The impact of development education and education for sustainable development interventions: a synthesis of the research

The Sustainable Development Goals set out by the United Nations advocate that all learners will have the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development. Development education, education for sustainable development and global citizenship education are deliberate educational interventions, which all address global justice and sustainability issues. Current research continues to expand our understanding of the field, but there are no recent reviews of the literature addressing the impact of these educational interventions. The objective of this paper is, therefore, to examine the impact of intentional development education, education for sustainable development and global citizenship education. We reviewed 243 abstracts against specific inclusion criteria: 127 from Scopus, 101 from ERIC, and 15 from EBSCO. Of those abstracts, 99 met inclusion criteria and underwent double review, which excluded further studies. Of the final 44 papers included for review, 26 focused on education for sustainable development or environmental educational themes, 12 were global orientated in content, either through development education or global citizenship, and six were intercultural educational interventions. In this paper, we provide an overview of measures of assessment of learning used, review the evidence of the impact on learners, and address some methodological and pedagogical questions arising from the review.     

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.     

Reforming further education teacher training: a policy communities and policy networks analysis

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s teacher preparation for the schools sector in the United Kingdom was subject to a series of reforms and innovations including the establishment of new institutional arrangements to oversee the sector, namely the Teacher Training Agency (TTA – now the Training and Development Agency, TDA). Since 2002 the arrangements for training teachers in the broadly defined learning and skills sector have also been subject to scrutiny and a wide‐ranging reform agenda has been put forward by the Government. This paper examines the key reforms using a three stage model to analyse the policy development process and discusses the functions and status of the sector skills council, Learning UK (LLUK), in order to examine its relationships with external stakeholders. Contrasts are made with the approach adopted by the TTA during the reform of teacher training for school. The paper concludes with a tentative assessment of the progress of the reform agenda and the identification of a number of salient issues that warrant further research.     

Education reform and competency-based education

The core purpose of this paper is to describe a new educational paradigm as well as possible directions and tasks for education reform in the 21^st century. The present-day education system has failed to nurture the kind of creative people who can play leading roles in development or to produce citizens of a good character and democratic tendencies. We need to look at education from the standpoint of expanding the totality of possibilities for national development. The current educational system of Korea can be characterized as one of “manpower-centered education. ” In this system, education functions to produce the human resources needed by the nation, and there is a strong belief in the classification and selection of high-quality human capital via the school system. We can think of an educational model that is parallel to the current system of manpower classification and selection and call it “competency-based education. ” In this model, the identification of individual ability, talent, and aptitude is deemed to be the most important, and the key task of education is self-actualization through recognition and cultivation of such talents and abilities. What educational values should be pursued within a new competency-based paradigm? First, we can reduce the relative weight of subject-centered education and introduce a competency-based curriculum in order to teach key competences for life. Second, new intelligence theories must be introduced into education in order to foster the development of students' talents, aptitudes, and potentials. Third, we can make use of positive psychology, which is a newly emerging field, the core concept of which is the belief that happiness in life depends on one's ability to develop and maintain positive feelings and emotions.     

Teacher counter stories to a citizenship education mega policy narrative. Preparing for citizenship in Chile

The present article focuses on the counter stories of two Chilean social studies high school teachers. Counter stories describe how teachers use their professional experience to confront those mega narratives composed of dominant educational policies that impinge upon their pedagogical practices. The mega narrative described in this study as a citizenship education mega policy narrative is composed by citizenship educational guidelines that have become influenced by other market-driven educational policies, and is not only present in Chile but has also been influenced by policies coming from countries such as England and the US. Therefore, the discussions that emerge from these counter stories on the nature of this mega narrative and the ways through which teachers can confront it through their teaching, and the implications that all this has for the field of citizenship education, do not only fill a gap in Chilean research but also contribute to discussions on counter and mega narratives in the field of citizenship education within a wider international scope.     

从教书匠到燃灯者:教师公民教育自觉的蒙昧与唤醒

从课程角度来看,目前我国学校公民教育存在两个不充分:公民学科教育以公民认知代替完整的公民教育,路径开发不充分;其他各类课程协同的公民教育同向聚焦不足,路径拓展不充分。从教师角度思考其原因,是“教书匠”的职业定位蒙昧了其现代教育背景下职能的自觉,拘囿了其教育视域的拓展。教师要以公民教育自觉,为社会和谐与公民幸福而教,拓展公民教育的场域,结成学习共同体,向自然、向社会、向生活开发,搭建全景、多层交错衔接式育公民的大世界;拓展学科教学视域,在学科课程资源中发掘或显或隐的公民教育课程资源,构建全员、全课程育公民的大格局。     

Global citizenship as education for peacebuilding in a divided society: structural and contextual constraints on the development of critical dialogic discourse in schools

In post-conflict and divided societies, global citizenship education has been described as a central element of peacebuilding education, whereby critical pedagogy is seen as a tool to advance students’ thinking, transform their views and promote democratic behaviours. The present study investigates understandings of and attitudes to global citizenship and the challenges faced in its implementation. Teacher interviews highlight lack of time and resources for critical reflection and dialogue. Where opportunities for relevant training are provided, this can benefit critical engagement. Boundaries of educational systems and structures also influence pupils’ understandings of the issues as evidenced in questionnaire findings. We argue that critical pedagogies may be limited unless criticality and activism transcend local and global issues and are applied to schools themselves. Emotional engagement may be required for teachers to claim the space to critically reflect and share with colleagues within and beyond their sectors in order to enable critical discourse amongst pupils.     

Citizenship education in civics textbooks in the Japanese junior high school curriculum

This article discusses the types of citizenship education that are included in a sample of Japanese junior high school civics textbooks. Seven civics textbooks that have been authorized by the Ministry of Education for use in junior high school from the 2012 academic year were analysed in the context of fundamental issues in citizenship education and the national curriculum guidelines in Japan. In contrast to some previously published research, it is argued that the textbooks encourage, to a limited extent, active, participatory approaches by students with exercises and practical tasks to help students develop skills and gain the understanding required to live in contemporary society. It is suggested that the textbooks place some limitations on active learning especially in relation to students' political participation and that they reflect the struggle Japan is experiencing in the search for an inclusive national identity. Further work may serve to clarify the nature of potential contributions to citizenship education including that associated with students' involvement in whole school issues.     

Towards a radical digital citizenship in digital education

In this article, we attempt to define and explore a concept of ‘radical digital citizenship’ and its implications for digital education. We argue that the ‘digital’ and its attendant technologies are constituted by on-going materialist struggles for equality and justice in the Global South and North which are erased in the dominant literature and debates in digital education. We assert the need for politically informed understandings of the digital, technology and citizenship and for a ‘radical digital citizenship’ in which critical social relations with technology are made visible and emancipatory technological practices for social justice are developed.     

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.     

Reflections on citizenship education in Australia,Canada and England

In this article we describe the background to the recent development of citizenship education in Australia, Canada and England and then, following an account of our methods, discuss issues arising from an analysis of a sample of textbooks from these countries. We suggest that the current policies to introduce versions of citizenship education have emerged in these countries in the context of diverse challenges to the legitimacy of the nation state. We argue, generally, that all three countries tend, in the textbooks we have examined, to emphasize forms of citizenship education that may submerge citizen empowerment under essentially orthodox agendas. We see differences in textbooks between and within the three countries but argue that, despite many exceptions, we are able to characterize textbooks in Ontario, Canada as education in civics (provision of information about formal public institutions), those in England as education for citizenship (a broad‐based promotion of socially useful qualities) and those in Australia as social studies (societal understanding that emerges from the development of critical thinking skills related to existing academic subjects such as history and English).     

Globalisation and citizenship education

This article discusses the notion of globalisation by reference to several of its proponents and critics. Issues of citizenship education in an era of global electronic communications are examined and the author argues that citizenship education that has a global dimension will necessarily be concerned with economic, social and political inequalities between citizens both within and between nation states. Global divisions involve fundamental inequalities of resources, rights to residence and much else. Since globalisation invokes differing responses from citizens around the world and within nation states it is likely that global citizenship education will have varied effects.     

Towards a framework for critical citizenship education

Increasingly, countries around the world are promoting forms of ‘critical’ citizenship in the planned curricula of schools. However, the intended meaning behind this term varies markedly and can range from a set of abstract and technical skills under the label ‘critical thinking’ to a desire to encourage engagement, action and political emancipation, often labelled ‘critical pedagogy’. This article distinguishes these manifestations of the ‘critical’ and, based on an analysis of the prevailing models of critical pedagogy and citizenship education, develops a conceptual framework for analysing and comparing the nature of critical citizenship.     

Typology of Student Citizenship

Most of the empirical frameworks and theories concerned with the development of citizenship today are quite complex and only provide some guidance for what citizenship education should attend to; they do not provide insight into the actual citizenship of students. We constructed a typology of student citizenship, on the basis of data collected from students. Patterns of scores for the citizenship orientations and citizenship knowledge of students were examined, and four clearly interpretable profiles could be identified (committed citizenship, indifferent citizenship, ordinary citizenship and self-assured citizenship). A sample of 7,768 students from grades 5 to 9 (aged 11–16 years) from 38 primary and secondary education schools participated in this research. The typology was then cross-validated on a separate sample of 15,940 students from Dutch primary and secondary education schools. The types of the citizenship differed depending on the individual demographic characteristics of the students and their level of education. Implications of the typology for citizenship education and future research are discussed.     

Citizenship education in Mexico: the depoliticisation of adolescence through secondary school

Recent contributions have argued about the depoliticisation of citizenship education (CE), mainly through theoretical and documentary analyses, and based on the European context. Nonetheless, there is a lack of field studies which can provide empirical evidence about how does the depoliticisation of CE actually operate. Based on a mixed-method research in Mexico City’s secondary schools, this paper shows how the contemporary approach to CE, instead of looking at nurturing children’s and adolescents’ politicity, contributes to pupils’ depoliticisation. Among different potential characterisations of political participation (PP), the curriculum of CE circumscribes it within the arena of formal politics, from which students are largely excluded in the present. Additionally, CE promotes a range of practices of participation which are deprived from a political meaning. Students appropriate them discursively, but perceive limited opportunities for perform them, especially in school. Through the depoliticisation of CE, adolescents mostly learn that PP is a promise of inclusion in the future, while the idea of active citizenship becomes reduced to a correct discourse about largely imperceptible practices in students’ everyday life. The article stresses the need of shifting the priority of CE in Mexico from the formal curriculum to the transformation of school practices, in order to develop students’ politicity through participation.     

An education policy paradigm that fails upper secondary school pupils

In this article, we illustrate the creation of the education policy paradigm that constitutes the framework of vocational education and training (VET) programmes, and analyse local school representatives’ perception of VET in upper secondary schools in Sweden. The education policy paradigm, established through three periods of reform during the twentieth century, undervalues VET as being less worthy than general/academic education. This paradigm generates the rhetoric used by interviewed school representatives that encourages school pupils to choose the ‘right’ (academic) programmes in order to foster a specific citizenship competence, even if this competence is not fully compatible with labour market demands. Young people who cannot, or will not, attain the ‘right’ education, and thus the advocated citizenship competence, lose out in a school system where general/academic education and higher education preparatory programmes are consistently prioritised over VET. An educational system that advocates discrimination and suspicion of VET limits career options and restricts entry into the labour market, as well as risk stigmatising pupils undertaking VET; this paradigm is neither justified nor democratic.     

美国公民教育对于我国思想政治教育的启示

近年来,公民教育在我国越来越受到重视,如何培养社会发展需要的独立民主精神,提高公民的法律意识和道德意识,增强公民的政治参与能力已成为我国思想政治教育的重要课题。本文从公民与公民教育入手,总结归纳了美国公民教育的核心理念和培养途径,重在解决我国思想政治教育在现实中面临的现状和遇到的难题,为我国的思想政治教育引入公民教育理念进行教育改革提供有益启示。     

网络条件下大学生公民意识教育的思考

随着信息技术的发展,网络对社会生活产生了巨大影响,同时也为大学生公民意识教育带来了机遇和挑战。高校的教育工作者必须正视网络迅猛发展的现实,充分利用网络优势,对大学生实施有效的公民意识教育。文章在分析网络特点,高校大学生公民意识教育在网络条件下所面临的机遇和挑战的基础上,就高校大学生公民意识教育问题进行了研究和探讨。     

Creating critical‐democratic citizenship education: empowering humanity and democracy in Dutch education

Dutch society and educational policy see citizenship education as being an important task of education. The first section of this paper discusses the concept of citizenship and citizenship education, and analyses educational developments in the Netherlands. Following on from this introduction the second part of the paper puts forward a critical democratic pedagogy of citizenship education. With this proposed democratic pedagogy in mind, the third and final part of the paper goes on to analyse the discourses and developing practices of citizenship education in the Netherlands, and proposes a number of new possibilities.