Search

Governments, international organizations and academics have, in recent decades, expressed a sense of crisis in the practice of democracy based largely upon increasing levels of disengagement by citizens from even the most basic elements of civic life. One response has been to devise civics and citizenship education curricula for schools with the concomitant expectations of enhanced civic practice. Our examination of citizenship education programs has revealed considerable variation from country to country in the degree of success achieved in the design, development and implementation of programs. This paper examines recent developments in citizenship education in four leading Western democracies - Australia, Canada, England and the USA; each one with its own particular successes and shortcomings. It identifies several factors associated with the successful building of curriculum capacity for citizenship education and argues that these are fundamental for countries wishing to move beyond rhetoric and toward substance in citizenship education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognition of young children as citizens is relatively new in sociology, with translation emerging into education. Discourses of children and childhood shape ideas of young children as citizens and national discourses of citizenship frame what civic participation can be. The authors analysed national early childhood education curricula frameworks of Australia, New Zealand and the United States to understand how discourses authorise constructions of children as citizens and opportunities for young children's civic participation. They sought to locate how children are positioned as citizens and what opportunities there are for young children's citizenship participation in national early childhood curricula documents of Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Illustrative examples of children's citizenship membership and participation from the three nations' early childhood curricula were critically read to locate how prevalent discourses of children, childhood and citizenship in each nation define children as citizens and shape possibilities for citizenship participation for young children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary citizenship education tends to focus on the development of skills through real experiences, which has led to a relative neglect or simplification of knowledge and understanding. This article outlines a framework for analysing citizenship curricula drawing on Young’s notion of ‘powerful knowledge’ and ‘knowledge of the powerful’ and on Shulman’s account of subject knowledge, which includes substantive concepts and epistemic criteria. These ideas are used to analyse the citizenship curricula in the four nations of the UK and Ireland to assess the extent to which they provide an adequate account of knowledge and understanding of citizenship. The article concludes that it is important to reconsider the relationship between the genuinely educational aspects of citizenship education (where ‘powerful knowledge’ opens up new and diverse understandings) from the normative aims, which are more akin to a form of socialisation (where ‘knowledge of the powerful’ closes down certain possibilities). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]