citizens. We argue that making clear connections to service-learning is an important proposal at a time when the nature of Citizenship education within the English National Curriculum has been revised in terms of content and scope.
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Reviews
Authors: Ian Davies, Kalwant Bhopal, Edda Sant and Omar MunipAbstractReinventing Evidence in Social Enquiry: Decoding Facts and Variables, Richard Biernacki (2012) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 199 pp. ISBN: 9781137007278, p/bk, £19.99
Disposed to Learn: Schooling, Ethnicity and the Scholarly Habitus, Megan Watkins and Greg Noble (2013) Bloomsbury, 166 pp., ISBN: 9781441177117, p/bk, £24.99
Progressive education. A critical introduction, John Howlett (2013) London: Bloomsbury, 306 pp., ISBN: 9781441141729, p/bk, £22.49
Young Citizens of the World; Teaching Elementary Social Studies through Civic Engagement, Marilynne Boyle-Baise and Jack Zevin (2014) Oxon: Routledge, 225 pp., ISBN: 9780415826495, p/bk, £31.99
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