Citizenship education in England and Wales: theoretical critique and practical considerations

This paper presents a theoretical critique of citizenship education in England and Wales, as a means of raising pedagogical considerations for teachers, and policy issues for curriculum makers and planners. Drawing on a range of recent empirical studies, we construct an analysis of practice and suggest that differences between dominant models of citizenship in England and Wales owe much to their histories. We suggest that such differences create opportunities for new curriculum‐making practices as well as democratic possibilities in the context of citizenship education, at a time when curricula in both England and Wales are under revision. Considering school councils/forums as an exemplar of practice common to both contexts, we question the wisdom of schools employing a narrow conception of active citizenship, via forums, in order to demonstrate they are satisfying the relevant requirements of the Order for Citizenship in England, and aspects of the Personal and Social Education curriculum in Wales. While the exemplars are both from the UK context the arguments apply beyond these borders and to more general concerns regarding the development of global citizenship.     

公民教育的进展研究：发达国家的探索

21世纪初，无论是在国家层面还是在国际范围，人们都开始对公民教育产生新的兴趣。越来越多具有多元文化的民主国家对作为民主公民教育基础的人权教育的国际共识、全球化进程所带来的统一性与多样性之间关系的冲突特征、许多民主的民族一国家对公民（特别是年轻人）的政治参与水平以及对种族主义倾向的反民主运动的忧虑等，都被看作是引进和加强公民教育的原因。一个由国际学者组成的研究小组，通过考察、研究为我们确认了多元文化的民主体系中公民教育在教学方面的一些重要原则、概念以及公民教育对学校课程的促进。发达国家在实践方面的经验显示，成功的公民教育要求一个清晰的政策框架和专业的教师培训等。     

Global–local dynamics of curriculum policy development: a case-study from Singapore

Non-government education is often a highly emotive and frequently irrational area of educational debate, especially when it centres on the degree of government funding and support. Frequently people take fortified positions, being either for or against it, often on political grounds and often without taking into account the cultural contexts and complexities involved. The purpose of this article is to look beyond these confines. It is based on a research project focusing on ‘whole’ curriculum policy at the individual school level in non-government schools in a variety of English-speaking countries in the developed world. The article is in three parts. The first part outlines the conceptual framework employed to guide our research project on curriculum policy. The second part presents a case-study of Chinese High School (CHS) in Singapore. This is an exemplar of the type of case-study of curriculum policy in non-government schools being undertaken as part of our research. Also, it is an interesting case in its own right; while the school has developed a global orientation to its curriculum policy and has incorporated ‘the global’ into ‘the local’ extremely rapidly, this curriculum transition has not been without its tensions and costs. The third part of the article offers a discussion of the ‘bigger picture’ implications of the findings.     

A comparative study of GCE and international curricula in Singapore and Australia

This paper is a comparative analysis of global citizenship education (GCE) in two primary schools, an international school in Singapore and an independent school in Australia, focusing on the implementation of GCE practices through the adoption of international education models - the International Primary Curriculum (IPC) and the International Baccalaureate Programme (IB) respectively, to create hybrid curricula. The research findings indicate that the curriculum and resources, school culture, school leaders’ and teachers’ values, as well as the utilisation of human and financial resources all influence how the schools engage with GCE in their quest towards internationalisation. A key overarching finding of the research relates to the tensions between critical democratic and educational domains and neo-liberal market rationales, which had significantly affected the schools’ decisions in curricula and GCE enactment within both schools. Despite their commitment to GCE ideals, both schools were equally mindful about being distinctive and remaining competitive within their educational markets.     

Globalization,National Identity,and Citizenship Education: China’s Search for Modernization and a Modern Chinese Citizenry

Since the early 20th century, numerous scholars have proposed theories and models describing, interpreting, and suggesting the development paths countries have taken or should take. None of these, however, can fully explain China’s efforts, mainly through education and citizenship education, to modernize itself and foster a modern citizenry since the late 19th century. This article traces and examines these efforts through a reflective and critical analysis of such public texts as official policy documents, curriculum standards, and related commentaries, and reveals three major findings. First, China’s leaders have advanced different views of and approaches to development and citizenship in response to changing domestic and global contexts. Second, the Chinese state determines China’s development course, defines its national identity and citizenry, and selects its nation-building curricula. Third, the Chinese state’s growing desire for national rejuvenation in an increasingly competitive, globalized world in the 21st century mandates an important education mission that its citizenship education be politically and ideologically open and accommodative, and help students develop global, national and local identities and function as active, responsible citizens of a multileveled, multicultural world. This article furthers academic understanding of how China’s education responds to economic, political, and social demands and shapes students’ multiple identities in a global age.     

Teacher Competence Frameworks in Europe: policy-as-discourse and policy-as-practice

This article analyses the growing focus on teacher competences in European policy discourse against the backdrop of global convergences in education reforms. It traces key ideas, policy recommendations, peer learning and documents which underscore the relevance of teacher quality for education improvement, as recently stressed in the European Commission Communication and Staff Working Documents Rethinking Education. The intertwining of teacher competence frameworks with other areas of education policy is outlined — key competences in school education, the quality of initial teacher education, and the continuous professional development of teachers — teasing out reasons for their central role. Some insights from research and peer learning then explore key implications in the defining and implementing of teacher competence frameworks in national education systems. A comparative viewpoint further analyses current policy trends about teacher competences across European national contexts, in discourse and practice. In order to do so, a framework of analysis takes into account system features as key variables affecting national policy — roles and responsibilities of stakeholders, governance and education cultures, and the status of the teaching profession. Across the variety of policy practices, the analysis endeavours to trace some emerging patterns and trends, highlighting paradigmatic national examples, with some food for thought.     

Diversifying Schools and Leveraging School Improvement: a Comparative Analysis of The English Radical,and Singapore Conservative,Specialist Schools' Policies

ABSTRACT

Within the context of fierce global economic competition, school diversification and specialist schools have been seen by governments as cornerstones of education policy to engineer school improvement in both England and Singapore for more than a decade. In both systems, the policy has manifested in different school types, school names and sometimes buildings – in England, specialist status schools, academies and most recently free schools; and in Singapore, specialist schools and niche schools. Diversification is promoted by each school emphasising distinctiveness in its curriculum – often with implications for its funding and degree of autonomy – which differentiate it from others. There is normally the intention to scale-up curricular innovations school-wide. The paper addresses three aims in respect to both countries: first, it profiles the evolution of specialist schools' policies in both states in relation to school improvement and secondly, social justice; thirdly, it undertakes a comparative policy analysis in order to draw conclusions as to how the relationship between central government and schools has re-configured in both countries – arguing that the policy in England is radical, that in Singapore, conservative.     

Comparative glocal perspectives on European teacher education

This article reports the findings of a PhD study, which offers comparative perspectives on teacher education in a period of reforms, inquiring into stakeholders’ perceptions in English, French, Italian and Spanish contexts as case studies. The interaction of needs and constraints in European initial teacher education within higher education reforms, and the mediation between contrasting influences and diverse education cultures, are viewed as global phenomena: teacher education practices in different countries can be described as ‘translations’ of European policies, with innovative potential in glocal developments. This article explores some issues of the European dimension of teacher education, reporting the qualitative findings of the study, underpinned by a theoretical framework encompassing globalisation and social ecological studies. In the four case study contexts, the focus is on secondary teacher education; when a subject perspective is required, it concerns the area of modern languages, considering their transversal role in European education policies. Findings from the national case studies come from a limited empirical sample, but can be of interest in showing emerging tensions and trends.     

How to be Singaporean: becoming global national citizens and the national dimension in cosmopolitan openness

ABSTRACT

This paper looks at how cosmopolitanism is practised amongst Singaporeans who have experienced Singapore’s education reform in the 1990s. Cosmopolitanism in Singapore is tied to state-intervention with a national orientation. To complement Singapore’s push towards cosmopolitanism, the education reform in the 1990s promoted the idea of a national citizen with a global orientation. I looked at 40 Singaporeans born after the year 1990 to investigate cosmopolitan attitudes that have emerged from the tensions between cosmopolitanism and nationalism. To meet the state’s ideals of cosmopolitanism, these Singaporeans employed strategies to practice a particular form of cosmopolitan openness which prioritise national interests. Nationalism and cosmopolitanism co-exist in Singapore and share a dialectic relationship as I argue that these Singaporeans are global national citizens.     

Taming cosmopolitanism: the limits of national and neoliberal civic education in two global cities

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes global education policy and curricular documents in Singapore and Hong Kong. Using a discursive approach, we characterize curricular aims through various cosmopolitan perspectives. We posit that although touted as Asian global cities, Singapore and Hong Kong are cases where neoliberal and nation-centric educational agendas have effectively rebranded cosmopolitanism and tamed its transformative potential. To develop this argument, we review theories and critiques of cosmopolitan forms of global citizenship education deemed necessary to prepare young people for complex global social conditions. We discuss cosmopolitan principles on identity, values, and deliberation and draw on critical cosmopolitanism and Asian forms of cosmopolitanism to provide a discursive framework for analyzing curricular intentions in the two cases.     

Global citizens or global workers? Comparing university programmes for global citizenship education in Japan and the UK

Abstract

The implementation of global citizenship programmes at universities has been taking place against a backdrop of growing internationalisation and marketisation in higher education, leading some to conclude that universities are cultivating global workers rather than global citizens. This small-scale exploratory study aimed to investigate these claims through the comparison of global citizenship education (GCE) programmes in two contrasting contexts – the UK and Japan. Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative content analysis, our findings suggest that the universities in both the UK and Japanese contexts demonstrate examples of adaptation and localisation of GCE to fit with institutional commitments, and both universities have significant elements of employability agendas infused into their programmes. We argue that while different in many respects, the two programmes both demonstrate an adaptation of GCE to fit within broader internationalisation strategies aimed at maximising global competitiveness and an alignment with the neoliberal trends shaping the global higher education sector.     

Schooling the new generation of German citizens: a comparison of citizenship curricula in Berlin and Baden‐Württemberg

In Germany, unlike other European countries, citizenship education has a long history. Since the Second World War, its role has evolved from promoting de‐Nazification in the West and state socialism in the East to emphasising common citizenship in a multicultural society. Today, the federal states (Bundesländer) are largely autonomous in matters of education. Drawing on citizenship curricula from two states with historically opposite political constellations – Berlin and Baden‐Württemberg – we argue that they share an emphasis on the fragility of democracy and the challenges arising from migration. While Baden‐Württemberg favours the concept of tolerance, Berlin privileges the idea of interculturalism. There are important within‐state differences: the Baden‐Württemberg curriculum for the vocational‐track Hauptschule being more similar to the curricula in Berlin, perhaps as a result of the larger concentration of migrants. This raises questions for educators and policy‐makers around the need for a single coherent model of citizenship education and the importance of citizenship in multicultural Germany for all.     

Students positioned as global citizens in Australian and New Zealand universities: A discourse analysis

ABSTRACT

Higher education plays a critical role in producing society’s leaders by preparing graduates with the knowledge, capabilities and disposition to appreciate diversity and address social injustice. Many higher education institutions within and beyond Australia have aimed to internationalise their curricula to ensure students achieve capabilities that enable them to contribute to an evolving global knowledge economy. However, the inclusion of global citizenship as a graduate attribute embedded in internationalised curricula, and the processes to achieving this, are highly contested. Guided by a discourse analysis approach, this study explored how Australian and New Zealand universities position students as global citizens in public web pages. Publicly available policy and other text documents on university websites relating to internationalisation and/or global citizenship were collected and screened. Those that met inclusion criteria were analysed to identify discourses and to further understand how higher education institutions describe their plan to advance and achieve global citizenship agendas. Two key themes were generated: expressions of internationalisation policy and global citizenship as an obscured educational intention. These findings are further elaborated, providing an outline of the possible implications for higher education policy and practice relating to the internationalisation of curriculum for global citizenship and its potential impact on educators and students.     

Framing education policies and transitions of Roma students in Europe

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to identify the contexts and conditions that allow for successful education transitions and opportunities for the Roma minority in Europe. Thus far, transnational and national policies have failed to ensure Roma inclusion and education equality, even though some progress is visible. Using a combination of policy analysis and interviews with NGO and European Union actors, University academics and Roma students, the article examines the key contexts that frame education policies and create the necessary conditions for education transitions. It identifies the problems and challenges within the contemporary EU education policy frameworks and highlights the tensions between political rhetoric and policy commitments that are visible at national, transnational, and local levels. In addition, through a focus on individual student experiences, the article captures the lived reality of Roma students who have managed their education transitions with success.     

The cosmopolitan turn in Literature education and its resulting tensions in Singapore schools

ABSTRACT

In this article, I highlight the emergence of a cosmopolitan turn in Literature education as observed in teachers’ beliefs and practices in Singapore schools. Central to the cosmopolitan turn is the view that Literature education should not be disengaged from real-world connections to others particularly those who are marginalized and oppressed in the world. In the first part of this article, I describe core principles informing a cosmopolitan approach to teaching Literature that is distinct from previous movements. In the second part, I utilize case studies of Literature teachers from four secondary schools in Singapore to discuss key tensions resulting from teachers’ attempts to foster cosmopolitan sensitivities. These tensions point to the propensity for Literature education to prioritize a form of universalism that neglects the dynamic interconnections between national and global identity; to encourage a human capital approach to education where cosmopolitanism is co-opted to strategically benefit elites and to perpetuate passive rather than active cosmopolitan engagement with justice. I suggest that awareness of these tensions can enable educators to develop more holistic and ethically grounded cosmopolitan Literature education where all students can be equipped with critical and empathetic capacities to navigate diverse and conflicting values in our global age.     

Teacher education in Scotland – riding out the recession?

Background: Teacher education in Scotland has developed its own trajectory for many years and this distinctiveness appears to have increased since the creation of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. Teachers' pay and conditions were addressed in 2001 by the agreement A teaching profession for the 21st century. This agreement led to a number of innovations in teacher education and development. More recently, there has been a report of the Review of Teacher Education in Scotland by Graham Donaldson and a committee is currently reviewing teachers' pay and conditions.

Purpose: This article examines the extent to which the development of teacher education in Scotland has been affected by the global financial crisis and its impact on the provision of public services. Three policy contexts are explored in turn, those of politics and economics, education and teacher education, so that the analysis moves from the wider societal perspective towards the specifics of teacher education.

Sources of evidence: The article draws on a close analysis of relevant policy documents, including those produced by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Scottish Government and the General Teaching Council for Scotland. Additionally reference is made where appropriate to a wide range of published research and to reports such as the Review of Teacher Education in Scotland.

Main argument: The ways in which teacher education policy in Scotland is developing is a result of the interaction between history, culture and politics played out at a national level under the wider influence of UK, European and global affairs, both economic and political. There are real tensions in the current conjunction of policies and trends, which create major challenges for all those involved. The promotion of career-long professional learning and enhanced school autonomy proceed alongside the review of teachers' professional conditions (McCormac Review), high levels of intermittent employment among new teachers, fluctuations in student numbers and staffing in university Schools of Education, and contracting resource to support school-level curriculum development and continuing professional development. The social partnership achieved between employers and practitioners is under increasing strain; and relations of partnership between universities and schools are subject to increasing critical scrutiny. Teaching in a time of crisis creates new challenges, and the need for innovative approaches to enduring challenges, in the short and longer term.

Conclusions: The longstanding commitment to explicit values in Scottish culture and education is all the more important in a context where pressures for accountability and efficiency are greater than ever.     

A cross-national comparison of international strategies: global citizenship and the advancement of national competitiveness

This paper examines national-level strategies concerning internationalisation of education and the extent to which global citizenship is deployed in their discourse. We focus on a cross-national comparison of selected internationalisation strategies in Australia, Canada, Ireland, the UK and the USA, all countries with highly developed economies and a relatively high proportion of the market share of international students. We draw on a thematic textual analysis and the use of corpus technologies to explore the framing of discourses and language use in each strategy. Our comparative analysis of national strategies highlights a dominant approach to international education that is primarily competitive in its orientation, with national interest as the key driver. This cross-national comparison also revealed considerable variation in framing of strategic internationalisation on a discourse level. Based on findings, we argue that internationalisation strategies limit the possibilities of advancing central tenets of global citizenship.     

Discovering democracy: an analysis of curriculum policy for citizenship education

Citizenship education has become the focus of renewed interest internationally as governments are struggling with issues of national identity in an era of globalisation where there is much ‘talk’ of threats to the legitimacy of nation states. Within this context, the Australian Commonwealth Government took another step in an accelerating trend of becoming involved in curriculum policy with the introduction of its citizenship education curriculum package, Discovering Democracy, in the late 1990s. Legally, education in Australia is a State government responsibility. However, over the last half century, the Commonwealth Government has increasingly set education agendas, justified in terms of'the national interest’ and has achieved them using financial levers which result from the vertical fiscal imbalance between the Commonwealth and the States.

This article examines citizenship curriculum policy processes and practices associated with the enactment of the Commonwealth's Discovering Democracy curriculum package in the State of Western Australia (WA). The study employed a framework of a policy trajectory extending from the Commonwealth Government (macro level) through State (WA) policy enactment (meso level) to individual classrooms (micro level). Documents and interviews with key players, including the Commonwealth Minister for Education, were the main data sources.

Analysis of the policy process revealed the emergence of power struggles as a result of the provision of a national curriculum on citizenship education by the Commonwealth Government, and these struggles occurred at national, State and local levels. These power struggles resulted in extensive transformation of Commonwealth and State level policy intent as the policy enactment proceeded at the classroom level. The study demonstrates the need for better alignment of conceptualisations and discourses in the processes of curriculum development if a greater congruence is to be achieved between expectations and realities in curriculum renewal. Meta‐level issues to emerge from the data, in particular the nature of policy consultative processes and the construction of teacher professional identity, have broader implications for education policy processes in other domains and in other countries.     

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.     

Restrictive and expansive policy learning – challenges and strategies for knowledge exchange in upper secondary education across the four countries of the UK

Abstract

This article examines the challenges and possibilities for UK policy learning in relation to upper secondary education (USE) across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (NI) within current national and global policy contexts. Drawing on a range of international literature, the article explores the concepts of ‘restrictive’ and ‘expansive’ policy learning and develops a framework of dimensions for examining what is taking place across the UK at a time of change for all four national USE systems. From an examination of recent national policy literatures and interviews with key policy actors within the ‘UK laboratory’, we found that the conditions for expansive policy learning had markedly deteriorated due to ‘accelerating divergence’ between the three smaller countries and a dominant England that has been pursuing an ‘extreme Anglo Saxon education model’. The article also notes that some aspects of policy learning continue to take place ‘beneath the radar’ between UK and wide civil society organisations. This activity is more prevalent across the three smaller countries although each, to differing degrees, is still constrained by its position in relation to the UK as a whole.