Critical Thinking About Citizenship in Northern Cyprus Middle School Social Studies Textbooks.

AbstractSharing a divided island after generations of conflict, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) has only been recognized internationally by Turkey. Yet, like most modern democracies, TRNC’s Ministry of Education cites educating students to embrace democracy, peace, and social justice as a central goal for its schooling system. Our textbook analysis explored how citizenship is conceptualized in TRNC middle school social studies textbooks. Additionally, because of the importance of critical thinking in most theories of democratic citizenship and approaches to citizenship education, we also explored how these textbooks encouraged critical thinking about citizenship. Through qualitative content analysis, we found that TRNC middle school social studies textbooks primarily conceptualized citizenship as democratic citizenship. Although the textbooks feature several discussions of democratic citizenship, they do not promote critical thinking about it. On the other hand, the textbooks do promote limited critical thinking about another aspect of democratic citizenship explored in the textbooks: social movement participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]