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In view of the serious moral decay in South African society, this article reports on our research regarding the role of the school in the inculcation of citizenship values (as part of the brief of South African education). We regard a set of citizenship values consonant with a democratic dispensation to be a core component of a moral order essential for South Africa. Using a combination of interpretive-constructivist and comparative approaches, we examine and evaluate the experiences of other post-conflict societies in using education to inculcate citizenship values. We conclude that schools can be successful with respect to the inculcation of citizenship values, provided that the curriculum itself does not discriminate against any group or category of people. Desegregation can only be beneficial in the absence of negative depiction (including criminalisation) or the unequal treatment of any particular societal grouping. Our research suggests that active citizenship education is needed in schools. For this reason, we contend that teacher education has to form an integral part of a moral revival project. Lastly, we highlight the importance of finding democratically agreed-upon ways to continually engage with parents, legal caregivers and other stakeholders and role-players before and during the execution of any such project.

Many scholars argue that the practice of educational tracking exerts a distinct effect on young people's political engagement. They point out that students in academic tracks are becoming more politically engaged than those than those in vocational ones, and suggest that this may be due to differences across tracks in the curriculum, pedagogy, peer environment or student self-confidence. The current paper aims to investigate whether tracking is related to political engagement through any of these four mechanisms. It uses survey data collected among students in the final year of upper secondary education in France and employs a stepwise multilevel analysis to explore this question. It finds little differences between tracks in the curriculum and in pedagogy relevant for political engagement. Students in academic tracks nonetheless express a stronger commitment to vote than those in vocational ones. This difference between tracks disappears when the social composition of the school population is taken into account, suggesting that the peer environment is the primary mechanism driving the effect of tracking in France. However, in contexts with greater variation between the tracks in curriculum and pedagogy, the latter may well be equally or more important mechanisms.

This paper assesses the explanatory power of a perspective arguing that school social segregation enhances social inequalities in political engagement because of the distinct effects that concentrations of adolescents of disadvantaged backgrounds in educational settings generate. It tests this argument with data of the 2000 Civic Education Study among Upper Secondary students and uses intentions to participate and political competences as outcomes to represent political engagement. Social inequalities in political competences turn out to be greater in states with the most segregated systems, but social disparities in intentions to participate are unrelated to the level of segregation. The paper argues that policy makers should consider creating a more integrated school system if they seek to reduce social inequalities in "informed" political participation.

High-quality longitudinal data from the "UK Household Longitudinal Study" gives us the opportunity to investigate whether participation in adult education (AE) fosters volunteering, and whether this depends on the volume of AE, its content, or on the qualification obtained with it. From a public enlightenment perspective, we would only expect to find an effect if the content of AE relates to social issues and domains relevant for volunteering. Yet theories emphasizing AE as a place of encounter and an activity that strengthens self-confidence would expect a positive effect regardless of the content but depending on the volume and the obtained qualification. Our results from a person fixed-effects model reveal a significant and positive effect of participation in AE on volunteering in general, while volume, content, and obtained qualifications appear to make no difference. These findings provisionally suggest that social interactions and self-perceptions explain civic returns to AE.

This article examines how different civic learning opportunities relate to students' political knowledge in different school tracks. Existing studies have found that citizenship teaching can not only enhance overall levels of civic outcomes but also mitigate inequalities. However, educational achievement studies emphasize the risk of a tracked school context exacerbating the general knowledge gap. Combining these findings, we do not know whether efforts in the vocational track to enhance civic outcomes can still reduce civic inequalities. This study relies on the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016 data. It uses multilevel analysis to examine how the civic learning opportunities schools offer (as perceived by students) are related to civic knowledge across different tracks. It finds that cross-track differences in civic knowledge are not smaller in schools rich in civic learning opportunities. We provisionally propose that this is due to differences across tracks in the levels and the nature of the civic learning opportunities provided.

Research consistently shows that parents' educational attainment is associated with their children's level of political interest. The life stage when this relationship is established and grows has been identified to be between the ages of 10 and 16. This paper identifies the social class‐based practices that drive the influence of parental education on the development of political interest among early adolescents and explains why the social gap grows at this point. The paper draws on two panel surveys, the Citizenship Education Longitudinal Study and the Understanding Society Youth Survey, and applies latent growth curve modelling and path analysis. The findings show that university‐educated parents influence the change in political interest of their children in early adolescence by raising their educational aspirations, enabling their access to political activities in school, choosing the school for their children, taking their children to museums and art galleries and influencing their children's friendship groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The academy concept has recently been subjected to significant academic scrutiny. However, this research has focused on assessing the success of this reform drive with regard to its outcomes, as opposed to its implementation. On the basis of the extant research, this paper identifies several factors that could plausibly be linked to variances in the extent of academy uptake across local authorities in England. The paper employs Fuzzy-Set-Qualitative-Comparative-Analysis (fsQCA) to analyse the relationship between these potential explanatory factors and the outcome of interest across 150 local authorities in England, up to November 2017. The findings support the paper's hypothesis that higher levels of academisation are associated with different causal combinations, unified by the fact of both a 'promoting' agent and a conducive context being required to underpin reform in this respect. We conclude that those interested in pursuing academisation should broaden its appeal to a wider range of social actors.

In 2014 the British government called on schools to actively promote fundamental British values (FBVs), seeing this as an effective way to prevent the radicalisation of young people. The government considers these values to include democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law and respect for people of different backgrounds and religions. Rather than criticising this policy on theoretical or ideological grounds, as many studies have done, the current article aims to ascertain support for the values labelled as fundamentally British among 23 year olds in England and to assess whether levels of support are associated with educational attainment and distinct educational practices experienced earlier in life. Data from the Citizenship Education Longitudinal Study (CELS) are analysed for these purposes. A multidimensional measure of FBVs is constructed based on policy understandings of the term rather than statistical considerations. The article finds that levels of support for FBVs among 23 year olds are already very high and do not differ between the White British majority and various minority ethnic groups, although the small sample sizes of the latter do not allow for strong conclusions about these differences. Among the educational conditions, educational attainment and particularly track attended appears to be the only influential condition, with those obtaining academic qualifications showing significantly higher support for FBVs than those achieving vocational ones. Adding this variable to the model neutralises the effects of specific programmes or pedagogies experienced during lower secondary, such as citizenship education, an open climate of classroom discussion or school-based political activities.

A major concern in religiously divided societies, is identity formation, as the different communities in such societies aim to pass their religion and culture on to the next generation. Research looking at the socialization function of education shows that history education plays a significant role in identity formation. For instance, [Korostelina, K. V. (2013). History Education in the Formation of Social Identity: Toward a Culture of Peace. Palgrave Macmillan] identifies three conceptions of national identity, an ethnic, a multicultural, and a civic one, and argues that these can be shaped through history education. Linking this back to divided societies, existing research shows that communities generally promote an ethnic or a civic identity through history education, but not a multicultural one. Lebanon is an example of a religiously divided society where the school system, which is mainly composed of private schools, is divided along sectarian lines. We draw on Korostelina's model to develop our own analytic framework, which we subsequently use to analyze history textbooks used in different Lebanese religious schools. We find that these textbooks generally promote sectarian identities corresponding to the three main religious communities, despite recent attempts to promote a civic identity in some Christian and Sunni private schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article performs exploratory research using a mixed-methods approach (structural equation modelling and a thematic analysis of interview data) to analyse the ways in which socioeconomic disparities in voting patterns are reproduced through inequalities in education in different national contexts, and the role of self-efficacy in this process. The evidence suggests that in Germany and England students with lower socioeconomic status (SES) have lower levels of general self-efficacy, and that this is reinforced through early experiences of inequalities in the education system, such as within- or between-school selection. Low levels of general self-efficacy are then found to reduce political self-efficacy and voting intentions. In Germany and England, it is these students who enter initial vocational education and training (IVET). The experience of IVET then reinforces the distinctions in civic engagement, probably either through peer socialisation and/or curriculum differences. In Denmark, where SES has a weaker association with track placement, the experience of being placed in IVET plays a stronger role in reducing political self-efficacy and voting intentions.