A case for cautious optimism? Active citizenship and the Australian civics and citizenship curriculum

In late 2013 a new curriculum for Civics and Citizenship education was published by the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority for use in Australian schools. In line with previous curricular initiatives concerning education for citizenship in Australia a key rationale behind the new subject is the education of “active citizens”. Research evidence over the last 25 years paints a mixed picture regarding the extent to which the translation of policy intent has been successfully implemented within Australian schools. Exploring the new subject of Civics and Citizenship in Australia in the context of previous initiatives and existing research evidence, we explore the contested and complex nature of active citizenship around three key issues – the scope and form of action that constitutes citizenship in one’s communities, how young people themselves conceptualize and experience participation, the potential that active citizenship opportunities are interpreted as being synonymous with the use of active teaching and learning methods. On this basis we argue that the new curriculum provides some optimism for those committed to education for citizenship in Australian schools, but that this optimism needs to be tempered with a degree of caution.     

Patriotism and National Education: Perceptions of trainee teachers in Singapore

The effective teaching of national education requires from the teacher a sense of commitment and personal conviction. The teacher has to demonstrate confidence in what is said and taught in class and, more importantly, through his or her personal values and convictions. In other words, the teacher is required to be patriotic. This paper examines the different types of patriotism among trainee teachers in Singapore, and how these types of patriotism influence their perceptions of citizenship values, the importance of national education, and the extent to which national education is viewed as government propaganda. The results revealed four homogenous clusters that differed significantly in terms of their perceptions.     

Education for citizenship in South Australian public schools: a pilot study of senior leader and teacher perceptions

Preparing students for informed and active citizenship is a core goal of education and schooling in Australia. The ways schools educate and prepare young Australians for citizenship involves a range of processes and initiatives central to the work of schools, including school ethos, mission, extracurricular activities and community-based participation. With regard to the formal curriculum, the recent introduction and implementation of the first ever Federal Australian Curriculum includes provision for a new subject – Civics and Citizenship. Research evidence from other nations suggests that schools understand, approach and enact education for citizenship in a multitude of ways, yet how Australian schools construct this aspect of their work is currently under-researched. In this context, and drawing on data from interviews with school leaders and teachers of Years 6–8 (11–14 year olds) students in a small sample of South Australian primary and secondary schools, we explore perceptions and current approaches to education for citizenship. Our findings suggest (1) that while school leaders and teachers value education for citizenship, they do so for different reasons; (2) that schools place values as central to education for citizenship; and (3) that community involvement is typically understood as occurring within rather than beyond the school.     

澳大利亚公民教育发展的三个维度

从20世纪初起,澳大利亚公民教育经历了曲折的发展历程,其发展主要包含三个维度:社会科从产生到逐步完善、旧公民学逐步发展为新公民学、公民身份逐渐替代臣民身份。从某种程度上说,澳大利亚公民教育的发展就是一部独特的澳大利亚社会发展史。     

Far away and nearby: Holocaust remembrance and human rights education in Switzerland

The article considers how young people in Swiss schools are taught about the history and background of the Holocaust within the wider perspective of human rights education, as an important basis for education concerning democratic citizenship. Given the country’s specific history, for decades the Holocaust was not a matter of great interest in Swiss schools, or a topic that pupils often learned about as a part of their own history. Recently, however, sensitivity about historical incidents and the processes of the Third Reich has increased. Holocaust education has also become more important in the context of Swiss state institutional policy and non-governmental initiatives and has also become an issue in schools. This article includes an overview of relevant Swiss history and the current political situation, and a review of Swiss educational policies and especially of activities related to Holocaust remembrance and human rights education.     

培养高中生公民意识的实践研究

公民意识教育的有效载体是社会实践,将公民意识的培养紧密地与社会实践教育相结合,以社会实践活动为载体,积极实践、探索培养学生公民意识教育的针对性、实效性,主要在内容安排、方法选择、资源挖掘、机制评价四个方面进行探索,着重培养学生的社会公德意识、责任意识和爱国意识。在“引领学生更好发展”的办学理念指引下,坚持公民意识的教育,为了每一个学生健康、和谐成长作出更大努力。     

Developing mathematical proficiency in the Australian context: implications for students with learning difficulties

The teaching of mathematics in Australian schools has received considerable attention over the past decade. States and territories have designed and implemented new mathematics syllabi, and education sectors have supported teachers through sustained professional learning initiatives. Whereas the major focus of these initiatives has been on students constructing mathematical knowledge from a range of learning activities and quality instruction, the education of students with difficulties in learning mathematics has been given little direct attention. This analysis of current syllabus developments and professional learning initiatives highlights the risk of exposing students with learning difficulties to fragile program designs and classroom instruction. The research literature is also examined to propose ways in which these fragilities can be addressed.     

Patriotism and Democratic Citizenship Education in South Africa: On the (im) possibility of reconciliation and nation building

In this article, I shall evaluate critically the democratic citizenship education project in South Africa to ascertain whether the patriotic sentiments expressed in the Manifesto on Values, Education and Democracy (2001) are in conflict with the achievement of reconciliation and nation building (specifically peace and friendship) after decades of apartheid rule. My first argument is that, although it seems as if the teaching of patriotism through the Department of Education's democratic citizenship agenda in South African schools is a laudable initiative that can contribute toward establishing a definitive break with our apartheid past, the expression of blind patriotic sentiments (such as pledging allegiance to one's country and its citizens only) as articulated in the Manifesto can potentially marginalise others (immigrant communities) as the country endeavours to build its fledgling democracy. My second argument is that the intended democratic form of patriotism of the Department of Education can possibly be undermined by cultivating a culture of 'safe expression', which could slow down the country's quest for reconciliation and nation building.     

Civics and Values in the Asia‐Pacific Region

The Asia‐Pacific region has witnessed a substantial and frequently profound surge of interest in civics and democratic citizenship in recent years. This change has been driven by global forces and educational policy initiatives at national level in most countries and more localized levels in others. In turn these policies have been driven by a perceived need for a more active, participatory citizenry in a time of accelerated capitalism and globalization. A key feature of the policies in the region has been the deliberate inclusion of a set of values based on concepts of the ‘good’ citizen and democratic citizenship. This article examines these developments in selected countries within the region, with particular emphasis upon the values initiatives taken, in an attempt to make sense of the changing scene in civics education.

This article was prepared as part of a project funded by the Pacific Basin Research Center and Soka University.     

Being human or being a citizen? Rethinking human rights and citizenship education in the light of Agamben and Merleau-Ponty

This paper argues against a trend of human rights education, where human rights are taught in the form of citizenship education. In my view, citizenship education and human rights education cannot be taken as replaceable for each other. Underpinning the idea of citizenship is a distinction between ‘politically qualified’ and ‘politically unqualified’ persons. This distinction implies a violation of human rights in the name of social solidarity and security. This paper will argue that citizenship education could imply discrimination/exclusion although it claims to promote solidarity and human rights. Furthermore, the qualification of having rights is not dependent on citizenship but simply in human life itself. Three educational implications are discussed. Firstly, human rights and citizenship education cannot be seen as equivalents. Secondly, educators should be alert to the dangers of possible exclusion implied in citizenship education. Finally, this paper proposes different suggestions for human rights and citizenship education separately.     

Education for future-oriented citizenship: implications for the education of twenty-first century competencies

Globalization and the knowledge economy have opened up worldwide agendas for national development. Following this is the emphasis on the social dimension, otherwise known as social capital. Much of social capital includes “soft skills” and “twenty-first century skills”, which broadly cover critical, creative and inventive thinking; information, interactive and communication skills; civic literacy, global awareness and cross-cultural skills. Proactively, the Singapore government is preparing for Curriculum 2015, a new curriculum that would develop student attributes, embedded in the “confident person”, “self-directed learner”, “active contributor”, and “concerned citizen”. Significantly, a new curricular initiative, Character and Citizenship Education, emphasizes the integrative nature of citizenship and twenty-first century competencies and has been implemented in all schools in Singapore from 2011. This future-oriented approach to citizenship education emphasizes the significance of individual initiatives and the intellectual capital of citizens. This paper analyses features of this particular approach to citizenship education, and its strengths and significance, which may be viewed as an integrative “total curriculum approach” with a “whole-society” perspective. In addition, the challenges of teaching twenty-first century skills will also be highlighted. This departs from the conventional paradigm of socialization, but to help students develop attributes for a future society to come.     

Religious education in Russia: a comparative and critical analysis

RE in Russia has been recently introduced as a compulsory regular school subject during the last year of elementary school. The present study offers a critical analysis of the current practice of Russian RE by comparing it with RE in Sweden, Denmark and Britain. This analysis shows that Russian RE is ambivalent. Although it is based on a non-confessional religious studies approach, Russian RE also serves the interests of the Russian Orthodox Church, which aims to educate students into Orthodox Christianity, as well as the interests of the Russian state itself, which turns RE in a kind of citizenship education focusing on the patriotic upbringing of students.     

Makabayan Curriculum for Secondary Schools in the Philippines: The Development of Citizenship

The Department of Education in the Philippines has undertaken initiatives to restructure the curriculum for secondary schools as part of its ongoing effort to improve the quality of learning. After a decade of study, the Department produced a new basic education curriculum, as the 2002 Basic Education Curriculum. All public schools in the country were mandated to implement the curriculum at the start of 2002–2003 school year. Makabayan (nationalistic or patriotic) is one of the learning areas in the Basic Education Curriculum along with English, Filipino, Science and Mathematics. Makabayan from First to Fourth Year is designed to develop the personal, social and work special skills of learners especially their interpersonal skills, empathy with other cultures, vocational efficiency, problem-solving, and decision-making in daily life, that is, to develop socio-cultural and politico-economic literacy. This paper describes the context and content of the Makabayan curriculum and the extent to which it develops in learners a sense of citizenship, that is, a healthy personal and national self-concept. To delimit scope, this paper focuses on the study of geography only as one of the components of Araling Panlipunan (Social Studies) in the secondary school Makabayan Curriculum, using the results of a study of third year high school students' learning of geographic knowledge and skills as bases of empirical data. Key Words: citizenship, geographic literacy and competency, Makabayan curriculum, secondary education     

Local,national and global citizenship

This paper puts local, national and global citizenship into context post 11.9.01 and pre Johannesburg Earth Summit 2002. It contextualises the strands of the Crick report (1998) and how these integrate with the national curriculum. It argues for a school ethos of citizenship which permeates the whole curriculum rather than a taught citizenship curriculum. The whole notion of citizenship is related to Agenda 21 and Local Agenda 21 and strong bonds are made with Education for Sustainability and Environmental Education.     

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN GEOGRAPHY'S CONTRIBUTION TO CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION IN ENGLAND IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY

The relationship between geography and education for citizenship has for long been associated with one of the subject's claims for a place in the curriculum. Suggestions that geography should be included in the school curriculum, for example, were made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on the grounds of the increase in Britain's international and overseas trade coupled with the gradual development of a middle class of merchants demanding greater knowledge of the world. In other words, it was claimed that knowing and understanding of other parts of the world served a citizenship end. However, there was no evidence that these counsels were ever widely put into practice. How could geography contribute to citizenship education if it was not part of the curriculum in school? The answer was obviously that it had to secure a place in the curriculum first. In retrospect its success in gaining a place in the curriculum was arguably partly due to its contribution to citizenship education. The achievement began largely in the nineteenth century. Thus Watson, who made a study of the growth of modern subjects in English schools found it difficult to trace a single reference to the teaching of geography in secondary schools in earlier times, though apparently at Westminster school members of certain forms were instructed after supper (in summer only) in the finding of places on ‘maps’. Much of the evidence suggested that whatever geography was taught by private tutors or learned individuals through the books which were undoubtedly published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the public and grammar schools did little or nothing to teach the subject. It was only in the eighteenth century that one began to see some stereotypical forms of geography being taught in a number of schools, concentrating on basic physical and political geography, increasingly by means of catechetical methods.     

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.     

Vulnerability and the neo-liberal youth citizen: a view from Australia

This article develops a critical discourse analysis of Australian youth and community policies, examined through a discussion of theoretical debates about citizenship and vulnerability. Informed by a Foucauldian genealogical approach, it explores citizenship, not in terms of rights and universal categories, but in terms of relational, situated and dividing practices. Two major relationships are examined: the relationship between local communities and citizens, including the relationship between space and citizenship; and the relational construction of virtuous and vulnerable citizens. Vulnerability can refer to negative difference and weakness and it can denote a compassionate disposition and openness to difference. It is argued that in neo-liberal policy discourses vulnerability becomes tied to a ‘conversion narrative’ that renders social–structural marginalisation an individual responsibility and re-inscribes developmental explanations of social exclusion. This analysis of Australian policy discourses opens up questions regarding transnational citizenship and vulnerability that warrant further comparative and empirical investigation; and it invites a rethinking of the theoretical framing of youth citizenship, which has implications for conceptualising and conducting comparative youth studies in education.     

Investigating contingency in school history: an aid to rich,meaningfully critical citizenship?

A common charge levelled at English and Welsh citizenship education, whether taught as a separate subject or incorporated into other disciplines, is that it encourages compliance more than it inspires critical thought. There is room within the compulsory citizenship framework, however, for teachers to advance genuinely critical attributes in students. My aim here is to suggest that school History has particular potential for this, and to argue more specifically that the historical study of contingency in human affairs could advance a rich, meaningfully critical form of citizenship that contributes to Gutmann's ideal of ‘conscious social reproduction’. Gutmann's vision for citizenship centres on the idea that through critical scrutiny of present norms and institutions, students can be equipped to take part in the collective shaping of their future. Drawing on the work of social and political theorists as well as that of educationalists and philosophers of history, I argue that contingency can be rigorously and fruitfully investigated in school History, and that this could – at best – help students to develop three vital capacities for critical citizenship and conscious social reproduction: discernment of historical possibility, subtle normative reflection, and enriched political imagination.