Islamic education and the challenge of democratic citizenship: a critical perspective

This article analyzes how concepts of liberal and progressive Islam, which have been developed in the political and theological academic literature, may inform the curriculum of Islamic education and the practice of religious educators in Islamic schools in the US. We investigate the meaning of in-faith Islamic education and how it can conform to the life in a democratic, multicultural, and multi-faith society. Liberal Islam challenges the transmission-oriented and rigid interpretations of Islam and seeks to appreciate and to contextualize the religious claims which are compatible with ideals of reflective education, rational thinking, mutual respect, and equal citizenship. It suggests that students become critical ‘consumers’ of Islam, its moral and civic purposes, and the cultural politics of religious interrogations.     

Israeli teachers make sense of global citizenship education in a divided society- religion,marginalisation and economic globalisation

ABSTRACT

Global citizenship education (GCE) has recently been promoted by national education systems and supranational organisations as a means for facilitating social cohesion and peace education. We examined the perceptions of GCE held by teachers from the three main education sectors in Israel: secular-Jewish, religious-Jewish, and Palestinian Arab, and found stark differences in the way teachers from each sector interpreted the term. For marginalised groups (Palestinian Arab), GCE is seen as offering a way of securing a sense of belonging to a global society. For already well-resourced social groups (Jewish secular), GCE is viewed as a way of promoting global futures. Meanwhile, for the Jewish religious minority in Israel, GCE is seen as a threat to national identity and religious values. Our findings cast doubt on the unifying potential of GCE, and we conclude by calling upon scholars and policymakers to examine unique obstacles facing GCE in their various contexts.     

Teachers' views on citizenship education in secondary education in The Netherlands

In 2005 the Dutch Minister of Education proposed making it compulsory for all schools in The Netherlands to stimulate active citizenship and social integration. Teachers must give these educational goals a tangible form in their practice. What are the teachers' views on citizenship education? Concepts of citizenship education and the teacher's role in it may differ widely, and very different perspectives on values and value development are possible. This article addresses how teachers view citizenship education. We present the results of a survey conducted among a representative sample of Dutch secondary schools. The results show that teachers make clear choices in the importance they attach to certain values. Teachers want students to acquire skills to analyse, communicate and reflect on values, and they want to stimulate the development of certain values. The chosen values relate to different types of citizenship. School level, school subject and the age of the teachers make a difference to the importance teachers attach to different values.     

Civic education in Lesotho: implications for teaching of democratic citizenship

This paper investigates the extent to which civic education is achieving its goals of teaching democracy and producing responsible democratic citizenship in Lesotho. This is done by analysing the conceptions of civic education, democracy, public participation, human rights, freedoms and responsibilities that appear in Lesotho’s documents that are used to teach people about democracy through formal, non-formal and informal education. I therefore argue that in the current Lesotho’s political history, these conceptions do not provide enough conditions for the cultivation of active democratic citizenship. Instead the materials dwell too much on teaching citizens about the systems and structures of government, preoccupied with inconsistent definitions and characteristics of democracy and with informing citizens of the importance of knowing how to vote and abide by the laws of the country; without showing how democracy should operate in a democratic country. The findings reveal that civic education for adults in Lesotho is offered informally, through the civil society organisations and politicians that are largely based in urban parts of Lesotho. This suggest that civic education should be tailored for the rural and urban citizens in a context of democratic transition in a country that still embraces strong traditional ties to communitarian living.     

Education and religion in Iran: The inclusiveness of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) textbooks

The focus of this paper is religion and education with particular reference to EFL (English as a Foreign Language) textbooks. The writers of this paper aim to raise the awareness of research community, educators, and teachers regarding the interconnectedness of religion and education. In the first phase of the study, the researchers scanned a series of secondary-level Iranian EFL textbooks prescribed by the Iranian Ministry of Education to determine religious concepts in the form of linear and/or non linear content. The next phase of research was the analysis of the content to determine the level of inclusiveness of the textbooks in terms of culture and religion. These textbooks were also analyzed to determine whether the propagation of religious content was overt or covert. Finally the impact of religious content in textbooks was discussed with reference to identity and nation building.     

The effect of short-term educational travel programs on environmental citizenship

Short-term study abroad is the fastest growing area of international education and there is increasing interest in the role of modified applications of this form (e.g. faculty-led, field/environmental, and/or educational travel) in influencing global citizenship. Using an empirical database of over 650 students registered for a study abroad course in sustainable development offered in Australia and New Zealand, we explore the effect of short-term educational travel programs on environmental citizenship. We also identify differences among key student characteristics (past study abroad experience, gender, and program destination) in influencing citizenry. Results show that participation in the educational travel program significantly moderates (decreases) the difference in environmental citizenship scores for first-timers (vs. those with past experience in study abroad) and program destination, but increases the difference in environmental citizenship for males vs. females. Implications for destination image and national brand marketing of environmental-oriented educational travel programs are discussed.     

Towards the decolonisation of religion education in a pre-service education classroom

ABSTRACT

In this article, I reflect on my attempts to decolonise religious education at a historically white university in a post-apartheid South Africa. This pre-service education project conducted in 2017 happened against the backdrop of two events, namely, a renewed curriculum policy, Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) and the #RhodesMustFall (RMF) and #FeesMustFall (FMF) protests. These events encouraged me to reflect on my academic role as a teacher-educator preparing pre-service teachers to teach religion in schools. This led to me asking many questions such as, what is the effect of my teaching religious education?, How do teacher-educators prepare religious education pre-service teachers for a multicultural and multireligious society?, How does my teaching align itself with the decolonisation of education? and How do I redress the colonial past in my religious education classroom? The data which included reflective reports, student experiences and self-reflexivity acknowledged the findings that religion education served as a unifying factor in building social cohesion. The significance of this paper lies in the argument that decolonisation becomes an imperative if one is striving for social justice and intends to commit oneself to a more equitable society where crossing borders must be a seamless act.     

(Dis-) Locating the transformative dimension of global citizenship education

Despite a groundswell of evidence for transformative education, manifestos for ‘transformative pedagogy for global citizenship’ remain under-theorized and pay limited attention to implications for practice. This paper connects theory and practice through analyzing a curriculum development project that sought to produce a framework for ‘engaged global citizens’. It considers the political and philosophical framings of the self and other, citizen and world, that underlie this empirical work, especially with reference to reflexivity, hermeneutics, democratic engagement and co-production. The resultant pedagogical framework, based upon concepts of transformative learning, attempted to undercut the homogenizing tendencies within global citizenship education (GCE). This discussion highlights the tensions and reifying effects of educational frameworks such as the Teaching Excellence Framework in the UK and the proposed framework for ‘global competence’ in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment. Evidence is presented that frameworks which attempt to make explicit educational phenomena and processes are overdetermined by efficacy and metrics that become perverse ends in themselves. While the anticipated project output here was the framework itself, the substantive output was, in fact, practical: namely the ongoing deliberation and reflection upon the discourses that both do and undo the task of locating the transformative dimension of GCE.     

The role of extracurricular activities in active citizenship education

There have been multiple trends of building democratic citizens through formal education, and in the European context the trials have been dramatically increased with the Europeanization process since the 1980s. In line with this trend, an in-depth qualitative case study was carried out in a private primary school in Turkey to shed light on the role of school-based extra-curricular activities as a contemporary trend in building active citizenship values and competencies in students. Qualitative data were collected through multiple data collection tools as observation field notes, interviews, and document analysis to achieve triangulation and trustworthiness. Much of the findings were compatible with EURYDICE Report (2005) on citizenship education, and yielded six themes, called the six blossoms of extra-curricular activities in citizenship education: namely, active citizenship perception; social accountability; intercultural awareness; awareness of democracy and human rights; thinking and research skills; and interaction and interpersonal skills.     

Australian schools as deliberative spaces: framing the goal of active and informed citizenship

Educating for active and informed citizenship represents a core goal of Australian education and schooling. Owing to a range of factors – including the contested conceptual nature of citizenship and democracy – there is reason to question the extent to which this goal is being translated into practice. Similarly, while the Australian Curriculum requires students to engage with others in talk, this is framed rather broadly. Recognizing the value of greater conceptual precision about citizenship, democracy and discursive interactions, this article explores the value of deliberative democracy as a frame for active and informed citizenship. In doing so it argues that viewing schools as deliberative spaces which do/could engage in deliberative pedagogies provides a useful and focused basis for conceiving how young Australians do and can engage in, and learn, the capacities necessary for democratic citizenship.     

The impact of religion on the educational achievement of Black boys: A UK and USA study

Black boys in the United Kingdom and the USA have almost become synonymous with the concept of ‘underachievement’. However, many Black boys are achieving against the odds. Whilst the possession of a high degree of dominant cultural capital is widely recognised as a key contributory factor to academic achievement, the contributory role of other forms of non‐dominant capital is often overlooked. This qualitative study of educationally successful Black males in the United Kingdom and the USA, involving 40 Black male students from both new and ancient universities, set out to establish whether religion was a contributory factor to the educational success of Black male students. The study found that most of these students were religious and that their church community engineered cultural and social capital and their belief in God engineered religious capital, all of which made significant contributions to these Black male students' academic achievement.     

The imagined community of sexually liberal citizens: educational reforms since the 1970s

Recent integration discourses in Europe locate problems of equality, gender, and sexuality among migrant youth. Educating and testing the values of future citizens is supposed to guarantee their conformity with ‘western’ and ‘modern’ values. By analyzing educational reform discourses in multicultural Luxembourg, the paper aims to challenge these contemporary narratives in two ways: (1) In a historical analysis, the paper traces conservative reform resistance in the case of sex education which is often overlooked due to the focus on migrants; (2) In placing sex education’s reform legitimation and resistance within (a) broader educational reform discourses of inequality and citizenship and (b) contemporary narrations of the reforms and their taboos, the paper reconstructs how liberals and conservatives join an alliance over sexuality education of ‘the Other’. The sociological–historical discourse analysis critically questions the ethnicization of sexuality by disclosing its homogenizing use to cover conservative resistance within the citizen’s community.     

Learning for democracy: The politics and practice of citizenship education

It is now two decades since the Advisory Group on Citizenship, commissioned by the newly elected Labour government, recommended the introduction of statutory citizenship education. On the twentieth anniversary of the eponymously named ‘Crick Report’, this article presents the findings of a rigorous mixed‐methods study of citizenship educators in the UK. This research suggests that teachers continue to lack a shared understanding of citizenship, conceptually and pedagogically, and also reveals an emphasis amongst teachers upon individualistic notions of good citizenship that are reflective of national, and increasingly global, political discourse. The findings are analysed using a new conceptual framework—the declarative–procedural paradigm—which is developed here to understand the relationship between political and normatively driven visions of democratic citizenship and classroom pedagogy. In doing so the article adds, theoretically and substantively, to the specific research pool of citizenship studies and broader debates about political disengagement.     

The gendering of global citizenship: findings from a large-scale quantitative study on global citizenship education experiences

The growing literature on the gendering of citizenship and citizenship education highlights that western notions of ‘citizenship’ have often been framed in a way that implicitly excludes women. At the same time, insofar as feminist writers have addressed citizenship, they have tended to see it in largely local and national terms. While feminist literature has laid the groundwork for understanding how schools have shaped and structured a gendered citizenry, there is a lack of large-scale quantitative data which might allow us to explore the intersection between gender and global citizenship education. Drawing on a large-scale quantitative study on development education/global citizenship education in second-level schools, the data presented here suggest that emergent notions of global citizenship are being gendered in schools. The data suggest that girls’ schools are more likely than other types of schools to emphasise a sense of responsibility for, and an analysis of, global inequalities, while differences also emerge between boys’ schools and co-educational schools.     

Human rights,education for democratic citizenship and international organisations: findings from a Kuwaiti UNESCO ASPnet school

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.     

Teachers’ democratic assignment: a critical discourse analysis of teacher education policies in Ireland and Sweden

ABSTRACT

The needs of a globalized economy are rapidly changing what is legitimated as school knowledge and values, and calling up new understandings of teachers’ role in stimulating democratic spaces. We have termed this Teachers’ Democratic Assignment. We examine changing notions of teachers’ democratic assignment in Ireland and Sweden using a Critical Discourse Analysis. We tested our hypothesis that teachers’ democratic assignment has changed in unprecedented ways using an analysis of policy documents in teacher education. Our findings reported a substantive converging paradigm shift from a predominantly progressive (reconstructivist) curriculum discourse where democracy was seen as inextricably linked to everyday practice in the early years of this century, to a more essentialist (perennialist) discourse in recent times. The findings will have interest for a wider audience and have implications for the role of democracy in teacher education as well as the question of education as a social responsibility for a vibrant democracy.     

自由教育的历史演变及当代特征

始于古希腊时期的自由教育思想，直到今天仍然在教育理论和实践领域发挥着影响力，考察自由教育的历史演变及当代特征，有助于准确地理解和把握自由教育思想。     

Ecological and intercultural citizenship in the primary English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom: an online project in Argentina

This article describes an online intercultural citizenship project concerning the environment in the primary English-language classroom carried out in 2013/2014 between Argentina and Denmark. It is part of a network of projects coordinated by Michael Byram that involves teachers and researchers in Europe, the US and East Asia. The project is framed within the theory of intercultural citizenship in the foreign-language classroom and it is the only study set in the primary school context. Furthermore, developments in Latin America in this field are scarce and the study intends to fill an empirical gap. Although the comparative perspective is ingrained in the project, the article describes mainly the Argentinian standpoint.

At the same time, and more generally (beyond language education), it will be argued, and shown, that the project can also be framed within the notion of ecological citizenship, understood as a new form of citizenship that presents new challenges to educators. While the notion of citizenship in formal education usually assumes nationalist and patriotic mindsets, in this project ecological citizenship offers a new framework that introduces an international, transnational or global perspective. Furthermore, citizenship education tends to be reserved to secondary civics and social studies classrooms and in this sense the focus on the primary school context and on the foreign-language classroom is innovative in this project.     

The religious educational legacy of Mordechai (Motti) Bar-Lev: scholar and visionary

The aim of this article is to analyse the educational and spiritual legacy of Mordechai (Motti) Bar-Lev, one of the pillars of religious education research in Israel. We first analyse the ideological–theoretical foundations that underlay his thought and provided inspiration for his scientific writing. Next, we analyse the principal dilemmas on which he focused in his research, and finally we attempt to consider the special nature of his work and its contribution to religious education research. Bar-Lev’s quantitative and qualitative research dealt with the elite of religious Zionism who grappled with traditionalism and modernity, and principally with its habitat – state religious education. Bar-Lev will be remembered not only as having informed the field of religious education in Israel, but, most of all, as the researcher who shaped its future.     

An ideology critique of global citizenship education

ABSTRACT

In the last two decades, global citizenship education (GCE) has become a catchphrase used by international and national educational agencies, as well as researchers, to delineate the increasing internationalisation of education, framed as an answer to the growing globalisation and the high values of citizenship. These developments, however, have created issues, due to the presence of two conflicting discourses. While the discourse of critical democracy highlights the importance of ethical values, social responsibility and active citizenry, a neoliberal discourse privileges instead a market-rationale, focused on self-investment and enhanced profits. These two discourses are not separated; they rather appear side by side, causing a confusing effect. This article aims to analyse GCE as an ideology, unveiling not only its hidden (discursive) content but also the role played by non-discursive elements in guaranteeing the coexistence of antagonistic discourses. It will be argued that not only the critical democratic discourse does not offer any resistance or threat to the neoliberal structuring of higher education, but also this discourse can function as an apologetic narrative that exculpates all of us who still want to work in universities, notwithstanding our dissatisfaction with their current commodification.