Social justice storytelling and young children's active citizenship

This paper examines empirical data with regard to recent theorizing and conceptualizing of children's citizenship. It draws on a doctoral study where the author told social justice stories to one class of children aged five to six years to investigate the active citizenship that the stories set in motion. By imagining this action research study rhizomatically, organic and tangent pathways were mapped of what the stories set in motion. Analysis was informed by poststructuralist discourse theory and critical theory on political action, which enabled identification of enablers and constrainers of young children's actual practice of citizenship. A case is argued for acknowledgement of young children's political identities and capacity to act as communitarian citizens.     

Lifelong learning,higher education and active citizenship: from rhetoric to action

This introductory paper provides the background to the Cape Town Statement on Characteristic Elements of a Lifelong Learning Higher Education Institution that appears in this Journal. It describes the journey of a network of adult educators and academics from the North, South, East and West through contested terrain from Hamburg, to Paris, Mumbai and Cape Town in 2000. At a conference held in Cape Town in October 2000, the delegates concluded that there were six essential characteristics of a higher education lifelong learning institution. This paper reviews the essential elements of these characteristics and comments on the journey of their development.     

Citizenship as a learning process: disciplinary citizenship versus cultural citizenship

A relatively neglected dimension of citizenship is learning processes. A theory of learning is outlined, distinguishing between individual learning processes and collective ones. Linking learning to citizenship suggests a model of cultural citizenship, which entails mechanisms of translation whereby the different levels of learning are connected. In this article, the idea of cultural citizenship is conceived of in terms of learning processes and is defended against what will be called disciplinary citizenship in which learning is reduced to citizenship classes and formal membership of the polity.     

Measuring learning for citizenship

Over the past two hundred years or so, there has been a remarkable growth in the professionalization of occupations. This article identifies a range of social theories that may be used as maps and compasses to gain a deeper understanding of the processes of professionalization and the roles of professional education and particularly continuing professional education (CPE) in these processes. Underlying the article is the notion that educators working in this field are poorly served by the lack of adequate social theory. The article discusses limitations inherent in technicist and instrumentalist theories and various forms of liberal functionalist theory of professionalization and CPE. It then goes on to suggest the beginnings of an alternative critical social theory that may inform our thinking about professionalization and CPE. It suggests that sites of continuing professional learning and education may usefully be conceptualized as sites of struggle, and identifies a number of areas of tension and contradiction that, it is argued, must inform debates about the aims, purposes and structure of CPE, about who should gain access to what forms of knowledge, and about which forms of knowledge should be seen as most valuable. It suggests that these questions are primarily political and cannot be resolved in instrumental and technical terms alone. The contradictions and tensions identified give rise to ethical issues, issues of competence, excellence and mediocrity, issues surrounding the role of the state, professional self-regulation and monopolization, the links that may or may not be developed with wider political and industrial struggles of working people, issues concerned with occupational imperialism vs. the legitimation of occupations, professionalization and bureaucratization, and issues concerning professionalization and globalization. The hope is that this article will provoke further theorizing. In particular, I hope that it will stimulate critical research, which will look historically at the professionalization of a range of occupations and the role of CPE in this process.     

浅谈初高中英语学习衔接

初中生升入高中后,会有一段时间无法适应高中学习,出现很多学习问题,产生学习心理障碍。因而高中英语教师要想办法使他们尽早进入高中英语学习状态,了解高中英语与初中英语的差异,调整好他们的心理状态和学习方法,避免他们盲目学习,浪费太多时间,导致他们失去学习英语的兴趣。     

Supporting learning with interactive multimedia through active integration of representations

When learners explore dynamic and interactive visualisations they are often not able to interact with them in a systematic and goal-oriented way. Frequently, even supporting learners in processes of discovery learning does not lead to better learning outcomes. This can be due to missing pre-requisite knowledge such as the coherent mental integration of the pictorial and symbolic sources of information. In order to support learners in this process, we encouraged them to interactively and externally relate different static sources of information to each other before exploring dynamic and interactive visualisations. We evaluated the benefit of this instructional support in two experimental studies concerning the domains of statistics and mechanics. It revealed that the active integration of static representations before processing dynamic visualisations resulted in better performance and can provide a basis for a more systematic and goal-oriented experimentation behaviour during simulation-based discovery learning.in final form: 16 November 2004     

Service learning and intercultural citizenship in foreign-language education

Service Learning, a pedagogy combining formal learning with community service, has recently developed into Intercultural Service Learning (ISL). Intercultural Citizenship Education (ICE) combines foreign-language education and education for (intercultural) citizenship. They have different origins and applications but recent work in ISL is linked to foreign language education, as is ICE. A comparison of the two reveals considerable similarities and the potential for mutual enrichment. The article first explains the two types of education and their origins and theory, and examples of each are then provided. Thus the ways in which they complement each other and the potential for further coherence and enrichment are demonstrated. In particular it is argued that foreign language education can gain from the experience and rigour of ISL to give new possibilities for language teachers.     

Adult education,lifelong learning and citizenship: some ifs and buts

This paper suggests that the dominant discourse of lifelong learning is a political rather than an educational discourse. On this view, lifelong learning enables the deconstruction of welfare to be effected through the reconstruction of citizenship. Democratic citizenship properly understood, on the other hand, depends on determined progress towards a more equitable distribution of material and cultural resources among citizens. Education on its own can do little to ensure that such structural change takes place. It is, nevertheless, the task of critical adult education, as distinct from economistic models of lifelong learning, to raise such questions as urgent issues for democratic deliberation and debate, and to expand our notions of what it means to be active citizens in a democratic society. The paper contains the text of a talk given at the annual study conference of the UK's National Institute of Adult Continuing Education in April 2002.     

Educational policy through service learning: Preparation for citizenship and civic participation

This article describes a course designed to prepare undergraduate students to participate effectively in civic life and in public decisions about education and schooling. The course includes an examination of the theoretical and conceptual basis of civic responsibility and service learning, a review of the process of educational policymaking, and an in-depth exploration of a number of current educational policy issues. The course is taught with service learning pedagogy. Experiences in a service placement yield personal knowledge that has the potential to inform students' critical analysis of theoretical, research, and policy literature and to make students more effective active classroom learners.Susan G. Forman is Vice President for Undergraduate Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She obtained her B.A. and her M.S. at the University of Rhode Island and her Ph.D. in School Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Vice President Forman is responsible for oversight of university-wide curriculum and teaching issues and has substantially expanded service learning courses as a means of increasing students' understanding of citizenship. Louise C. Wilkinson is Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her B.A. is from Oberlin College, her Ed.M. from Harvard University, and her Ph.D. in Human Development also from Harvard. Dean Wilkinson's interests in education span primary through higher education and include a focus on teacher education and how educational policies are formulated and implemented.     

Social literacy and citizenship education in the school curriculum

This article explores citizenship education's need to focus on both ‘political’ and ‘social’ literacy within a communitarian framework. The Crick Report (1998; see also Lahey, Crick and Porter, 1974), while recognizing that the social dimension of citizenship education was a precondition for both the civic and political dimensions, concentrated largely on ‘political’ literacy. This article examines the social dimension of citizenship education. Concern with the social dimension of the curriculum in schools is not a recent interest, but changes within society have accelerated the social demands made upon schools. At the very least, society expects schools to correct the behaviour of children and to teach them values which usually means insisting on ‘good’ behaviour. The social development of pupils has thus assumed a much greater place in the aspirations of schools. Programmes of personal and social education, together with citizenship education, invariably emphasize a range of social skills and these skills are introduced early and built upon throughout the years of schooling. An individual's sense and ability to make socially productive decisions do not develop by themselves; rather, they require knowledge, values and skills. Above all opportunities are required for children to experience social relations in such a way that they are able to operate critically within value-laden discourses and thereby to become informed and ethically empowered, active citizens.     

Citizenship education in Ukraine and Russia: reconciling nation‐building and active citizenship

This paper examines the discourses framing citizenship education in Ukraine and Russia from perestroika to the present and assesses the role of the Council of Europe in promoting democratic citizenship in both countries. We argue that there is a tension between the discourses of active citizenship, strongly disseminated by international agencies (the Council of Europe in our case), and national consolidation, pursued by Ukraine and Russia since the fall of the Soviet regime. While the beginning of the 1990s was marked by democratization and individualization, from the mid‐1990s the emphasis on state cohesion became more prominent in both states. From the end of the 1990s, however, citizenship education aims started to diverge, despite a similar approach of the Council of Europe to the two countries. In Russia the government reinforced the state cohesion agenda, which led to the patriotic education discourse gaining strength. In Ukraine, nation‐building was made secondary to bringing the education system in line with international standards in order to improve the country’s competitiveness. The nature of citizenship education in the two countries therefore seems to be more a reflection of domestic political developments than the product of international policy agenda.     

Learning citizenship through social participation outside and inside school: An international,multilevel study of young people's learning of citizenship

In this article we revisit and re‐analyse data from the 1999 IEA CIVED transnational study to examine the factors associated with the ways in which young people learn positive attitudes towards participation in, and knowledge and skills about democracy. Less formal learning, wherever it takes place, has recently been conceptualised as a process of social participation, and we explore its effects using Lave and Wenger's and Wenger's understanding of learning through communities of practice. This is then contrasted with the effect of the volume of civic education. The analysis shows that learning through social participation, both inside and outside school, and in particular through meaning‐making activities shows a strong positive relationship with citizenship knowledge, skills and dispositions across a wide range of countries. Moreover, it demonstrates the usefulness of situated learning theory in the field of civic learning, and its applicability in large‐scale, quantitative studies.     

Social citizenship formation at university: a South African case study

The paper considers citizenship formation at universities, drawing on the example of a student leadership project at the University of the Free State, a formerly White South African university, in a higher education context and society where racialised difference continues to influence peer relationships. The paper proposes a multi-dimensional conceptualisation of social citizenship, as described by T.H. Marshall, enriched by the capabilities approach, which adds specific citizenship dimensions of deliberation, acknowledgment of heterogeneity, and agency goals and activities as core elements of being able to be and to do as citizens. This is operationalised by investigating the student development intervention, based on biographical interview data from 50 of the 71 students who participated in the first iteration of the programme. The data is analysed for the three capability dimensions and for student criticisms of the programme, before an overall judgment is made of the programme’s contribution to democratic values and citizenship formation.     

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.     

Key skills for science learning: the importance of text cohesion and reading ability

To explore the importance of text cohesion, we conducted two experiments. We measured online (reading times) and offline (comprehension accuracy) processes for texts that were high and low cohesion. In study one (n?=?60), we manipulated referential cohesion using noun repetition (high cohesion) and synonymy (low cohesion). Students showed enhanced comprehension accuracy and faster comprehension responses for text that were high in referential cohesion. In study two (n?=?52), we examined connective text designs (‘because’, ‘and’ and ‘no connective’). Students demonstrated enhanced reading times for text using a ‘because’ connective. Additionally, we examined the individual differences (reading ability, science self-concept and self-esteem) as predictors of achievement with science comprehension tasks. Across both experiments reading ability predicted comprehension with both high (noun-repetition text and ‘and’ text) and low cohesion text (synonym text and ‘no connective’ text). These findings highlight the importance of good reading abilities and text cohesion for promoting science comprehension and learning.     

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.     

Modern foreign language learning and European citizenship in the Irish context

This paper presents some of the findings of a study investigating young people's attitudes towards Europe and the European Union and their self-reported learning about European citizenship in Ireland. The paper considers adolescents’ attitudes and motivations for language learning in light of recent literature arguing for the role of modern foreign language instruction in the teaching of European citizenship. Findings based on the results of a knowledge test regarding the rights and opportunities offered through European citizenship are also included. Data provide evidence that Irish students possess more knowledge than their counterparts in England, Spain and France on the subject, while showing more positive attitudes than other students. The paper considers the contribution of modern foreign language teaching to this knowledge and their positive attitudes, drawing some possible inferences for other European member states.     

Exploring global citizenship learning and ecological Behaviour change through extracurricular activities

ABSTRACT

This research paper aims to examine the effects of extracurricular activities in building knowledge, skills and attitudes that attempt to develop ecological citizenship as a subset of global citizenship among middle school students. I focus on one extracurricular programme entitled ‘The Friends of Nature’ that was provided in a Moroccan private middle school. Adopting a qualitative research method approach, data consisted of interviews with thirty students from 7th, 8th and 9th grades and two teachers (social studies and life and earth science teacher), and were collected over the course of three months through multiple data collection tools, namely observation, student focus group discussions and teacher interviews. A series of environmental activities offered students opportunities to: identify environmental problems, promote education for sustainable development and improve their environmentally conscious behaviour, develop creative solutions, and take actions for preserving nature in their community. The data were analysed using a content analysis method. The results reveal that students demonstrated cognitive development in terms of human rights, citizenship rights and responsibilities, environmental sustainability. While the program developed attitudes of empathy, respect, solidarity, it failed to instil a sense of responsibility to act for the betterment of the world, thus being a global citizen.