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The place of religion and how it should be employed in education for citizenship is currently an issue in Europe. The challenges of increasing diversity are the underlying factors. The conception of maximal citizenship (a critical model of citizenship) gives a significant framework for analysis and scholarly perspectives about several European contexts on this matter. However, there is hardly maximal citizenship in Finnish contexts in scholarship. Hence, this work searches for the elements of maximal citizenship in educational policy for young people by employing the policy relating to citizenship in Finnish religious education (RE). Focusing on grades 7–9 of basic education, its primary data is based on selected national policy documents. The data were analysed using critical discourse analysis. The main findings suggest that citizenship in Finnish RE is only somewhat compatible with the characteristics of maximal citizenship. This reveals some policy shortcomings that could negatively affect the potential of critical-mindedness of young people and equal opportunities in a democracy. Hence, some suggestions that could improve the situation are embedded in the paper. Nevertheless, a linguistic conception of citizenship in Finland vis-à-vis a recent development in national educational policy seems to push the conception of maximal citizenship in a relatively new direction. Furthermore, an explicit use of the "Convention on the Rights of the Child" in Finnish curriculum broadens our conception of maximal citizenship in general. Moreover, while scholars generally agree that maximal citizenship is essentially "critical", this piece suggests that every "critical" approach to citizenship education is not necessarily "maximal". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to assess students' social representations of forced migration as a relevant social problem in the last year of primary education and the opportunity for its curricular inclusion. The study was carried out by means of a questionnaire, filled in by 6th-year primary education groups (11–12 years old) (n = 70), in a state-supported private school in the city of A Coruña (Galicia, Spain). The questionnaire was supported by three pictures of forced migrations from the media. In this case, the children had to interpret the pictures through a series of questions that sought to investigate their representations, the causes they identify in this social problem, their opinions, and possible solutions. Finally, the opportunity for the inclusion of social problems as curriculum content was addressed. The study shows that the students are in favor of migrants, that they use concepts from the social sciences in their arguments—albeit simple ones, and that they are in favor of the curricular inclusion of social problems, in which they develop representations through different sources of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizenship Education could play a pivotal role in creating a fairer society in which all groups participate equally in the political progress. But strong causal evidence of which educational techniques work best to create political engagement is lacking. This paper presents the results of a systematic review of controlled trials within the field based on transparent search protocols. It finds 25 studies which use controlled trials to test causal claims between Citizenship Education programs and political engagement outcomes. The studies identified largely confirm accepted ideas, such as the importance of participatory methods, whole school approaches, teacher training, and doubts over whether knowledge alone or online engagement necessarily translate into behavioral change. But the paucity of identified studies also points both to the difficulties of attracting funding for controlled trials which investigate Citizenship Education as a tool for political engagement and real epistemological tensions within the discipline itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current crisis of unsustainability has renewed academic interest in sustainable global citizenship. Classical approaches to this type of citizenship have turned out to be quite abstract, utopian, and naive. This article is a theoretical reflection on sustainable global citizenship from a critical realist perspective, with the aim of bringing realism and pragmatism to the personal and social transformations necessary to achieve sustainability. The contribution of this work consists of the proposal of a conceptual framework that is structured by the following five key dimensions of citizenship: governance, status, social-ecological systems, social conscience, and engagement. These dimensions have been interpreted and described from two core ideas of critical realism: the position-practice system and the seven-scalar laminated system. The main conclusions are that agency-structure dualism requires more comprehensive approaches that integrate self-awareness of all the components that intervene in the autonomous decision to act, and that include personal capabilities, the desire and motivation to get engaged, and the real possibility of participating determined by the social context and the personal situation. It is also necessary to increase the number of types of agencies, especially with the recognition of the group as a key entity. The resolution of the dichotomy on state-global scale relationships can be articulated by differentiating between government and governance, and the role of social innovation in the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamics that today's society is facing require critical citizens capable of understanding the complexity of problems from their various dimensions. This work aimed to investigate the social representations that future primary school teachers have about socio-environmental problems, sustainability, purposes of socio-environmental education, and strategies to train in Global Citizenship Education and in Education for Sustainable Development. An exploratory case study was carried out, framed in an action-research approach in the classes of Social Sciences Teaching of the Primary Education Degree of two universities in Galicia (Spain): the University of A Coruña and the University of Santiago de Compostela. A quantitative and qualitative analysis was developed by applying a questionnaire to a sample of 200 students. The results showed that students focus on problems such as climate change or environmental pollution, leaving aside issues such as social inequalities, poverty, or gender issues. In addition, they have difficulties in recognizing the strategies by which teachers can provide their students with critical thinking that leads to social transformation. Significant differences were observed in some researched aspects according to the university of origin, the grade, and the gender of the students, with gender being the one that influenced the greatest number of questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the contemporary era, societies are divided, and political polarization is increasing. One of the most powerful instruments the government can use is general standard education, specifically citizenship education. We will look at the case of Estonia, because Estonia's main political cleavage is the ethnic cleavage between the Estonian and the Russophone community. Our main research question is as follows: How would it be possible to use democratic citizenship education to decrease in the future the socio-economic inequality between different communities in Estonia? We will outline the context of ethnic socio-economic inequality in Estonia and show how these differences have been at least partially influenced by the current education system in Estonia and how citizenship education can be used to reduce these inequalities in the future. We will conduct an empirical analysis of the curriculum, and this will be followed by semi-structured qualitative interviews. In the discussion, we will make suggestions to the current Estonian citizenship education policy and offer various insights into tackling this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We still have only a limited understanding of the effectiveness of schools in promoting citizenship, the factors explaining this effectiveness and the way in which these aspects interact. Using elaborate cross-sectional data from students, teachers, team leaders and school leaders at 78 Dutch secondary schools, this study empirically examines a school effectiveness model of citizenship education in order to achieve a more comprehensive explanation of citizenship competence acquisition. Using multilevel structural equation models, we analyze direct and indirect school-level predictors of student knowledge, attitudes and self-evaluated skills regarding citizenship. Four aspects of citizenship education are examined: the school's policies regarding citizenship education, its teaching practices, and its professional and pedagogical learning environment (i.e., teaching community and classroom climate). With respect to school policies, positive effects are found for the attention paid to citizenship education in staff meetings. The professional learning environment is related to students' citizenship competences mainly indirectly, via the average classroom climate. Effects of teaching practices vary: more emphasis on monitoring is more frequently found at schools with lower average levels of citizenship competences, whereas schools that let students choose their own topics in class have on average higher levels of citizenship competences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]