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This paper analyses the fracturing of civic and moral virtue within curricular policies pertaining to Citizenship in England since the late 1990s. A longstanding aim of education and schooling, the teaching of citizenship gained a more secure base in the English curriculum with the introduction of Citizenship as a statutory subject for 11–16 years olds from 2002, which owed a great deal to the Report of the Advisory Group on Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools (Crick Report). The report drew intimate connections between civic virtue, moral virtue, and personal character. These connections have become seriously fractured over the years since the Crick Report. In charting this fracturing, the paper will examine how the character-influenced direction taken in the early/mid-2000s was replaced by, at first, a more general emphasis on British Values before morphing into a more specific, though no less problematic, concentration on Fundamental British Values. While character education has gained significant policy attention in England over the last six years, the civic dimensions have been at best underplayed, with little connection to education for citizenship. It is argued that without greater clarity and consistency about how the moral – including moral virtues – intersects with the civic in contemporary Britain, official curricular policy (whether for Citizenship education, character education or more generally) will restrict rather than encourage the education of young citizens who are informed, wise, responsible and active participants in their communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes the case for including critical harmony as a complement to justice within civic education. The concept of harmony is significant for civic education because it acknowledges the crucial role that relationships play in society—an important moral, ethical, and social ideal in many cultures around the world. Harmony must also incorporate a critical dimension, however, by embracing conflict and tension, valuing difference and diversity, and striving for balance among divergent voices. By using examples of public issues such as housing and gender identity to illustrate the relational dimension of public policy, this paper argues that the concept of critical harmony can contribute to a more comprehensive foundation for students' deliberation of civic issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizenship education has been a feature of the school curricula in many western democracies since the 1990s. Consequently, there is a proliferation of research which explores its efficacy in instilling political literacy and encouraging democratic engagement amongst pupils. Less is known however about how citizenship is taught in societies emerging from conflicts which are [at least in part] motivated by competing narratives around citizenship. This paper examines this issue within the context of Northern Ireland. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 18 post-primary citizenship teachers, it argues that whilst the curricular text for citizenship education has encouraged teachers to discuss 'the past' in Northern Ireland only a minority of teachers do so. The paper suggests that teachers are constrained in their attempts to explore the past by a complex interplay of factors including cultural norms of avoidance and their interpretation of the current socio-political context. The paper argues that it cannot be assumed that teachers themselves possess the critical capacities that they are expected to nurture in pupils, yet, where efforts are made to harness teachers' critical skills, they are more likely to display the confidence and skill to discuss contentious issues related to the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines three recent accounts of what has allegedly gone wrong with the school curriculum in England in recent years and their prescriptions for remedying these ills – all three accounts sharing strong proposals to reinstate knowledge at the heart of the curriculum. These analyses, despite some significant similarities, come from very different political standpoints. They are: first, proposals by the current UK Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove to ‘shrink’ the National Curriculum whilst promoting a new English Baccalaureate; secondly Frank Furedi, Kathryn Ecclestone and Dennis Hayes’ critiques of ‘therapeutic education’ and thirdly Michael Young and Johan Muller’s proposals, grounded in a social realist epistemology, for a ‘Future 3’ curriculum which respects the objectivity of knowledge but also recognises its fallibility and openness to change. The paper concludes by suggesting that Michael Gove’s basic objective is to shape what Basil Bernstein called a neoconservative prospective educational identity; the paper offers a critical assessment of this project and briefly considers an alternative approach, focusing on some issues relating to citizenship education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Citizenship, nationalism, human rights and democracy are four terms and concepts that are inextricably linked. In Kuwait, the status of citizen is based on nationality, gender and age, with women, children, naturalised citizens, expatriates and bidoon (stateless people) denied many freedoms, rights and services. Citizenship is defined by some, feeling and practice. In Kuwait, the denial or limitation of the first makes the latter two all but impossible. Purpose: In this paper, I discuss the tensions between citizenship, nationalism, human rights and democracy within the Kuwaiti context and then explore how these are mirrored in the tangling of terms within the Kuwaiti national curriculum. Particular attention is paid to the Constitution and Human Rights (CHR) module, which introduced a form of national democratic citizenship education to the secondary curriculum (grades 10, 11 and 12) for the first time in 2006 but was then rescinded to grade 12 only by the 2009-2010 academic year. Students' perceptions of the concepts and their learning will form an important part of the analysis. Methodology: The student voices come from student research workshops carried out as part of a case study of a Kuwaiti government school. These workshops were carried out in the spring terms of 2009 and 2010 with grades 10, 11 and 12 classes; a total of approximately 180 students were involved. In small groups, students were asked to reflect on posters on what they learned in school about citizenship, human rights and democracy. Their responses were translated, coded and categorised by theme. The grade 11 posters were selected for this paper, as they provide a contrast between the 2009 students, who took the CHR module, and the 2010 students, who did not. Quotes that were selected forinclusion in this paper were those that had themes echoed by several other students. Conclusions: The CHR module shifted the focus from education for national citizenship to education for democratic national citizenship, as reflected in the contrasting student responses in 2009 and 2010. However, the module also inadvertently brought to the surface the inconsistencies and tensions between several of the concepts it was meant to educate about. This caused students to develop criticality, and, alongside their learning on human rights and politics, wasa potentially strong trigger for change from below. Its swift withdrawal fromthe curriculum, however, shifted the focus of citizenship education back tonationalism and patriotism. It also rendered students less equipped to effect change - a result that the more sceptical may believe was intended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades there have been increased calls for UK schools to develop a more European and global orientation in their pedagogy and curriculum, and to equip children and young people with post-national knowledge, skills, and dispositions. This paper examines some key problems in post-national conceptions of citizenship education, in order to develop a research agenda focusing on the contested nature of notions of post-national citizenship (with particular attention to European and global citizenship), and on the way these notions are understood as having competing claims in education. In examining these issues the paper explains the confused governmental agendas and commitments in relation to European and/or global citizenship education, and concludes by considering alternative theories of citizenship, curriculum, and pedagogy that may provide a deeper understanding of the associated issues and tensions. Although the paper relates directly to the UK, some of the debates have a wider significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education for citizenship is firmly on the policy agenda throughout Britain, and there is an expectation that teachers will create a participative, consultative ethos in schools. This paper identifies three main vehicles for pupil consultation: elected pupil councils, democratic and participative classrooms and opportunities for pupils to engage with controversial issues within the curriculum. It focuses on a longitudinal study of pupils' experience of democratic practice in Scottish schools in relation to these vehicles. Evidence from a diverse sample of primary schools illustrates the way in which upper-stage pupils are encouraged to participate in decision-making processes and engage in the discussion of contemporary social issues of their own interest both in the classroom and during pupil council meetings. In addition, further evidence of the extent to which these same pupils' experience of the democratic process evolves following their transition to secondary school is reported. The paper raises new questions about the extent to which Scottish pupils may be exposed to a progressive model of democratic education, and suggests that children may be given more opportunities for consultation in primary school than they are in the early stages of secondary school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the extent to which the implementation and assessment of the new citizenship curriculum in England treats learners as citizens or subjects by evaluating whether the interests of state or citizen predominate. Philosophical, contextual, and practical perspectives on citizenship education are drawn upon to evaluate mechanisms which mediate state power in young citizens' lives. Current methods of delivering and assessing the citizenship curriculum in schools are challenged and the ideology underpinning citizenship education, as conceptualized in official discourse, is questioned. The view is advanced that citizenship cannot be reduced to what learners know (the informed citizen) or do (the active citizen) as it cannot be divorced from who they are. This paper focuses on citizenship education in the context of English liberal democracy but has a wide application as it addresses issues relevant to the state education of citizens elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses Kazakhstan's new generation literature textbooks for Kazakh-medium schools, with a focus on national identity and citizenship constructs that the revised textbooks promote. By comparing the literature textbooks of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, the paper discusses Soviet institutional and cultural legacies that continue to exist in Kazakhstan's literature curriculum. Implications of the recurrent patterns of nation-building discourse in the literature textbooks for democracy and social cohesion in Kazakhstan are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how textbooks deal with the issues of education for democratic citizenship encompassed within the European framework and Spanish educational reforms. The sample comprised the 24 individual texts in social science, natural science, and technology for 6–12‐year‐olds. This paper delimits and defines the six themes for analysis: responsibility, participation, conflict resolution, diversity, and human rights. It offers a qualitative description of the content of each theme as well as a quantitative assessment of the frequency with which they appear. The results indicate that European ideals of citizenship education are dealt with unevenly, and in some cases barely, in these textbooks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports an investigation into how secondary student participants in Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement related this particular political experience to their learning of Liberal Studies. Questionnaire-based surveys and interviews were conducted to probe their interpretations of Liberal Studies’ impact on their political involvement and their perceptions of national versus local identity. The results indicate that students perceived the subject to have offered them background knowledge necessary for comprehending the movement rather than functioning as the cause of their participation against the backdrop of wider socio-economic conflicts in the community at large. Moreover, the current Liberal Studies curriculum seems to have reinforced students’ sense of a dichotomy between their local and national identities. Further examination of that dichotomy sheds light on both the review of Liberal Studies and another recently proposed, but swiftly shelved, curriculum: Moral and National Education. The study’s broad implications for citizenship education worldwide are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores citizenship discourses empirically through upper secondary school student’s understandings, as these emerge in and through their everyday experiences. Drawing on a post-structuralist theorisation inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, a discourse analysis of data from interviews with students is carried out. This analysis characterises three discourses of the active citizen – a knowledgeable citizen, a responsive and holistic citizen, and a self-responsible ‘free’ citizen. The analysis raises questions over the implications of contemporary efforts for the intensification of standardising forces through citizenship education. It also stresses the notion that engaging students actively does always also involve discourses other than those stressed through the curriculum, which nurtures the body and nerve of democracy itself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent contributions have argued about the depoliticisation of citizenship education (CE), mainly through theoretical and documentary analyses, and based on the European context. Nonetheless, there is a lack of field studies which can provide empirical evidence about how does the depoliticisation of CE actually operate. Based on a mixed-method research in Mexico City’s secondary schools, this paper shows how the contemporary approach to CE, instead of looking at nurturing children’s and adolescents’ politicity, contributes to pupils’ depoliticisation. Among different potential characterisations of political participation (PP), the curriculum of CE circumscribes it within the arena of formal politics, from which students are largely excluded in the present. Additionally, CE promotes a range of practices of participation which are deprived from a political meaning. Students appropriate them discursively, but perceive limited opportunities for perform them, especially in school. Through the depoliticisation of CE, adolescents mostly learn that PP is a promise of inclusion in the future, while the idea of active citizenship becomes reduced to a correct discourse about largely imperceptible practices in students’ everyday life. The article stresses the need of shifting the priority of CE in Mexico from the formal curriculum to the transformation of school practices, in order to develop students’ politicity through participation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The promotion of ‘critical citizenship’ has become a key objective of official school curricula around the world. Using an analytic framework developed by the authors, this paper identifies the diverse conceptions of critical citizenship that are promoted, by comparing the official school curricula for citizenship in England and France. The analysis goes beyond the dichotomous distinctions prevalent in comparisons of education in the two countries, especially those that focus on the contrasting degrees of centralisation–decentralisation, and suggests that there were significant differences in the goals promoted in their curricula with regard to four key dimensions: ideology, the collective, the individual and action. While these differences reflect historical, political, social, economic and cultural differences between the two nations, the analysis indicates a lack of symmetry across the levels of the curriculum, which contributed to the significant spaces that were found to exist which have the potential for teachers and students to creatively interpret how critical citizenship can be understood and implemented in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While universal human rights frameworks and democratic models of government have gained global support and even adherence, they often exist in tension with local cultural and religious practices. In Kuwait, tensions arise between its constitution, legal system and Islam, with several groups consequently marginalised. These tensions extend into the education system. This paper seeks to explore both theoretically and contextually the potential of a curricular module introduced in 2006 in deepening education for democratic citizenship in Kuwait. Theoretical analysis reveals the module, introduced without altering the authoritarian ethos of the system, to be quite a thin engagement with the concepts of rights and democracy. However, its enactment within the case study school – both representative of an authoritarian state school and a member of UNESCO’s Associated Schools Project Network (ASPnet) – uncovered its deeper potential and perhaps discovered the reason for its swift relegation from a three-year to a one-year programme. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Citizenship education is of central importance in curriculum and schooling, as evidenced by the proliferation of research and writing in the area over the last 20 years. Building on existing citizenship literature, this paper discusses one aspect of a larger project exploring the ways in which citizenship is discursively produced in officially mandated school curriculum and the ways in which students themselves understand and take up narratives of ‘good’ citizenship in light of their diverse experiences and social locations. Using an image-based approach to research, students visually represented and then discussed with researchers their perceptions of good citizenship. What became apparent through the analysis of images and focus group transcripts was the ease with which students, regardless of their social locations, reproduced commonsense narratives of ‘good’ citizenship, including socially sanctioned concern for the environment, a sense of nationalism and national pride, respect for relationships and a communal ethos, and the official discourse of multiculturalism. Missing from students’ understandings of ‘good’ citizenship was any kind of social analysis, suggesting that they largely accepted citizenship as universally realized and experienced by individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

National curricula are being challenged and transformed by the impact of migration and European integration. This paper examines how cultural diversity and Europe are intertwined in geography, history, and citizenship education curricula in Greece, Germany, and England. This question is explored using quantitative and qualitative methods through a case study of curriculum content and discourses of 5 years compulsory schooling in all three countries. One might expect Germany and Greece, which have historically embraced a more monocultural vision, as having largely similar approaches. Yet, the cross-national analysis illustrates that the relationships between European and multicultural values are put together in rather different ways depending on the school subject. Whilst history is ethnocentric in all three countries, Greek geography and citizenship curricula veer between ethnocentrism and Europeanism. In contrast, in England, notions of multicultural Britishness are reinforced in geography and citizenship education. German curricula privilege national and European topics, but attempts have been made to address diversity, particularly in geography. Curriculum analyses have hitherto largely focused on either national and European dimensions or multicultural and global dimensions. This study provides new insights into how these dimensions intersect and their combined effect on migration and citizenship education in European societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the nature of citizenship found in recent republican cosmopolitan work within political theory. It argues that republican cosmopolitanism, which seeks to recognise the importance of both cosmopolitan and active citizenry within global political communities, offers important insights through which the nature of global citizenship education may be understood. After identifying the central substantive tenets of republican cosmopolitanism, key issues raised by these for citizenship education are discussed. It is suggested that citizenship education can benefit conceptually from understanding and interrogating global issues from a republican cosmopolitan perspective, and that in turn recourse to republican cosmopolitan ideas raises important questions concerning the nature and focus of global aspects of the citizenship curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The English language has become a global language, a development which has influenced English language teaching and learning throughout the world. This influence has occurred more impressively in China than in other parts of the world as a result of the breathtaking pace at which China has integrated with global economies. Increasing industrial, economic and multicultural development has spurred language educators in China to question the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curriculum in relation to the role of English, particularly in secondary schools. In this paper we present a brief review of the role of English as a global language in the Chinese context, a context which is now to be seen as a global one. The new curriculum has been progressively rolled out in Chinese schools since 2001. We highlight the redefinition of the role of English in the new EFL curriculum in Chinese secondary schools in particular and the significance of this as it presents new features of the new EFL curriculum as part of a developing research field, based on a comparison with the 1993 EFL curriculum. In this study, we focus on policy statements and curriculum documents as well as published previous research in order to understand the redefining of the role of English as a foreign language in the new EFL curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The documented social-subjects curricula for Scottish 5-16 year olds are analysed for representations of 'self-in-society'. Such representations are important in Scotland because it is expected that the new Education-for-Citizenship framework will in part be delivered through the social subjects. However, citizenship education is also relevant throughout the UK and beyond and our analysis of the social subjects has wider relevance. An ideal-type analysis was used on documents including national guidelines, examination syllabuses, examination papers, and assessor instructions. Our analysis suggests that in these documents: the self is seen as an abstract; people are understood by category; society is the sum of discrete institutions; self-in-society is fully defined; and this representation of society is not contested. This representation becomes increasingly exclusive with age/ability and may be linked to assumed modes of curricular division, teaching and assessment. We discuss how this overall picture might affect students' sense of 'agency' in the light of citizenship education. We conclude that the social-subjects' curricular representation of self-in-society may not fully support the Scottish Education-for-Citizenship framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching is a moral endeavour. It transmits moral messages based on values and expectations. This paper explores the relationship between school practice and the democratic values endorsed in the Swedish national curriculum. A lunch‐time episode illustrates the discrepancy between the national curriculum’s ethical values and their realization in practice. This discrepancy problematizes the decentralization process in Swedish schooling. Furthermore, it suggests that episodes at the margins of school practice may be just as important to the moral curriculum of school as the knowledge‐related elements conventionally deemed to be the core of the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last few years there has been a renewed interest in questions of citizenship and in particular its relation to young people. This has been allied to an educational discourse where the emphasis has been upon questions concerned with ‘outcome’ rather than with ‘process’– with the curriculum and methods of teaching rather than questions of understanding and learning. This paper seeks to describe and illuminate the linkages within and between these related discourses. It advocates an inclusive and relational view of citizenship-as-practice within a distinctive socio-economic and political, and cultural milieu. Drawing upon some empirical insights from our research we conclude that an appropriate educational programme would respect the claim to citizenship status of everyone in society, including children and young people. It would work together with young people rather than on young people, and recognise that the actual practices of citizenship, and the ways in which these practices transform over time are educationally significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While economic factors play a crucial role in determining election outcomes, the place of economic understanding in educating citizens is neither widely recognized nor substantially articulated in the literature. Although economic educators have frequently asserted that economic understanding is important to citizens’ education, they have not set out their case by engaging with the wider literature on citizenship education. This paper identifies two dimensions of an economic education that enable it to contribute to a ‘maximalist’ citizenship education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]