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CONTENTS

3–4 Editorial 91–105 A good global neighbour:


Scotland, Malawi and global
Articles citizenship
PENNY ENSLIN AND NICKI HEDGE
5–23 Comparative civic education
research: What we know and what
Reviews
we need to know
CAROLE L. HAHN
107–108 Engaging young people in civic
25–42 Insights from formal testing of life, James Youniss and Peter
civics and citizenship learning in Levine (eds), (2009)
Australia
SUZANNE MELLOR 109–110 Knowing our place: Children
talking about power, identity and
43–60 Young people’s intentions about citizenship, Judith Gill and Sue
their political activity Howard, (2009)
ALISTAIR ROSS AND
MELINDA DOOLY 110–111 Citizenship: A very short
introduction, Richard Bellamy
61–75 From getting along to democratic (2008)
engagement: Moving toward deep
diversity in citizenship education 111–113 The Internet and democratic
CARLA L. PECK, LAURA A. citizenship: theory, practice and
THOMPSON, OTTILIA CHAREKA, policy, Stephen Coleman and Jay G.
REVA JOSHEE AND ALAN SEARS Blumler (2009)

77–90 Alternative policy measures for 113–115 Social studies today: Research
improving citizenship education in and practice, Walter Parker
Hong Kong (ed.) (2009)
GREGORY P. FAIRBROTHER

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CTL 6 (1) pp. 3–4 © Intellect Ltd 2010

Citizenship Teaching and Learning


Volume 6 Number 1
© Intellect Ltd 2010. Editorial. English language. doi: 10.1386/ctl.6.1.3_2

EDITORIAL

Citizenship Teaching and Learning is, with the publication of this issue, entering
a new and highly significant phase. This is the first edition of the journal that
is published by Intellect, a respected academic publisher with a high profile
position across several fields. From its first edition in 2005, CTL has enjoyed an
excellent reputation for high quality academic articles and book reviews that
have had a clear and strong impact. Our research shows that the journal has
already reached and been welcomed by very impressive numbers of readers.
The established position of Intellect will allow CTL to become even more firmly
established, with a corresponding increase in subscriptions and readership.
Publication with Intellect has been made possible by the hard work of
many individuals and through institutional collaboration which brings together
CiCea (Children’s Identity and Citizenship in European Association) and cit-
izED (an international higher education network for citizenship education).
Both CiCea and citizED are already securely established with excellent interna-
tional conferences, a wide range of publications and very positive professional
and personal relationships. This formal collaboration is, in itself, an indication
of the sort of collegial activity that is appropriate to citizenship and is sufficiently
dynamic to allow for and encourage other collaborations.
In this issue there are articles and book reviews that indicate the scale of our
ambitions concerning citizenship education. Carole Hahn provides an interna-
tional review of civic education research emphasizing the significance of culture
for the characterization of key issues and identifies an agenda for work in the
future. This overview is followed by articles that explore citizenship educa-
tion in particular contexts in a way that illuminates ideas and practice across
national boundaries. Suzanne Mellor writes about formal testing of civics and
citizenship learning in Australia. She identifies levels of achievement and pro-
vides explanations for them. Alistair Ross and Melinda Dooly discuss findings
from a survey of 2,400 young people in Poland, Spain, Turkey and England; in

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Editorial

the context of concerns about a democratic deficit, these authors discuss the
intention of young people to act in similar ways to adults. Carla Peck, Laura
Thompson, Ottilia Chareka, Reva Joshee and Alan Sears argue that although
policy and practice in Canada has moved away from attempts to assimilate
minority groups, and towards fostering respect and appreciation for diversity,
attention to diversity education remains superficial and limited. Gregory Fair-
brother discusses developments in Hong Kong and, through an analysis of
data, argues that citizenship education (as currently practised in Hong Kong)
shows considerable continuity with the pre-1997 period and is not achieving
intended results in areas such as the development of national identity and
active citizenship among students. In light of this he discusses the potential,
and emphasizes the limitations, of developing citizenship education as a dis-
crete subject. Penny Enslin and Nicki Hedge explore the idea of the global
neighbour: they identify it as a form of qualified moral partiality, appropriate
to the shifting understandings of geographical borders occasioned by global-
ization. Their reflections are placed within the context of relationships between
Scotland and Malawi, particularly in connection with higher education policy.
The book reviews, edited by Mitsuharu Mizuyama, explore a wide range of
issues about forms of citizenship education within and across countries.
This issue of Citizenship Teaching and Learning is not comprehensive in
its coverage of citizenship education but it demonstrates a commitment to
academic excellence, an international approach (that recognizes the value of in-
country developments as well as connections across borders) and an inclusive
collegiality. Essential to the better understanding and practice of citizenship
is a commitment to equality, justice, diversity, respect for others and demo-
cratic participation. Through the excellent work that has been included in this
first edition (created through new and continuing partnerships with Intellect,
citizED, CiCea and others) an ambitious statement of intent is being made.

Ian Davies

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CTL 6 (1) pp. 5–23 © Intellect Ltd 2010

Citizenship Teaching and Learning


Volume 6 Number 1
© Intellect Ltd 2010. Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/ctl.6.1.5_1

CAROLE L. HAHN
Emory University, Atlanta, USA

Comparative civic education


research: What we know
and what we need to know

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article reviews research conducted in different regions of the world and interna- civic/citizenship
tional and comparative studies. It raises issues for consideration by researchers, such education
as the importance of culture in understanding civic meanings. It concludes with a political socialization
proposed agenda for needed future research. civic education/social
studies research
citizenship
INTRODUCTION comparative/
Scholarship on education for citizenship and democracy has greatly expanded international studies
over the past decade as researchers from all parts of the globe are conducting
empirical studies that use a wide variety of methods. Clearly, the field of com-
parative and international civic education has gone global. But what have we
learned from this increased research activity? What do we yet need to know?
In this article I will first review studies conducted within countries in different
regions of the world; then I identify several international and comparative stud-
ies conducted cross-nationally. Finally, I will propose an agenda for research
needed in the future.

BACKGROUND
The field that I call ‘Comparative Civic Education’ has its roots in citizenship
education, political socialization, and comparative and international education.

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Carole L. Hahn

Although for centuries scholars wrote about the importance of education for
citizenship, it was not until the 1960s that political socialization researchers
(primarily in the United States and Western Europe) began to systematically
study how young people acquired their political knowledge, skills, and attitudes
(See reviews in Ehman 1980; Hahn 1998). Those early researchers focused on
how agents of socialization, such as the family, school, and media, transmitted
messages about the political world to youth. Since then the term ‘civic educa-
tion’ has expanded to include the many ways young people construct meanings
of civil society, as well as the political world. Importantly, today the dominant
constructivist paradigm posits that youth are active constructors of meaning,
rather than passive recipients of adult messages (Torney-Purta, Schwille, and
Amadeo 1999; Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald and Schulz 2001). The con-
structivist view of civic learning underlies much of current research. Before
looking at that research, a few explanations are needed.
It would be impossible to include all of the studies from across the world.
I have selected particular empirical studies to illustrate research that is being
done in different regions and from different perspectives. The included stud-
ies are limited to ones published in journals that use English. Further, it is
important to realize that although civic education scholars from a wide range
of countries conducted the studies I include, most of the researchers came from
or were influenced by societies that grew out of the European Enlightenment
and place a high value on individualism and democratic participation. Even
the scholars who conducted studies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East that I
discuss here were at least partially educated in Australia, Canada, the United
Kingdom, or the United States. Thus, it is not surprising that they use con-
cepts and examine variables that are prevalent in the West. Other world views
may shift research foci. Importantly, scholars and policymakers need to keep in
mind that findings from one national or cultural context are not generalisable
to other contexts; the findings may, however, serve as hypotheses to be tested
elsewhere. Finally, due to space limitations, I point to highlights of varied stud-
ies to convey an overall picture of the cumulative research rather than analysing
particular studies in depth.
With these caveats in mind I now review some of what we know
from the cumulative research. I begin by undertaking a round-the-world
tour of geographic regions, describing studies conducted within single
countries.

RESEARCH FROM COUNTRIES WITHIN REGIONS


Numerous scholars have written descriptions of policies and practices for citi-
zenship education in their particular country for edited volumes (Arthur, Davies
and Hahn 2008; Banks 2004; Cogan and Derricott 2000; Cogan, Morris and
Print 2002; Georgi 2008; Grossman, Lee and Kennedy 2008; Lee and Fouts
2005; Lee, Grossman, Kennedy and Fairbrother 2004; Torney-Purta et al. 1999).
To produce their descriptions, authors surveyed previous research and the his-
tory of civic education in their country; some examined textbooks and/or policy
documents, interviewed students and/or teachers, and observed classroom
practice. Recent case studies describe curricular reforms in post-conflict soci-
eties (Freedman, Weinstein, Murphy and Longman 2008; Niens and Chastenay
2008). The varied case studies describing the intended and implemented cur-
riculum are important for understanding similarities and differences in civic
education across countries and for contextualizing the empirical studies that

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Comparative civic education research: What we know and what we need to know

have been conducted in particular countries. I will now focus on some of the
specific studies that used samples from a single country.

THE AMERICAS
The diversity of cultures, economies, and political systems within the west-
ern hemisphere is reflected in the differing traditions of civic education and
research on the topic. In this section I discuss research from the United States
at length because there is much cumulative scholarship and it is the tradition I
know best. I will then mention a few studies from other countries in the region.

The United States


For many years scholars have conducted research on civic education and youth
political socialization in the United States. Much of the research has been
reviewed elsewhere (Ehman 1980; Hahn 2008). I highlight only the most
extensive and well-executed studies to illustrate ‘what we know’.
Over the years many scholars have analysed data obtained from surveys
of large, nationally representative samples of youth. The National Assessment
of Educational Progress (NAEP) assesses student civic knowledge and experi-
ences approximately every five years. Using this rich database, scholars have
repeatedly found that overall students tend to have a general – but not in-
depth – knowledge of civic political topics (National Center for Education
Statistics (NCES) 1999; 2007). The researchers also found consistent patterns
indicating that the following groups of students tend to perform less well on the
tests of civic-political knowledge than their peers: students from low-income
families, students whose parents had little education, and students who are
African-American or Hispanic (NCES 1999; 2007). Contrary to earlier years,
girls now do as well as, or better than, boys on the tests. Similar findings were
obtained from the United States portion of the major international study of
civic education (Baldi, Perie, Skidmore, Greenberg and Hahn 2001).
In a frequently cited study that used NAEP data, Niemi and Junn (1998)
demonstrated that deliberate instruction in civics and government was associ-
ated with student knowledge; students with such instruction performed better
on NAEP assessments than those without instruction. Other scholars who used
data from other nationally representative samples similarly found that students
who received deliberate instruction in civics or government had higher levels of
civic knowledge than their peers who lacked such instruction (Hart, Donnelly,
Youniss and Atkins 2007; Torney-Purta and Wilkenfeld 2009). Evaluations of
a number of specially designed civic education programmes also revealed that
deliberate instruction was associated with increased civic knowledge (see Hahn
2008). Importantly, civic knowledge was associated with students’ anticipation
of voting and actual voting eight years after completing high school (Hart et al.
2007; Torney-Purta et al. 2001).
Much of the research from the United States has focused on the relationship
between students’ experiences of democratic participation in school and the
development of participatory civic-political attitudes. Scholars who used large
nationally representative samples and those who conducted studies in a few
schools came to the same conclusion: students who reported that they were
encouraged to discuss controversial public issues in an open classroom envi-
ronment (where they felt comfortable expressing their views) were more likely
to have higher levels of civic knowledge, political efficacy, political interest,

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Carole L. Hahn

sense of civic duty, and expectations of voting as adults than peers without
such experiences (Ehman 1980; Hahn 1998; Niemi and Junn 1998; Torney-
Purta et al. 2001). Evaluators of issues-centred curriculum projects also found
that students who explored and discussed issues reported increased political
interest and efficacy; they also followed the news, discussed politics with fam-
ily and friends, and reported increased desire to participate in civic life (see
Hahn 2008). Recently, Hess (2009) conducted a longitudinal study of students
in classes where teachers regularly lead discussions about controversial politi-
cal issues (CPI), revealing both the benefits and challenges to leading effective
CPI discussions. Other researchers found that students who experienced inter-
active discussion-based civic education had the highest scores on a measure
of twenty-first century competencies, including economic knowledge, skill in
interpreting media, and positive attitudes toward diverse groups (Torney-Purta
and Wilkenfeld 2009).
In the United States other researchers focused on the importance of
students’ participation in extra-curricular activities and ‘service learning’
programmes, whereby students provide service in the local community.
Researchers found that extra-curricular activities and service learning were
associated with civic knowledge, voting, and volunteering into adulthood
(Baldi et al. 2001; Hart et al. 2007). In a recent longitudinal study, researchers
found that when students experienced a combination of ‘civic opportunities’
(classroom instruction, service learning, and extra-curricular activities), they
increased in civic commitments, concern for local issues, and expectations of
future involvement (Kahne and Sporte 2008).
Unfortunately, however, researchers find that such opportunities are not
equally available to all students. Students from low-income, minority, and
immigrant families tend to have fewer civic opportunities than students from
middle class, majority culture families (Conover and Searing 2000; Kahne
and Middaugh 2008; Rubin 2007). Following a related line of inquiry, some
scholars have been exploring specific meanings of citizenship in particular cul-
turally embedded locations. For example, in one case study the researcher
explored how young people from a Native American background negotiated
their cultural, national, and global identities as citizens (Whitman 2007).
Taken together, studies conducted in the United States that used large
nationally representative samples identified factors associated with student
knowledge and attitudes. In recent years, researchers are complementing such
work with case studies that reveal the importance of particular socio-cultural
contexts in understanding civic education and political socialization.

Canada
In writing about civic education in Canada, authors note differing experi-
ences of First Nations, anglophone, and francophone groups, as well as of
recent immigrants to a multicultural society. Rather than trying to general-
ize across cultural groups and provinces, Canadian researchers have focused
on the thinking of individual learners. Researchers have explored children and
youth’s understandings of concepts such as rights and freedoms, ethnic diver-
sity, civic participation, and historical significance (Chareka and Sears 2005;
Hughes and Sears 1996; Peck 2009; Peck and Sears 2005). Using a phenomeno-
logical approach, with small samples of students, these researchers gained
insights into the process of student meaning-making. Using that approach,
Peck (2009) found that students’ ethnic identity served as the lens through

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Comparative civic education research: What we know and what we need to know

which they interpreted and constructed a sense of the nation’s past. (In this
journal Sears also discusses other research from Canada.)

Latin America
The Organization of American States (OAS) commissioned a secondary anal-
ysis of the IEA Civic Education Study using data for students from Colombia
and Chile, as well as the United States and Portugal (Torney-Purta and Amadeo
2004). School factors including perceptions of an open classroom climate, con-
fidence in school participation, and the opportunity to learn in school to solve
problems in the community, correlated with expectations of adult engagement.
Other scholars conducted ethnographic studies of civic education. In Mex-
ico, Levinson (2007) interviewed experts, examined policy documents, and
analysed textbooks. He also interviewed school administrators and teachers
and observed civic education classes in two states to ascertain how educators
were implementing a new course, ‘civic and ethical formation’ (Levinson 2007).
Levinson identified a series of challenges to reform: insufficient teacher train-
ing; undemocratic school governance; an emphasis on testing; a shortage of
resources in many rural schools; and an entrenched bureaucratic structure that
provided few incentives for teachers to change.
Suarez (2008) conducted a content analysis of curricula in Costa Rica and
Argentina at two time-periods to determine the extent to which the curric-
ula reflected a human rights discourse. He found that ‘human rights’ was a
central concept in both countries (similar to Levinson’s finding in Mexico) but
it was presented differently in light of the countries’ particular histories. The
online journal Inter-American Journal of Education for Democracy, published in
both Spanish and English, reports on other studies from the region.
In Canada and Latin America the numbers of scholars doing research on
civic education has increased in recent years. It will be interesting to see if in
the future they continue to develop a particular focus on phenomenological
studies in Canada and on curriculum for democracy and human rights in Latin
American countries.

EUROPE
Although civic education is planned and implemented at the national level,
the European Union and the Council of Europe have been active in bring-
ing together scholars and practitioners around topics of civic education at
a regional level. The Council of Europe, consisting of 47 member states as
of 2008, launched the curriculum development project ‘Education for Demo-
cratic Citizenship’ in 1997. In its third phase (2006–2009), the project aimed to
promote education for democracy (EDC) and human rights education (HRE),
with an emphasis on social cohesion, social inclusion, and respect for human
rights (Starkey and Osler 2009). The European Union’s ‘Children’s Identity
and Citizenship in Europe’ SOCRATES academic network (CiCe) published
edited volumes containing descriptions of projects in varied countries (e.g.
Roland-Levy and Ross 2003). Eurydice, the information network on educa-
tion in Europe, published a set of reports on citizenship education at school in
Europe. These regional networks provide a bridge across countries with distinct
traditions of civic education and differing approaches to research. The diver-
sity of these traditions is evident when comparing empirical studies that used
samples from within single countries.

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Carole L. Hahn

The United Kingdom


Subsequent to Parliament making citizenship a statutory requirement for all
English secondary schools from 2002 onwards, the government funded a large-
scale longitudinal study to monitor the implementation of the new initiative
and to determine its effects. The Citizenship Education Longitudinal Study
(CELS) is the largest and most complex longitudinal study anywhere to date.
The researchers followed a cohort of students from school year 7–13 in a
nationally representative sample of schools. They also administered question-
naires to cross-sectional samples of pupils in years 8, 10, and 12 bi-annually
and collected qualitative data in a purposeful sample of schools. In one of the
early reports the CELS researchers found that socio-economic status correlated
with student knowledge, feelings of empowerment, levels of trust, community
attachment, engagement, and commitment to volunteering, participation, and
political engagement (Cleaver, Ireland, Kerr and Lopes 2005).
Most of the CELS annual reports, however, focused primarily on the imple-
mentation of citizenship education (CE) in schools, rather than on student
learning. The citizenship legislation deliberately left it up to each school to
decide how it would implement the subject. As a result, there is a great range of
delivery models and practices for CE in schools. By 2008, most schools reported
delivering CE through discrete lessons, either as lessons within ‘personal,
social, and health education’ (PSHE) or in a subject called citizenship (Keat-
ing, Kerr, Lopes, Featherstone and Benton 2009). The report noted that there
was a dramatic change from 2002 when most citizenship teaching occurred
through subjects across the curriculum, assemblies, and from the school ethos.
The report also noted increased use of active instructional methods and teacher
confidence in teaching topics like the environment. However, teachers reported
low levels of confidence in teaching topics for political literacy and attention to
‘student voice’ was uneven (Keating et al. 2009). Taken together the project
reports provide valuable information about curricular change over time. How-
ever, to date they have said little about how particular approaches to citizenship
affect student learning.
Taking a different approach, the Nestlé Social Research Programme con-
ducted telephone interviews with a representative sample of young people,
ages 11–21 years old in England, Scotland, and Wales (Haste 2005). The
researcher concluded that from 25 per cent to 50 per cent of young people were
civically engaged, either by helping in the community or ‘making their voices
heard’ or both. To capture the varied ways in which young people were or were
not engaged, Haste (2005) generated profiles. Importantly the youth who were
the most engaged and who expected to be engaged in the future were ones
who said that they had been consulted about the development of school rules
and policies, involved with planning their class work, and were encouraged to
make up their own minds about issues. Students who were encouraged by the
school to become involved with the community were more likely to be actively
participating in helping activities. This study’s identification of different types
of engagement/disengagement and of the importance of listening to students
at school is echoed in other research.
Other researchers in the United Kingdom, along with colleagues elsewhere,
wrote case studies of ‘student voice’ (Holden 2008) and the teaching of human
rights (Osler 2005). Other UK researchers interviewed youth to explore the flex-
ible, multilayered, complex nature of identity, citizenship, and education for
citizenship in a multicultural society (Maylor and Read, with Mendick, Ross
and Rollock 2007; Osler and Starkey 2005).

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Comparative civic education research: What we know and what we need to know

Continental, Western Europe


Several researchers conducted comparative studies looking at samples of
schools and students in different continental European countries. For example,
I studied adolescent political attitudes, beliefs, and experiences in a purpose-
fully selected sample of schools in Denmark, England, Germany, and the
Netherlands (Hahn 1998). I noted the differing role of the school in prepar-
ing citizens across different countries and concluded that ‘there is no one form
of democracy and there is no one way of teaching for democracy’ (Hahn 1998:
236). Using mixed methods, I surveyed students at two time-periods, inter-
viewed teachers and students, and observed lessons in civic-related subjects.
In focusing on differing approaches to the teaching of controversial public
issues, I illustrated differences in pedagogical cultures embedded in distinct
civic cultures.
A team of anthropologists similarly looked at the ways that civic cultures
impact upon young people in the Netherlands, Germany, France, and England
(Schiffauer, Baumann, Kastoryano and Vertovec 2004). Using ethnographic
methods over an extended time in one school in each country, these researchers
focused on the process of civil enculturation of students from Turkish back-
grounds. They found that the immigrant youth took on the discourses of the
dominant cultures to explain their position as minorities in their respective
societies.
In another study, Davies (2002) looked at policies and practices for pro-
moting ‘student voice’ in schools in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and
Sweden. This study exemplifies a type of comparative education research – to
learn from others to inform policy research at home (Phillips and Schweisfurth
2007). In this case, Davies and her colleagues sought insights for educators
and policymakers in England who were undertaking new initiatives to pro-
mote ‘student voice’ in school decision-making. Davies found that in different
locales in the four countries, students were involved in school decision-making
through strong student councils, committees that advised on curriculum and
instruction, and processes for hiring and evaluating teachers. The December
2008 issue of the journal Citizenship Teaching and Learning contained additional
reports of student voice in varied countries to illustrate students’ viewpoints
rather than focusing on policies to involve students in school decision-making.

Central and Eastern Europe


After the fall of the Soviet Union, many non-governmental organizations in
Western Europe and the United States undertook projects with partners in cen-
tral and Eastern Europe to promote education for democracy. Various projects
developed curriculum materials in civic education and prepared teachers to use
the new curricula using student-centred pedagogy. Evaluations of two such
projects illustrate the type of study that has been done in different countries
in the region.
‘We are Citizens of Ukraine’ was one such project, where developers
designed lessons to teach skills for democratic citizenship, such as group coop-
eration, decision-making, and civic action (Craddock 2005). The evaluators of
the project found that students in the treatment group who used the new
curriculum outperformed a control group on a test of civic knowledge and
they compared favourably with respect to attitudes and behaviours. Other
researchers measured the effects of similar projects in Bosnia (Soule 2002),
Latvia, and Lithuania (Vontz, Metcalf and Patrick 2000).

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Carole L. Hahn

Other evaluators measured the effects of the project ‘Deliberating Democ-


racy’ on students in Azerbaijan, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and three cities
in the United States (Avery and Simmons 2008). The programme used a tech-
nique called ‘structured academic controversy’ to scaffold student discussions
of public policy issues. Students who participated in the programme said they:
learned about the issues, discussed national and international issues more
with their teachers than previously, and liked hearing diverse views and being
encouraged to express their own views. Additionally, both the teachers and the
students found the approach easy to learn.
Recent research in Europe indicates interest in policy implementation and
programme evaluation, as well as understanding student identity development
in increasingly multicultural societies. Much of the research also focuses on
developing participatory attitudes, dispositions, and competencies.

ASIA AND THE PACIFIC


In recent years there have been numerous conferences drawing together civic
education researchers in Asia and the Pacific. This cross-regional dialogue is
reflected in a series of books that examine similarities and differences in con-
cepts, curriculum, and pedagogy for civic education (Grossman et al. 2008;
Kennedy, Lee and Grossman 2010; Lee et al. 2004). Several of the countries
in the region teach courses in civic and moral education as well as courses in
social studies, which includes history, geography, and civics. Across the region
there is also a widespread interest in ‘national education’ to promote social
cohesion and attachment to the nation (Grossman et al. 2008). Some of the
authors of chapters in the regional book series cite empirical studies conducted
in particular countries but, to date, the series has not published a book that
focuses on research. Rather, it is necessary to look to the work of individual
scholars working in the region.

Chinese societies
Fairbrother (2008) is one of the few researchers who used cross-sectional data
over time to test theory. Using theories of the state and political socialization he
focused on the concepts ‘hegemony’ and ‘resistance’. He surveyed and inter-
viewed purposefully selected samples of university youth in Hong Kong and
Mainland China to assess the effects of the states’ messages about nationalism.
He found that in both societies student attitudes reflected dominant messages,
although some students showed signs of resistance through their scepticism
and curiosity.
Other researchers have conducted small-scale case studies in Chinese soci-
eties. For example, in Hong Kong, Leung and Yuen (2009) described one
school’s efforts to promote participatory citizenship and student empower-
ment. In Taiwan, researchers used a quasi-experimental approach to study the
effects of an issues-centred approach on students’ civic attitudes (Liao, Liu and
Doong 1998). The Taiwanese students, like their counterparts in other simi-
lar studies in other regions, exhibited enhanced civic participation attitudes,
concern about social/political issues, reasoned thinking, and perspective-taking
abilities. In Singapore, researchers Ho and Alviar-Martin (2009) explored how
teachers think about diversity in a multicultural society. They found that their
sample of teachers used essentialized racial categories that reflected soci-
etal discourse and state policies, rather than multidimensional and pluralist
conceptions of multiculturalism promoted by scholars and teacher educators.

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Australia
Civic educators in Australia have been active in regional, as well as interna-
tional, discussions of education for citizenship and democracy, as reflected in
their many contributions to edited volumes containing national case studies.
Up until the 1990s, however, Australia did not have a strong tradition of civic
education. As a consequence, researchers in two states found that on average
students exhibited low levels of political knowledge, political interest, efficacy,
trust, and civic tolerance (Mellor 1998; Print 1995). Further, in a national study
of Australian youth’s attitudes toward voting and other forms of civic-political
engagement, researchers found that many young people were alienated from
traditional forms of politics (Print, Saha and Edwards 2005). Nevertheless,
many young people expressed interest in social-political issues, having par-
ticipated in protests related to issues such as the environment, the Iraq War,
and refugees. The researchers concluded that many youth are civically engaged,
despite their lack of faith in politicians and the electoral system.
To address what is perceived to be a general lack of political engagement
among young people, a succession of Australian governments initiated civics
programmes. As in the United States, student civic knowledge is now assessed
regularly in a national assessment project, which will yield data for researchers
to analyse for years to come. (In this journal Mellor further elaborates on some
of the research from Australia.)

AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST


A growing number of researchers have been reporting studies of civic teaching
and learning in Africa and the Middle East to international audiences in recent
years.

Africa
In Africa, researchers have studied the effects of new civic education projects.
They have also explored teachers’ and students’ perspectives of concepts like
‘democracy’ and ‘citizenship’.
In South Africa, Finkel and Ernst (2005) conducted an evaluation of a civic
education project developed by ‘Street Law South Africa’. The study is simi-
lar to evaluations of new curricula in other regions where international NGOs,
partnered with local NGOs, develop curriculum materials and train teachers
in student-centred, issues-centred pedagogy. University students were trained
to teach a new curriculum, ‘Democracy for All’ (DFA), to students in grades
11 and 12 across the country. The researchers compared interview data from
students who had the programme, students who had standard civic education
from regular teachers, and students who had no exposure to a civic education
course. The researchers found that exposure to civic education, either through
DFA or a traditional course, had strong effects on student civic/political knowl-
edge. Importantly, moving from no exposure, to monthly exposure, to weekly
civics instruction, and finally to daily instruction led to progressively increased
levels of knowledge (Finkel and Ernst 2005).
In another study Kubow (2007) studied selected South African and Kenyan
teachers’ beliefs about democracy. The teachers defined democracy in terms of
equality, particularly gender equality, and freedom of thought and speech as
experienced in homes, schools, and communities. Kubow concluded that the
teachers’ beliefs were informed by both global/western rights-based discourses

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and local/indigenous values of compassion, communalism, and concern for the


interests of community. Similarly, other researchers found (through interviews
and digital photography) that Ghanaian students defined concepts like citi-
zenship, democracy, tolerance, patriotism, and rights and responsibilities in
terms of Ghanaian law and history (Groth 2006; Levstik and Groth 2005). In
Ghana and Rwanda, researchers also explored how history instruction can con-
tribute to a sense of who ‘we’ are as a nation that transcends ethnic divisions
(Freedman et al. 2008; Levstik and Groth 2005).

The Middle East


Most of the published articles on civic education and political socialization in
the Middle East have been conducted in Israel (Eisikovits 2005; Ichilov 2005;
Perlinger, Cannetti-Nisim and Pedahzur 2006). Similar to scholars working in
other regions, Perlinger and colleagues found students who had a civics course
exhibited higher levels of civic knowledge than those who did not (Perlinger
et al. 2006). Further, among students who had civics, those who perceived an
open climate for discussion reported higher levels of political efficacy, political
participation, and democratic orientations than students who experienced a
less open climate.
In another study, Ichilov (2005) revealed challenges for civic educators in
a divided society. Using data from the IEA ‘civic education study’ in Israel,
she compared students’ responses from Hebrew state schools, Hebrew reli-
gious schools, and Arab schools. Although, overall, eleventh graders in Israel
said that they did not discuss politics a great deal, the Israeli Palestinian Arab
students were more politically efficacious and they reported discussing politics
more than students at either type of Hebrew school. Additionally, whereas the
Jewish students were more likely than the Arab students to expect to engage
in conventional political activities (such as voting and obeying the law); the
Arab students were more likely to expect to be actively engaged in politics, to
participate in social causes, and to engage in illegal protest activity. Not sur-
prisingly, the Jewish students were more likely than the Arab students to have
positive attitudes toward the nation and its symbols. Ichilov (2005) concluded
that Israeli educators implementing a new civics curriculum designed to instil
a unified sense of Israeli identity and respect for diversity would face difficult
challenges.
In recent years, a number of scholars have reported on small-scale studies
conducted in Lebanon (Pederson, in press) and Jordan (Shirazi 2009). Pederson,
like Kubow in South Africa, found examples of local and global discourses in
students’ conceptions of democracy. Shirazi, like Fairbrother in China, found
examples of student resistance to the state’s intended policies. His ethno-
graphic study provided rich, thick description of how resistance was enacted
in one school.
I look forward to more scholars and NGOs working in Africa and the Mid-
dle East reporting on their work in international conferences and journals. I
anticipate that in the future, research emanating from these regions will capture
insider, as well as outsider, perspectives.
In summarizing research from studies conducted in single countries and
cultures, several themes emerge that might be treated as hypotheses to be
tested in other contexts. First, deliberate civic instruction may enhance civic
knowledge, but civics courses or lessons alone tend to have little, if any, effect
on student civic political attitudes. Second, when civic education incorporates

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active, participatory learning activities and there is an open climate for dis-
cussion, then students may develop democratic attitudes. Third, students’ and
teachers’ understandings of concepts, such as democracy, citizenship, partici-
pation, and rights, vary according to the particular culture in which individuals
are socialized. Fourth, notions of identity are multilayered, flexible, and com-
plex. Fifth, implanting civic education in divided and post-conflict societies
poses particular challenges.

INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE STUDIES


International and comparative education are complementary ‘twin’ fields but,
as Phillips and Schweisfurth (2007) note, it is not easy to know some-
times where one ends and the other begins. International means between
nations, implying a potentially comparative aspect whereas comparative refers
to explicit, direct comparisons usually across national borders. The distinction is
blurred under globalization, where international schools, international partner-
ships among schools, and local schools aim to prepare global citizens. In this
section, I discuss a few of the major findings from the large-scale cross-national
CivEd Study, supported by the International Association for the Evaluation of
Educational Achievement (IEA). I will follow that with reference to a few com-
parative studies in which researchers sought to explain their findings in light
of the distinct social, cultural, and historical contexts in which the research was
conducted.

The IEA civic education study


The largest and most comprehensive study of civic teaching and learning to
date is the ‘civic education (CivEd) study of the International Association for
the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, or IEA (Torney-Purta et al. 2001;
Torney-Purta et al. 1999). IEA will soon report findings from the subsequent
study, the ‘international civic and citizenship study’ (ICCS) but at the time of
this writing the results were not yet available. In the first phase of the CivEd
study, researchers developed case studies of civic education in their particular
countries, using qualitative data, such as interviews and analyses of curricu-
lar policies and textbooks (Torney-Purta et al. 1999). In the second phase of
the study, researchers administered questionnaires to nationally representative
samples of 14 year-old students in 28 countries (Torney-Purta et al. 2001). Later
questionnaires were administered to an older population of students in sixteen
countries (Amadeo, Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Husfeldt and Nikolova 2002). It
would be impossible to cover all of the findings from this massive study, which
have been widely disseminated. Rather, I will highlight a few of the themes
that emerged and mention some of the subsequent secondary analyses that
were conducted using this rich database.
Using a regression analysis to identify variables that predicted student civic
knowledge and student expectations of voting as adults, the IEA researchers
found that in most countries students’ expected years of education, home lit-
eracy resources, and perceptions of an open classroom climate for discussion
predicted civic knowledge. The variables ‘civic knowledge’ and ‘having learned
about the importance of voting in school’ were predictors of expected voting
(Torney-Purta et al. 2001).
Importantly, the CivEd Study not only measured knowledge; it also
investigated student perceptions and attitudes with respect to a number of

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Carole L. Hahn

civic-political issues. More students across countries said that obeying the law
and voting were important to good citizenship than said discussing politi-
cal issues or joining a political party were important. Young people in most
countries tended to agree that social-movement activities, such as helping the
community and promoting human rights, were important. Most students also
reported positive attitudes toward their country and held positive attitudes
toward immigrants’ and women’s rights (Torney-Purta et al. 2001).
Following the publication of the international CivEd report, several of
the participating countries published reports in their national languages and
individual researchers conducted secondary analyses of the data. A team
of researchers at the University of Maryland, in particular, have conducted
secondary analyses of the CivEd data set, using sophisticated and varied quan-
titative methods. Although their reports are too numerous to list here, they are
available on the project’s website (http://www.wam.umd.edu/∼iea).

Comparative studies
Several smaller studies in civic education have been explicitly comparative,
in that researchers compared similarities and differences across countries and
then sought explanations in the historical, philosophical, and cultural context
of the particular countries. In one study, a team of scholars, as insiders, exam-
ined civic education policies and observed classroom practice in their respective
countries of Australia, Hong Kong, and the United States (Cogan et al. 2002). In
another study, researchers conducted a secondary analysis of IEA data, seeking
explanations for student perceptions in Australia, Hong Kong, and the United
States in light of the particular civic cultures in each society and of global factors
(Kennedy, Hahn, and Lee 2008).
In a study of civic education in two international schools in the United
States and Hong Kong, Alviar-Martin (2009) examined how secondary students
developed global perspectives and a sense of cosmopolitan citizenship. She was
particularly interested in how local cultures and global discourse were evident
in the two settings. Two studies of school practices in European countries that
I described earlier were also explicitly comparative and sought explanations in
light of differing civic cultures (Hahn 1998; Shiffauer et al. 2004).
Other scholars focused on teachers’ perspectives cross-nationally in light of
both local and global influences. In one edited volume, researchers (who were
insiders) in Australia, Hong Kong, Russia, and the United States described the
context of civic education, used the same questions to survey and interview
teachers, and explained their findings in terms of what they knew about the his-
tory and culture of each specific country (Lee and Fouts 2005). Finally, as noted
earlier, Kubow (2007) compared teachers’ perspectives in Kenya and South
Africa, seeking explanations in both local cultures and global forces. I hope that
in the future more scholars will undertake comparative studies that illuminate
differing conceptions across cultures.

FUTURE RESEARCH
In light of what we know from research in comparative civic education to date,
I would like to propose an agenda for needed research in the future. As I
read studies conducted in one or two countries, I wondered if similar findings
would be obtained from replications in other countries. As I reflected upon
the conclusions that researchers drew from their findings, I began generating

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new questions. Below are my nominations for needed studies and questions for
consideration in the future.

1. More studies are needed of students’ and teachers’ understandings of


civic-political concepts in different cultural and national contexts. Do
ethnic and other subgroups within countries experience civic learning dif-
ferently, as has been found in several countries? Are similar profiles of
youth civic engagement found cross-nationally? Under what conditions
do students identify with or resist dominant narratives of history and
dominant messages about citizenship?
2. Further explorations of the effects of school civic instruction and expe-
riences on student knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour are needed. Is
instruction correlated with knowledge in additional national contexts? Are
attitudes correlated with opportunities to discuss issues in open classroom
climates? What are the effects of instruction over time? Which school expe-
riences appear to contribute to adult political and civic engagement? What
do students mean when they say that they discuss issues in an open class-
room climate? What can teachers do that seems to contribute to such a
perception?
3. Research on the relationship of gender and sexuality to civic attitudes and
experiences is much needed. Are gender differences in attitudes that have
been found in some countries evident in other countries? How can the-
oretical work on gender, sexuality, and citizenship provide new insights
to empirical studies? How are gender, sexuality, and gender-related issues
treated in curriculum, textbooks, and class instruction? Surprisingly few
scholars have looked at these questions to date (Arnot 2009; Hahn
1996; Hahn, Bernard-Powers, Crocco and Woyshner 2007; Kennedy 2006;
Torney-Purta et al. 2001).
4. There is a need for comparative studies of citizenship education for indige-
nous groups. Are the experiences of teachers and students in schools with
many First Nations, Native American, and aboriginal students in Canada,
the United States, and Australia similar? How do students in such settings
negotiate their multiple identities?
5. More research is needed that focuses on classes and schools that serve
many transnational students (immigrants, migrants, refugees, and mem-
bers of expatriate families). How do transnational youth who are border-
crossers think of themselves with respect to citizenship?
6. Additional studies are needed of schools, teachers, and societies imple-
menting global or cosmopolitan citizenship education. What factors seem
to enhance students’ global or cosmopolitan views? Do cross-case analyses
yield similar or different findings?
7. In countries where there are inequalities in civic opportunities, such as
the United States, studies are needed of experimental treatments aimed at
reducing such inequality. Which teacher education and/or particular school
or district-level policies are particularly effective? What does ‘best practice’
look like in schools serving many students from low-income families?
8. Research is needed on varied models of teacher education and the effects
of such teacher preparation on student learning. Using cross-case com-
parisons, what elements of a teacher preparation programme seem to be
effective in differing settings?
9. Studies are needed that explicitly use varied theories of globalization
to analyse comparative civic education. Although globalization is the

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Carole L. Hahn

dominant paradigm in comparative education today, different theories


of globalization would lead researchers to explore different phenom-
ena (Spring 2008). Which of these are most useful to civic education
scholarship?
10. Finally, scholarship on all of these topics that moves beyond description to
explanation in terms of both global and local forces is much needed.

Clearly, civic education research has come a long way since the early days
of political socialization researchers. It is an exciting time to be working in the
field as scholars spanning the globe share experiences and viewpoints, and
increasingly form teams to examine questions using varied methods and both
insider and outsider viewpoints to illuminate findings. This journal is playing
an important role in fostering a dialogue about the past, present, and future of
comparative citizenship teaching and learning.

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over the civic in school and community on the Spokane Indian reserva-
tion’, in D. Stevick and B. Levinson (eds), Reimagining Citizenship Education:
how diverse societies form democratic citizens, Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield Publisher, pp. 19–44.

SUGGESTED CITATION
Hahn, C.L. (2010), ‘Comparative civic education research: What we know and
what we need to know’ Citizenship Teaching and Learning 6: 1, pp. 5–23, doi:
10.1386/ctl.6.1.5_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Carole L. Hahn is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of educational stud-
ies at Emory University in Atlanta, USA. She was the US national research
coordinator for the ‘Civic Education Study’ of the International Association
for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and she is an Advisory
Professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. She is a past president of
the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) and recipient of the Jean
Dresden Grambs Distinguished Career Research Award from NCSS. She has

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Comparative civic education research: What we know and what we need to know

conducted comparative studies of citizenship education and written about civic


education in the US and comparatively.
Contact:
Carole L. Hahn, Educational Studies, North Decatur Bldg-Suite 240, Emory
University, 1784 N. Decatur Rd., Atlanta, GA 30322, USA
E-mail: chahn@emory.edu

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June 16, 2010 9:52 Intellect/CTL Page-24 CTL-6-1-Finals
CTL 6 (1) pp. 25–42 © Intellect Ltd 2010

Citizenship Teaching and Learning


Volume 6 Number 1
© Intellect Ltd 2010. Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/ctl.6.1.25_1

SUZANNE MELLOR
Australian Council for Educational Research

Insights from formal testing


of civics and citizenship
learning in Australia

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The national assessment programme in civics and citizenship (NAP-CC), conducted civics and citizenship
in Australia in 2004 and 2007, collected achievement data on the knowledge and education (CCE)
understandings – of both cognition and dispositional orientation – of year 6 and year Australia
10 students. The test instruments for both cycles broke new ground, especially in knowledge and
relation to the testing of student disposition to civics and citizenship participation and understandings
engagement, and enabled students to give creative and focussed responses to a range dispositions
of citizenship concepts. participation
The ‘civics and citizenship literacy achievement scales’ for both cycles indicate active engagement
student achievement is variable, and generally low level. The ‘student background sur- national assessment
vey’ in the second cycle sought data and information about variables with explanatory effects in achievement
power as to the demonstrated levels of achievement. Analyses of student background curriculum
and school programme data identified factors that appear to have a significant effect implementation
on achievement.
The article describes contextual developments which influenced the assess-
ments, provides an analysis of the achievement and background data and reflects
on what the reported findings, especially from the second cycle, have revealed
about students and their civics and citizenship learning experiences in Australian
schools.

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INTRODUCTION
The first cycle of the NAP-CC in Australia, involving over 20,000 students in
year 6 and year 10 (aged approximately 11 and 15 years), was conducted with a
nationally representative sample of 567 schools in 2004. The second cycle was
conducted in 2007, with over 12,000 students from 618 schools. These assess-
ments collected achievement and background data from students on their civic
knowledge and understandings, and of their dispositional orientation to citi-
zenship. The background data has also provided some insights into underlying
explanations for those achievements.

POLICY BACKGROUND
There were several distinct stages in the development of the policy framework
for the conduct of the NAP-CC. In April 1999, all the Australian state, terri-
tory and commonwealth ministers for education (meeting as the Ministerial
Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA))
agreed to the Adelaide Declaration on National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-
first Century. This document (MCEETYA 1999) provides the framework for the
assessment and reporting on student achievement in CCE, as part of the Annual
National Report on Schooling in Australia (MCEECDYA 2000–2006).
Goal 1.4 of the document stated that, when students leave school, they
should: ‘. . . be active and informed citizens with an understanding and appre-
ciation of Australia’s system of government and civic life’ (MCEETYA 1999).
In 1999 MCEETYA also agreed to develop key measures to monitor and
report on national progress towards achieving these goals. Sample assessments
were to join the already established annual, full-cohort testing in literacy and
numeracy. The additional areas for assessment were science, civics and citizen-
ship education (CCE), and information and communication technology (ICT).
Through its performance measurement and reporting taskforce (PMRT), in
July 2001 MCEETYA commissioned the construction of two ‘key performance
measures’ (KPMs) for civics and citizenship education: KPM1, which focused
on civics knowledge and understanding; and KPM2, which addressed citizen-
ship dispositions and skills for participation. The PMRT also commissioned a
triennial NAP-CC. In October 2002, the PMRT commissioned a trial for this
assessment and, in October 2004, the first cycle of the triennial NAP-CC of
student performance in civics and citizenship was conducted. That report was
published in December 2006 (MCEETYA 2006a). A team of researchers from
the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) won the contract for
the inaugural cycle, and the subsequent two, in 2007 and 2010. The author
of this article, who had been the project manager for Australia’s participa-
tion in the phase 2 (testing) of the International Association for the Evaluation
of Educational Achievement (IEA) ‘CivEd Study’ (conducted over the period
1995–2001 (Mellor et al. 2002)), led the ACER team.

CURRICULUM CONTEXT
For the first cycle of the NAP-CC, the educational context was strikingly dif-
ferent from such as prevailed for other national assessments, since it was not
a key learning area in any Australian education jurisdiction, and teaching and
learning in the area was fragmented and marked by uncertainty (Erebus 2003).
This was the situation despite the Discovering Democracy Program, an Australian
Government resource and professional development initiative (DEEWR 2004;
Holdsworth and Mellor 2004), funded from 1997–2004 at a cost of $32 million.

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Insights from formal testing of civics and citizenship learning in Australia

Such a context presented unique (indeed, almost-insuperable) challenges for


those conducting national assessment.
In Australia, each state and territory jurisdiction has schools from three
sectors: government, Catholic and private. Each sector provides schooling and
receives differential government funding. The curricula followed in each sector
are closely related to central curricula frameworks, but between-sector varia-
tions in delivery, especially at the compulsory schooling levels, that is before
years 11 and 12, are common.
In order to develop a national test of learning in any area or field, it is nec-
essary to develop an assessment domain (AD), which given the lack of clarity
and agreement across jurisdictions and sectors was a significant challenge. The
NAP-CC AD was developed by ACER staff working with the NAP-CC review
committee, specially convened by PMRT for this assessment programme exer-
cise. Its members represented their relevant education jurisdictions and also
brought a personal commitment to the area of civics and citizenship educa-
tion. With considerable effort, good will and expertise, AD was developed and
agreed, despite no such equivalent curriculum existing at a jurisdictional level.
As will be described below, the AD critically defined the field in terms of both
civics and citizenship. The full AD is available in both national reports from the
MCEECDYA website (MCEETYA 2006a and 2009a).
By the second NAP-CC cycle of assessment, conducted in 2007, how-
ever, some national curriculum policy frameworks had been developed. The
National Statements of Learning in Civics and Citizenship had been released in
2006 (MCEETYA 2006b). This document defined nationally agreed understand-
ings as to what should be taught in CCE and at what year level, and this was
to be implemented in all jurisdictions’ curricula. In much of this development
the NAP-CC AD, since it was the only national document of CCE learning
outcomes, and had been manifestly well-received in the 2004 assessment,
was treated as a default curriculum model. Therefore, much of the curriculum
development, in the statement of learning (SOL) and across jurisdictions, was
congruent with the AD. As a result of this by the second cycle of the NAP-
CC, CCE had a more prominent place and agreed focus in curriculum policies
than it had had in 2004. But this kind of policy progress was recent and would
not make a universal difference at the level of classroom or even school provi-
sion, nor to student learning. Variability in CCE programming between schools
had also been evidenced in CCE programme evaluations conducted by juris-
dictions (Erebus 2003); some schools had well- developed CCE programmes,
while many other schools had not even conceptualized the area. The provi-
sion of professional development in the area had also been variable within and
across jurisdictions and sectors.

THE ASSESSMENT DOMAIN (AD)


The AD comprised the domain descriptors for the two key performance
measures (KPMs) and a professional elaboration. The AD contained two
sub-dimensions, applicable at both year levels.
In the AD, civics education was conceptualized as the study of Australian
democracy – its history, traditions, structures and processes – and of the ways
in which Australian society is managed, by whom and to what end. Citizenship
education was conceptualized as the development of the skills, attitudes, beliefs
and values that will predispose students to participate: to become and remain

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Suzanne Mellor

KPM 1: Civics: Knowledge and understanding of civic institutions


and processes
Knowledge of key concepts and understandings relating to civic institutions
and processes in Australian democracy, government, law, national identity,
diversity, cohesion and social justice.

KPM 2: Citizenship: Dispositions and skills for participation


Understandings related to the attitudes, values, dispositions, beliefs and
actions that underpin active democratic citizenship.

Figure 1: Civics and citizenship dimensions of assessment domain.

engaged and involved in their society/culture/democracy. The underlying con-


ceptualization of what was needed for ‘a good or competent citizen’ (that is an
elaboration of what the Adelaide Declaration was seeking to make schools create
and the NAP-CC assess) was that he/she should have civic knowledge and a
disposition to engage in citizenship activities. Thus both were the proper focus
of CCE, and both needed to be taught. This conceptualization of CCE and the
NAP-CC was considerably broader that that attempted by the IEA study, for
instance (Mellor et al. 2002). This conceptual complexity constituted another
major challenge to the project’s survey and test developers.
Reflection on the concepts mentioned in figure 1 will show that both
KPMs indicated there is a range of contested dimensions to be encountered
in the teaching and learning of civics and citizenship. The literature associ-
ated with the AD, and the professional development provided to teachers in
some jurisdictions, emphasized that interpretation lies at the heart of all CCE.
The case was made that effective CCE learning and achievement requires a
rich and complex set of understandings, based on civics knowledge, attitudes
and dispositions, and that this could not be achieved without students being
provided with the opportunity to experience and practise civic and citizenship
competencies.
The second level of the AD – that of the domain descriptors – demonstrates
the key conceptual understandings: that is the range of knowledge and con-
texts students are expected to grasp. Many relate to principles as well as to the
use of them, in the Australian context. For both KPMs this level of the AD is a
combination of facts and concepts, with a distinct orientation to social justice in
a democracy as the dominant concept. The third level of the AD, that of profes-
sional elaboration, contained substantive detail (curriculum content) and fur-
ther explicated the kinds of knowledge, understandings, dispositions and skills
which students were required to demonstrate in the assessment. The profes-
sional elaboration was the focus of test developers during the development of
the items, as these were the learning outcomes being tested in the assessment,
and which, by implication, should also be the focus of CCE teaching.

THE TEST INSTRUMENTS


The assessment was representative of all elements identified in the AD. The
items were developed in units that comprised one or more assessment items
that related directly to single themes or stimuli. Various item types were used,

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Insights from formal testing of civics and citizenship learning in Australia

including dual choice, multiple choice, closed and constructed response items.
The test instruments for both cycles, 2004 and 2007, broke new ground, chal-
lenging common assumptions about assessment and about the kind of content
that could be assessed. The decision to test student disposition to civics and
citizenship participation and engagement was a particular challenge to test
developers’ skills. The constructed response items’ format and the marking
rubrics required to consistently assess the tests were innovative design ele-
ments. The analyses conducted indicated that the test instruments resulted in
a validated process of questioning. This process enabled students to give cre-
ative and focussed responses to citizenship concepts, and could be scaled. For
each cycle the number and range of item types, and the rotated cluster design
of the test booklets, enabled coverage of the domain. The first cycle confirmed
that the two sub-dimensions were linked and a single scale was developed to
describe student achievement. Examples of all item types, for both KPMs, with
the score guides for the coding of them, from both cycles of the NAP-CC, are
available in the school-release assessment materials files (MCEECDYA 2009b).

THE BACKGROUND SURVEY INSTRUMENTS


The student background survey was conducted in both cycles. The background
survey instrument collected information about students’ gender, age, Indige-
nous status, language background, school location and family background.
The survey in the 2007 cycle sought additional information about variables
with possible explanatory power regarding demonstrated levels of achieve-
ment. It asked students about the opportunities available for participation in
certain specified civics and citizenship-related activities in their school, and
the actual levels of participation they experienced at and outside school, and
student views on those activities. Findings on relationships between these
background characteristics and achievement, as measured by the scaled scores
on the assessment, were published in the 2007 national assessment report
(MCEECDYA 2009a).

THE SAMPLE
In both cycles, at both year levels, a sample of schools was selected with a
probability proportional to size. Then, in the first cycle, a random sample of
two classrooms, and in the second cycle a random sample of one classroom,
was selected from those schools. The sample design and procedures, the high
student response rates (in the second cycle, 92 per cent for year 6 and 86 per
cent for year 10) and the low levels of exclusions ensured that there was very
little bias in the sample. Additionally, few schools have been involved in both
cycles.

THE CIVICS AND CITIZENSHIP LITERACY SCALE


The civics and citizenship (C&C) literacy scale is an interval scale, with no
absolute zero, that has been standardized to have a mean score of 400, with
a standard deviation of 100, for the year 6 sample (2004). The mean for the
national year 6 sample was 405.9 with a standardized deviation of 107.7 (2007).
The mean for the national year 10 sample was 501.7 with a standardized
deviation of 120.6 (2007). The 2007 technical report provides a more detailed
description of the scale and how it was constructed (Wernert et al. 2009).

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THE PROFICIENCY LEVELS


The C&C literacy scale was overlaid with six proficiency levels, ranging from
‘below level 1’ to ‘level 6’. The proficient standard for year 6 students was set
at level 2 and the proficient standard for year 10 students was set at level 3, for
both the 2004 and 2007 cycles. These standards were not defined as ‘a mini-
mum competency’, but as ‘a challenging level of performance’. A description
of how the proficiency standards were developed is provided in Chapter 3 of
the 2004 report (MCEETYA 2006a). All proficiency bands were described in the
2004 national report (MCEETYA 2006a: 42) and in greater detail in the 2007
national report (MCEECDYA 2009a: 49–52). Figure 2 defines the understand-
ings and competencies embedded in the achievement scale, and the level of
achievement (or competency) expected by the two proficiency standards.

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT
The C&C literacy scale for both cycles indicates student achievement leaves
much to be desired. The 2007 cumulative percentage of year 6 students achiev-
ing at or above their proficient standard was 52 per cent. For year 10 it was only
41 per cent. These figures represent low achievement levels and only marginal
improvement from 2004. Figure 3 shows the 2007 achievement of both cohorts,
distributed across all six proficiency levels.
Given the educational context of the provision of CCE in Australian schools,
it can be no surprise that learning in C&C, as indicated by the achievement
described by the 2007 CCE literacy scale, was not high, and that it had only
marginally improved from the 2004 assessment. However, from the point of
view of the jurisdictions there were some embarrassments: since the provision

Characteristics of proficiency level 2 – Proficient standard for year 6:


Students who achieved at proficiency level 2 demonstrate accurate factual
responses to relatively simple civics and citizenship concepts or issues in their
responses to multiple-choice items (MCIs) and show limited interpretation or
reasoning in their responses to open-ended items (OEIs). They interpret and
reason within limits across KPMs. They recognize the division of governmen-
tal responsibilities in a federation, that respecting the rights of others to hold
differing opinions is a democratic principle, and can identify a link between a
change in Australia’s identity and the national anthem.

Characteristics of proficiency level 3 – Proficient standard for year 10:


Students who achieved at proficiency level 3 demonstrate relatively precise and
detailed factual responses to complex key civics and citizenship concepts or issues
in MCIs. In responding to OEIs they use field-specific language with some flu-
ency, and reveal some interpretation of information. They recognize some key
functions and features of parliament, identify the importance in democracies for
citizens to engage with issues, and analyse the common good as a motivation for
becoming a whistle-blower.

Figure 2: Characteristics of proficient standards for years 6 and 10.

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Insights from formal testing of civics and citizenship learning in Australia

Below level 1 Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5+

% CI % CI % CI % CI % CI % CI

Year 6 11.3 0.7 35.2 1.2 43.5 1.3 9.7 0.6 0.3 0.1 – –

Year 10 3.8 0.7 15.8 1.1 38.9 1.4 34.4 1.1 6.9 0.7 0.2 0.1
NB: There were no significant differences from 2004 to 2007 in the proficiency levels.
Figure 3: Distribution of year 6 and year 10 students by proficiency level, 2007 cycle.

of CCE curriculum had been handsomely funded, and professional develop-


ment had been provided (albeit somewhat randomly, despite the rhetoric of
successful implementation), improvement in achievement had been antici-
pated. Data was only analysed and reported at a jurisdictional (not sector)
level, but considerable variances in achievement between state and territory
education jurisdictions were reported. These were taken, especially by the suc-
cessful parties, as reflecting better implementation of curriculum development
in schools and classrooms. The national report indicated that there might be
many explanatory factors, including whole school programmes, not just CCE
curriculum provision. It urged a more critical interrogation of the jurisdictional
data, of other factors referenced in the 2007 national report and of other local
data available on implementation.

C&C LITERACY ACHIEVEMENT AND BACKGROUND CHARACTERISTICS


Part of the role of the background survey was to seek student-level data that
could assist in better understanding the variation in student achievement across
the proficiency levels, and between and across the different year levels (that is,
years 6 and 10). There was also a perception at PMRT that the year 10 achieve-
ments were closer to those of year 6 than they should have been. The 2007
background survey enabled researchers a closer examination of individual level
variables, including student activities and attitudes, and brought greater inter-
rogative precision to bear on the variations, allowing insights into some school
and non-school level effects on student achievement. The report provided
results of analyses which examined relationships between student performance
and each of the individual background characteristics on which data had been
collected through the background survey.

PARENTAL BACKGROUND
Data was sought from students on both parental occupation and education,
but collection of the year 6 data was systemically flawed and many year 10 stu-
dents could not provide data on parental education. For this reason, year 10
data on parental occupation was used as an indicator of social-economic status
(SES). Five categories were classified using the MCEETYA endorsed classifi-
cation. Where occupations were available for both parents, the higher-coded
occupation was used in the analyses (Wernert et al. 2009: Chapter 4).

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Figure 4: Year 10 students’ mean scores on the C&C literacy scale, by parental
occupation.

Differences in mean scores among students from each of the occupation


groups followed the expected pattern, being based on underlying socio-
economic differences, and the differences between the adjacent groups were
statistically significant. Figure 4 shows the linear trend of mean achievement
scores on the CCE literacy scale, according to occupation group, and the
associated confidence intervals.
In terms of trends from 2004, the gaps in achievement between the
occupation groups were greater in 2007. The most notable improvement in
achievement, by group, from 2004 to 2007, was of the highest occupation group,
and this was statistically significant. The strength of the association between
parental occupation background and achievement in civics and citizenship
was broadly similar to that revealed in other similar studies, such as for read-
ing literacy in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), (OECD
2000). The increase in that tendency may be enhanced by the curriculum con-
text, which is characterized by previously mentioned variability and paucity in
delivery. Whatever the explanation, the trend is a concern.

INFLUENCE OF ALL DEMOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND VARIABLES ON


ACHIEVEMENT
A multiple regression analysis was undertaken to investigate the unique influ-
ence of each of the background characteristics on year 10 achievements, and
also the amount of variation in achievements explained by included variables.
The analysis explained 13.2% of the total variance in performance, of which
about 1% was joint variation. The most powerful effect (at 9%) was that gener-
ated by parental occupation (which constituted approximately 70% of the total
of the explained variance). For a student whose parent is in the top occupa-
tion group, the likely effect of this variance is that they will achieve 40 points
higher on the C&C literacy scale than a student whose parent was in the second

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Insights from formal testing of civics and citizenship learning in Australia

Figure 5: Disaggregation of variance and explained variance in student


performance, by background variables.

occupation group. It is noteworthy that this variance in performance, explained


by the social and demographic predictors, is comparable to results in other
national assessments in Australia.

OPPORTUNITIES TO PARTICIPATE IN CIVICS AND CITIZENSHIP AND


GOVERNANCE ACTIVITIES AT SCHOOL
Schools can provide opportunities for students to participate in CCE and
school governance activities. Indeed the Adelaide Declaration and MCEETYA
documentation state that schools are obliged to provide such opportuni-
ties. The student background survey collected data on students’ school-based
opportunities to participate in certain specified activities. Figure 6 shows the
student-reported availability of such activities.
The 2007 survey also asked students about their actual participation in these
C&C and governance activities. Three quarters of year 6 and two thirds of

Figure 6: Opportunities for participation in C&C-related activities at school.

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Suzanne Mellor

year 10 students had voted for class representatives. Approximately one third
of year 6 and one fifth of year 10 students had served on a student repre-
sentative council (SRC), and of those, approximately three quarters believed
they had ‘contributed to school decision-making’. Less than a third of stu-
dents reported that they had contributed to school decision-making in non-SRC
ways. Variable numbers said they had participated in peer-support programmes,
helped create a school newspaper, represented the school, or participated in
such activities outside school. These responses indicate that only a minor-
ity of students were actively engaged in such activities (other than voting for
class reps), but when they were engaged they felt they ‘had made a useful
contribution’.
Students were asked to identify whether they had learnt the following at
school:

• The importance of voting in elections (80% of year 6 and 60% of year 10


reported ‘Yes’)
• To be interested in ‘how my school works’ (80% of year 6 and 60% of year
10 reported ‘Yes’)
• How to represent other students (80% of year 6 and 70% of year 10 reported
‘Yes’)
• That I can contribute to solving problems at my school (80% of year 6 and
70% of year 10 reported ‘Yes’)
• How to work cooperatively with other students (90% of both year 6 and
year 10 reported ‘Yes’)

The strongest pattern here is the consistently higher level of agreement in


responses as to their participation, from students in primary schools, compared
with those in secondary schools. There is an argument that primary schools are
often smaller communities, more like families than secondary schools, and so
individuals can have a clearer sense of identity there. But another view is that
the younger students are probably likely to have fewer queries and suggestions
about school governance that may be perceived by staff as threatening. School
leaders commonly express concerns verbally about allowing student ‘control’
in schools, and such views can be assumed to influence staff support for such
opportunities, especially to the full range of the student population. Certainly,
as figure 6 showed, only a minority of students in both primary and secondary
schools had had these opportunities. But it is pleasing that given the diversity of
the population in Australian schools so many students reported they thought
they had learnt how to work cooperatively with others. This is a significant
finding for a multicultural nation and indicates the power of positive schooling
in creating a cohesive society.
A correlation analysis of all the variables related to C&C participation,
conducted in 2004 (and in 2007 including its additional data), revealed small
correlation coefficients exist between all the variables. This suggests that there
was little association made by students between opportunities to participate
in C&C activities and what they have learned about governance. This is a
salutary reminder that students do not always learn in the way their teach-
ers expect them to, or make the desired connections. However the revealed
relationship between actual opportunities and actual participation indicates
that when students are offered opportunities to participate they are willing to
take them up. It appears we should speak less about disengaged students and

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Insights from formal testing of civics and citizenship learning in Australia

ask more about schools that do not actively encourage engagement in their
students.

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN OPPORTUNITIES TO PARTICIPATE AT


SCHOOL AND CIVICS AND CITIZENSHIP ACHIEVEMENT
The key purpose of the questions in the background survey was to assist in
identifying any relationships that may exist between school programming (that
is opportunities to participate) and C&C achievement (as represented by stu-
dents’ achievement levels on the C&C literacy scale). Such relationships, if they
existed, would assist in explaining how schools programming assists student
learning in the area of CCE.
The results of an analysis of the relatedness of participation in school gov-
ernance activities and achievement are demonstrated in figure 7. Schools were
categorized, on the basis of their student descriptions of what arrangements
existed in their school, as being a high, medium-high, medium-low or low
level provider of opportunities for participation in the two key areas previously
analysed in this article. Figure 7 also highlights the mean achievement scores
for each of the school categories, with the correlation coefficient for the two
participation variables with the achievement score.

Figure 7: Mean C&C achievement by level of opportunity for participation at school.

Figure 7 shows that for both year levels, as the level of opportunity pro-
vided by schools for student participation in the two kinds of activity increases,
so too do the mean achievement scores. Low achievement (that is less CCE
learning) correlates with fewer opportunities to participate: higher achievement
(that is more C&C learning) correlates with more opportunities. The associa-
tion is much stronger for the year 10 students than it is for the year 6 students,
and this may be a further explanatory possibility for the year level differences
previously mentioned.

OPPORTUNITIES TO PARTICIPATE IN CIVICS AND CITIZENSHIP AND


GOVERNANCE ACTIVITIES OUTSIDE SCHOOL
Students were asked to indicate if and how often they participated in specified
civics and citizenship-related activities outside school. The frequency options
provided were ‘Never or hardly ever’, ‘At least once a month’, ‘At least once a

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Suzanne Mellor

week’ and ‘More than 3 times a week’. The trends in student responses were
very similar for both year groups.

• Of the four options for gaining news of current events, 80% of students
nominated the TV news, frequently watched, as the preferred source, with
the Internet a distant fourth (40%). Radio and newspapers were rated by
about 70% of students as a preferred source, and the frequency of them
being used was correspondingly lower than TV.
• About 60% of students talked with their family about political and social
issues, whilst only 40% talked with their friends about such matters.
• The out-of-school activity that had the largest participation (at over 80%)
was sport, with participating in environmental, community or volun-
teer work being at much lower levels (around 20% for each activity
for year 10 students, and 40% for year 6 students for environmental
activities).

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN OPPORTUNITIES TO PARTICIPATE IN CCE


ACTIVITIES OUT OF SCHOOL AND C&C ACHIEVEMENT
Relationships were found to exist between achievement and both the frequency
and number of civics and citizenship-related activities undertaken by students
out of school. Figure 8 presents the mean scaled scores (that is, achievement)
for both year 6 and 10 students, according the number of activities participated
in, and the associated confidence intervals. As was found with the activities
undertaken at school, a linear trend is revealed, with the higher achievement
being associated with participation in a greater number of activities. Tests of
significance supported the finding about this relationship (Wernert et al. 2009:
Chapter 7). In year 10 each additional activity beyond the first one is associated
with a significant increase in achievement, and at year 6 the trend is slightly
less clear over the full range of steps.

Figure 8: Mean scores on the C&C scale by number of CCE-related out-of-school


activities participated in.

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Insights from formal testing of civics and citizenship learning in Australia

COMBINED EFFECT ON CIVICS AND CITIZENSHIP ACHIEVEMENT OF


BACKGROUND AND PARTICIPATION VARIABLES
Figure 5 showed the influence of demographic background variables on year-
10 student achievement, explaining 13.2% of the variance in achievement.
Further analysis was conducted on the variables relating to participation in
C&C activities, in and out of school: the findings for which were shown in
figure 8. A second regression analysis resulted in an explanatory model to anal-
yse relationships including both the background and activities variables. When
taken together these variables were found to explain 23.6 % of the total vari-
ance in performance. This increase of 10.4% in explanatory power indicates
that participation in civics and citizenship activities has a substantial influence
on achievement, over and above the influence of background characteristics.
Figure 9 shows the percentage of variance explained by each of the variables
found to have had a significant influence on student performance on the CCE
literacy scale.
Comparison of this figure with figure 5 will show that in this second model,
the explanatory power of parental occupation has been reduced from the 8.8%
in the first model to 5.4%. This indicates that some of the influence of parental
occupation may be due to differences in rates of participation in CCE activities,
according to level of parental occupation. Correspondingly, the joint variance
(that is the explained variance due to interaction between the explanatory
variables) has grown from 1.1% to 5.5%.
Additionally, more detailed analysis of individual variables indicated that
participation in school governance activities accounted for 3.7% of the total
variance. Of the out-of-school activities, the strongest explanatory power (hav-
ing a unique significant effect of 2%) resided with the frequency of ‘talking
about politics and social issues with my family’. Analysis found that the net
difference between a year 10 student who never, or hardly-ever, engaged in
these discussions and one who did so more than three times a week was over
60 points on the CCE scale. Discussions with peers outside school had less
effect but were also reportedly fewer. Programming discussions by students

Figure 9: Disaggregation of variance and explained variance in student performance


by student background and C&C participation variables.

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Suzanne Mellor

about politics and social issues is a strategy that schools could so readily adopt,
and these findings indicate it may have a powerful effect on learning. It was
also found that having voted for class representatives added about eighteen
points to the achievement score, and feeling that one had contributed to school
decision-making added about fifteen points to the achievement score on the
C&C scale.
Finally, a general comment about the pattern of the influence can be made.
The effect of all these variables, whether large or small, is that they are com-
pounding in their influence (the joint effect of such activities is greater than the
sum of the individual effects of each of them). The ramifications of this finding,
for students and schools, are considerable.

DISCUSSION OF THE FINDINGS


The first point is a reminder that an assessment programme like the NAP-
CC provides a snapshot of student achievement in CCE and an independent
evaluation of implementation levels. The NAP-CC reports indicate that, despite
high levels of government and public support for the teaching and learning of
C&C over several years, learning outcomes are poor and implementation is
variable and possibly weak. There is a need for a different approach by schools,
if the achievement levels are to be raised.
The second point is a reminder to policymakers that, demonstrably, the
implementation of assessment regimes alone will not result in improving
teaching and learning outcomes. The levels of achievement revealed by this
assessment programme certainly indicate that unless national assessment is
‘high stakes’ (which manifestly the NAP-CC was not, as it did not require
accountability because it did not report on individual students and schools)
then other incentives and support need to be provided before schools will seri-
ously implement change, regardless of how important they believe an initiative
to be. Assessment of this kind does not work as a ‘policy-pusher’.
The third discussion point relates to what import the findings might have
for schools in the Australian setting or for schools in other jurisdictions wanting
to support the teaching and learning of CCE in primary and secondary schools.
Due to the Australian education jurisdictions’ view that all their schools
were implementing the CCE curriculum frameworks, it was not possible to
question schools on their curriculum provision (either by a separate school
survey or by asking students some basic questions about what CCE-related
curriculum they had experienced). So the effect of formal teaching and learn-
ing on C&C achievement could not be examined. Therefore we are reduced
to examining the effect of indirect learning. In its baldest form, the findings
indicate that even if schools do not provide students with a curriculum which
enables them to formally learn about the substance of civics (as in KPM 1) and
citizenship (as in KPM 2), their students, if provided with opportunities to par-
ticipate in school governance and C&C-related activities in school, are able to
‘get a grip’ on much of what is being assessed in the NAP-CC programme.
The corollary of this finding is that schools can make a big or small dif-
ference, depending on the way such activities are administered, which in turn
reflects the value the school places on student participation in school decision-
making. To engage students in such an approach can be adopted regardless
of the capacity or willingness of the school to provide formal curriculum in
civics and citizenship. Figure 7 suggested that schools where the whole student
cohort on average did better than the national average were commonly those

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Insights from formal testing of civics and citizenship learning in Australia

which offered their students opportunities to participate, and that such activi-
ties provide an additional effect on achievement. So schools can choose how to
deliver C&C learning outcomes – there are more options than just curriculum
(though to do both would seem to be the best option).
As the 2007 report stated:

If schools do not wish to provide a detailed or conventional civics and


citizenship curriculum to all their students, thereby adding to the stu-
dents’ civic knowledge, this report’s findings indicate that worthwhile
gains will come from a governance model which allows decision-making
by students in the school.
(MCCECDYA 2009a: 109)

The fourth discussion point relates to social justice, and the rights of citizens
to know their rights and obligations so that they can become more active and
engaged in their world. These findings crystallize the ways in which schools
can give voice to their constituents, to empower them to seek to clarify their
identities and to learn how to make a difference for themselves and for others,
especially if the world does not seem to be their oyster. Schools are not able to
have an impact on parental occupation, though there is an argument that they
have a social justice obligation to compensate for the demonstrated low levels
of interest in/ knowledge of C&C – much as they do for improving general
literacy levels of students from homes where such literacy levels are not high. If
it is agreed, by policymakers and the general public, that creating ‘good citizens’
is a key purpose of schools, these findings indicate that the way forward is not
obscure. Wyn asks the relevant questions and develops this argument about the
purpose of schooling in such a way as it can be discussed by all practitioners and
be implemented by any education jurisdiction (Wyn 2009). All it needs is will.
The fifth discussion point relates to the ways in which national assessment
can provide much more than raw achievement data. If the right questions
are asked, through instruments additional to the testing, they can provide a
wealth of information on much more than simply the achievement data which
ostensibly was the primary purpose of the assessment exercise. With skilled
analysis, researchers can provide insights into educational context and social
background and information on how schools are managed, the values they
aspire to, and the roles they allow all their constituents. They enable informed
hypotheses to be developed about how some schools are able to activate partic-
ipative values in the life of their community, whilst others seem not to be able
to do so. All such data can be used to good effect by those seeking productive
change in student learning.
Sixthly, programmes such as this one also enable a critique to be developed
by schools and jurisdictions, on the basis of the school reports they receive as
part of the assessment feedback they receive. There is (or there can be) a lot
more to national assessment than initially meets the eye (especially the eye
of detractors of such programmes). One beneficial element of the NAP-CC,
mentioned only in passing in this article, which feeds directly into the pedagogy
of CCE, are the School Release Materials (MCEECDYA 2009b). These papers and
documents relate to the AD, the test items and their marking score guides, and
professional development programmes, and were prepared for school leaders
and practitioners. These NAP-CC web links relate expressly to the testing as
experienced by all schools.

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Suzanne Mellor

In conclusion, the NAP-CC programme and the national reports show


how schools which wish to can inspire their students to be active citizens,
by providing them with opportunities to learn and practise civic and citizen-
ship competencies. The examples of such opportunities were all very ordinary,
and their implementation self-evidently required no great rearranging to a
schools programme and management. But they did require a school to think
that giving their students voice and opportunities to practice civic competen-
cies was important. These findings indicate that certain pedagogies and whole
school governance structures can provide young people with real opportuni-
ties to learn more effective participation in their communities. The best news is
that such goals can be achieved, relatively easily; that such school-based pro-
grammes will make a difference to the lives of their students. It is not often
researchers can be so bold in their conclusions!

REFERENCES
Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR)
(2004), Whole School Approach Professional Development Activity
(ACER), Canberra: DEEWR, http://www.civicsandcitizenship.edu.au/cce/
professional_learning,9013.html. Accessed 15 October 2009.
Erebus Consulting Partners (2003), Evaluation of the Discovering Democracy
Program 2000–2003, Canberra: Quality Schooling Branch, Department of
Education, Science and Training, http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/school_
education/publications_resources/profiles/archives/evaluation_discovering_
democracy.htm. Accessed 15 October 2009.
Holdsworth, R. and Mellor, S. (2004), Discovering Democracy in Action: Imple-
menting the Program, Victoria: Department of Education and Training,
http://www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/edulibrary/public/teachlearn/student/
discoveringdemocracy.pdf. Accessed 25 January 2010.
Mellor, S., Kennedy, K. and Greenwood, L. (2002), Citizenship and democ-
racy: Australian students’ knowledge and beliefs – The IEA Civic Education
Study of Australian Fourteen Year Olds, Melbourne: Australian Council for
Educational Research.
Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs
(MCEETYA) (1999), The Adelaide Declaration on National Goals for Schooling
in the Twenty-first century, Melbourne: MCEETYA, http://www.mceecdya.
edu.au/mceecdya/adelaide_declaration_1999_text,28298.html. Accessed 25
January 2010.
Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs
(MCEETYA) (2000–2006), National Reports on Schooling, Melbourne:
MCEETYA, http://www.mceecdya.edu.au/mceecdya/anr/. Accessed 25 Jan-
uary 2010.
Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs
(MCEETYA) (2006a), National Assessment Program – Civics and Citizenship
Years 6 & 10 Report 2004, Melbourne: MCEETYA, http://www.mceecdya.
edu.au/mceecdya/nap_cc_2004_years_6_and_10_report,17149.html.
Accessed 25 January 2010.
Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs
(MCEETYA) (2006b), National Statements of Learning – Civics and Citizenship,
Melbourne: MCEETYA, http://www.mceecdya.edu.au/verve/_resources/
SOL_Civics_Copyright_update2008.pdf. Accessed 25 January 2010.

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Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth


Affairs (MCEECDYA) (2009a), National Assessment Program – Civics and
Citizenship Years 6 and 10 Report, Canberra: MCEECDYA, http://www.
mceecdya.edu.au/mceecdya/nap_civics_and_citizenship_2007_yrs6_and_
10_report,26602.html. Accessed 25 January 2010.
Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and
Youth Affairs (MCEECDYA) (2009b), National Assessment Program –
Civics and Citizenship-School Release Materials, Canberra: MCEECDYA,
http://www.mceecdya.edu.au/verve/_resources/FINAL_Yr6_SRM_NAPCC_
Feb09.pdf and http://www.mceecdya.edu.au/verve/_resources/FINAL_
Yr10_SRM_NAPCC_Feb09.pdf. Accessed 15 October 2009.
Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2001),
Knowledge and Skills for Life: First Results from the OECD Program for Interna-
tional Student Assessment (PISA) 2000, http://www.pisa.oecd.org/document/
46/0,3343,en_32252351_32236159_33688686_1_1_1_1,00.html. Accessed
15 October 2009.
Wernert, N., Gebhardt E. and Schulz, W. (2009), National Assessment Program –
Civics and Citizenship Year 6 and Year 10 Technical Report 2007, Melbourne:
Australian Council for Educational Research, http://www.mceecdya.
edu.au/verve/_resources/NAP_CC_2007_Technical_Report.pdf. Accessed
15 October 2009.
Wyn, J. (2009), Touching the Future: Building skills for life and work, AER55,
Melbourne: ACER Press, http://research.acer.edu.au/aer/9/. Accessed 25
January 2010.

SUGGESTED CITATION
Mellor, S. (2010), ‘Insights from formal testing of civics and citizenship
learning in Australia’ Citizenship Teaching and Learning 6: 1, pp. 25–42, doi:
10.1386/ctl.6.1.25_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Suzanne Mellor, a senior research fellow at the Australian Council for Educa-
tional Research since 1990, has worked on many policy and survey research
projects, some of them evaluative of education policy and programme imple-
mentation. She has a practitioner background, having taught in secondary and
tertiary institutions for over twenty years, coordinated curriculum writing for
accrediting bodies, devised a wide range of professional development activities
for teachers, and written text books for many levels and in a range of method-
ologies. In 2002 she was joint-researcher for the World Bank project ‘Promoting
Social Tolerance and Cohesion Through Education’ in the South Pacific. She
project-managed the national Australian component of the IEA ‘Civics Edu-
cation Study’ 1995–2002, and prepared the national report. In 2000–3 she
conducted the evaluation of the Victorian ‘Discovering Democracy Professional
Development Programme’, resulting in Discovering Democracy in Action: Imple-
menting the Programme (Department of Education and Training 2004). From
2003–2009 she project-managed the national sample assessment in CCE of
year 6 and 10 students in Australian schools, for MCEETYA. She is Series
Editor for ACER’s major research journal: Australian Education Review and
co-authored AER 47: The Case for Change: A review of contemporary research

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Suzanne Mellor

on Indigenous education outcomes, (see http://research.acer.edu.au/aer/7/) first


published in 2004.
Contact:
Suzanne Mellor, Australian Council for Educational Research, 19 Prospect Hill
Rd, Camberwell, VIC, Australia 3124.
E-mail: mellor@acer.edu.au

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CTL 6 (1) pp. 43–60 © Intellect Ltd 2010

Citizenship Teaching and Learning


Volume 6 Number 1
© Intellect Ltd 2010. Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/ctl.6.1.43_1

ALISTAIR ROSS
London Metropolitan University
MELINDA DOOLY
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Young people’s intentions


about their political activity

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
We discuss some implications for citizenship education, based on a survey of young youth
people in four European countries in which they were asked how they think they will political activity
act politically when they are adult. The empirical sections of the article are based on a political intentions
survey of 2,400 students aged between 11–17 in 2008–2009 in Poland, Spain, Turkey active citizenship
and England. This study is discussed within the broader context of a widespread con- apathy
cern about a so-called ‘democratic deficit’, and in particular about the political apathy participation
of youth. We suggest that young people appear to intend to act in very similar ways as
adults do. We raise questions about expectations of political activity, especially con-
cerning particular kinds of political behaviour, about young people’s own intentions,
and about what might be an appropriate educational response to these intentions.

INTRODUCTION
This article presents some of the results from a two-year, four-country study1 of 1 The project was a
young people’s current political engagement as well as their outlook on their European Science
Foundation ECRP
political behaviour in the future (Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz, Zalewska and Ross programme (06 ECRP
2010). From our analysis, we suggest that children and young people do impli- FP007) that linked
grants from the Polish
cate themselves in political behaviour – an argument that stands in contrast Ministry of Science
to frequent narratives suggesting that indifference to political issues is com- and Higher Education
monplace among youth. We interrogate these depictions of young people and (Grant ESF/84/2006),

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Alistair Ross and Melinda Dooly

the Spanish propose that their particular kinds of political behaviour should serve as a point
Inter-ministerial
Committee on Science of departure for appropriate educational response to citizenship education.
and Technology (CICYT) We begin by reviewing some current discussions about the meaning of
(Grant SEJ2007-
29191-E), the Turkish
political participation and action, and suggestions that young people are
Scientific and increasingly cynical about, and alienated from, ‘the political’. We argue that
Technological Research there is a need to review the traditional view of what constitutes the political,
Council of Turkey
(TUBITAK) (Grant and new social movements may better help us explain different kinds of civic
107KT66) and the British engagement. Many of the young people in our sample indicate that they have
Academy (Small Grants a lively and intelligent engagement with contemporary politics, and that they
Award SG 49353). The
project teams consisted intend to connect with a range of political processes in the future. We conclude
of (Poland) University of that predictions of a coming ‘death of politics’ are premature: political action,
Warmia and Mazury,
Olsztyn (Dr Beata
construed as a broad spectrum, will most likely form part of these young peo-
Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz, ple’s adult lives, and citizenship-education programmes need to address the
PI, and Wojciech agenda being set out by young people.
Siegien) and Warsaw
School of Social Sciences
and Humanities (PI,
Professor Anna
Zalewska and Agnieszka THE CONTEXT: DIFFERENT READINGS AND CONCEPTIONS OF
Bojanowska); (Spain)
Autonomous University ‘POLITICAL ACTIVITY’
of Barcelona (PI, Melinda
Dooly, Maria Villanueva,
There is no shortage of concerns about the decline in political participation.
Claudia Vallejo, Esther A considerable literature has developed on ‘the democratic deficit’ across the
Collados and Montserrat globe (for example Moravsci 2004; Hirschhorn 2006). There are particular con-
Oller) and University of
Cordoba (PI, Dr Carmen cerns in the European Union, where the European vote is often lower than the
Tabernero and Dr Elena national election vote (Avbelj 2005; Mitchell 2005). It is claimed that the per-
Briones Pérez) and centage of young people voting in national elections is in decline (IDEA 2006),
University Pompeu
Fabra (Dr Antoni Luna); and – even more so – in elections for the European Parliament (López Pintow
(Turkey) Istanbul and Gratschew 2004; EurActive 2009).
University (PI, Dr Nilüfer
Pembecioglu, Nadi Güler
Examining youth apathy across Europe, Forbrig points out that ‘[. . .] many
Ilkay Kanik, Burcu lament a dramatic decline in the political involvement of younger generations,
Akkay, Ece Kayrak, and decreasing levels of youth participation in elections, political parties and
Cemal Uzunoglu and
Gökçen Ardiç) and traditional social organisations are seen to provide ample evidence of this’
Eskisehir Anadolu (Forbrig 2005: 7).
University (PI, Dr Erol Responses of this nature have been reported from the four countries that
Nezih Orhon) and (UK)
London Metropolitan are the focus of this study. In Poland, Horowitz identifies ‘general concerns that
University, Institute for young people in these post-communist nations may grow up to be unsupport-
Policy Studies in
Education (PI, Professor
ive of democratic institutions or to be citizens who do not participate in politics’
Alistair Ross, Dr Kim (Horowitz 2005: 83). Oriza’s study of Spanish voting interest noted that in 1981
Allen, Sarah Minty and 33% of young people aged 15–24 professed to have a substantial interest in
Sumi Hollingworth) and
University of Exeter, politics, but by 1994 this proportion had declined to just 20% (Oriza 1996: 262):
School of Education (PI, this decline was also noted by Serrano et al. (1997).
Professor Cathie Holden Likewise, in Turkey, youth’s interest in politics is compared unfavourably
and Harriet Jones). The
project is largely reported to that shown by earlier generations. ‘Post-1980 Turkish youth are commonly
in Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz, seen as apolitical consumers of a global market [. . .] All the young people inter-
Zalewska and Ross 2010.
viewed stated that they are not really interested in politics and they do not
trust political parties and political leaders’ (Lüküslü 2005: 33, 34). These con-
cerns are paralleled in the United Kingdom. Griffin identifies the ‘widespread
concern amongst academic researchers, policymakers, youth workers, educa-
tors and elected politicians over the levels of apparent political disaffection and
apathy amongst young people [. . .] (Griffin 2005: 145).
This perceived decline in political and social participation noted above
has become of substantial concern and the subject of extensive media and
political comment (Norris 2002; Lister and Pia 2008). It is also of interest to

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Young people’s intentions about their political activity

educationalists, because the fundamentals of how individuals interact with


social organizations begins in childhood and adolescence, and thus in the years
of schooling. This seems to beg the question: what do we know of young peo-
ple’s social participation, and how might schooling contribute to the processes
of their social learning and activity? The information that we have on who
votes in elections is not sufficiently detailed to really ascertain whether it is
younger voters in particular who have become less inclined to vote. There may
be generational changes, or it may simply be that younger people have always
participated in elections to a lower extent than older people.
The foregoing claims of youth political apathy are predicated on particular
forms and patterns of political participation; principally the traditional markers
of political involvement in post-1945 western states. It can be argued that such
a ‘traditional’ political activity as voting is not the only possible way to partic-
ipate, and indeed is rooted in an outdated concept of what constitutes a civic
culture, i.e., something that simply requires most people to have a fairly irreg-
ular and passive participation in the political sphere, leaving a small political
elite to undertake more regular and effective activity.
Much commentary on ‘the democratic deficit’ is rooted in a particular form
of civic culture, in which most citizens were required (and expected) to qui-
etly endorse the political system, making occasional selections between parties
that put forward broadly similar slates of policies. This, it might be argued, was
related to the international climate of the cold-war years. The classic exposition
of such a civic culture was made by Almond and Verba (1965), who posited
the theory of a ‘passive culture’ in which most citizens accept existing political
systems and structures, and a few are more actively involved in political roles.
Perhaps this was a sufficient level of political activism in the period from 1945
to 1990, particularly as the ruling elite saw itself as engaged in international
cold-war confrontation.
Norris (2002) argues that such forms of political and social engagement are
being replaced. Using Lasswell’s definition of politics as ‘who gets what, when
and where’ (Lasswell 1936), Norris suggests that:

Political participation is evolving in terms of the ‘who’ (the agencies and


the collective organizations), ‘what’ (the repertoires of actions commonly
used for political expression) and ‘where’ (the targets that participants
seek to influence). (Norris 2002: 4)

Plausibly, traditional electoral participation and political party membership is


being replaced by informal political and social participation through demon-
strations, political activism around single issues, petitions and boycotts, and
perhaps by greater participation at the micro level. Lister and Pia (2008) sug-
gest that in many European countries there has been an increase in the number
of people who profess to have an interest in politics.

The World Values Survey [. . .] provides evidence that civic participation


is increasing, with membership of and participation in civic organiza-
tions both seeing significant increases (particularly so for environmental
and global justice issues). It seems that the claim that there has not
been a general decline in citizen’s political activity has some considerable
purchase.
(Lister and Pia 2008: 93)

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Alistair Ross and Melinda Dooly

They do add that these activities remain minority pursuits, and that taking part
in elections remains more popular. Nevertheless, voting participation has grad-
ually declined over the past thirty years, and informal political activism has
risen sharply over the same period. European youth appear to be progressively
disenchanted with politics while exercising their political participation in ways
that differ from traditional electoral participation.
Why might this be so? The three major competing theories (the socio-
economic resources model, the rational choice theory and the social capital
theory) as to why individuals do (or do not) participate in the social arena all
appear to have limitations.
The socio-economic resources model (Verba and Nie 1972) argues that indi-
viduals with better material resources, education and time are more likely to
participate – it is the better educated and better off who vote (and stand for
election, and participate in informal political activities). But diachronic stud-
ies point out that in European societies overall educational levels and levels
of material wealth have greatly increased, while voter participation rates have
fallen (Pattie et al. 2003; 2004).
Rational choice theory suggests that participation occurs when benefits out-
weigh costs. It has been suggested that the citizen is better off not voting,
because the chance that an individual vote will have any impact on the out-
come is virtually zero (Downs 1957). The rational decision is not to participate
in any collective activities, but to freeride (Olson 1971). Yet this is not the case:
many people (still) behave ‘irrationally’ and vote; among many political sci-
entists, this has been termed the paradox of participation (Green and Shapiro
1994; Mansbridge 1990).
Social capital theory proposes that if individuals participate in social
groups – (e.g. associations) – then social capital in the form of cooperation, trust
and reciprocal behaviours develops (Putnam 1993; 2000). Higher levels of social
capital lead to higher levels of participation, which in turn lead to higher levels
of social capital. But how (and why) should this be so? One critic argued ‘Can
we imagine rates of voter participation and organized public activity sharply
improving if people heed the call to hold more picnics and songfests?’ (Skocpol
2003: 57).
Some analysts have identified what are termed ‘new social movements’
emerging from the mid-1960s onwards. Such movements – which focus on
environmental issues, feminism and human rights – have resisted incorpora-
tion into traditional political parties based on social class or trade unionism
(Pichardo 1997).
On the other hand, many in the citizenship education movement, and oth-
ers, would also aspire to educational processes that empower active citizens –
individuals who will critically engage with, and seek to affect the course of,
social events. The distinction between active and passive citizenship has been
particularly debated over the past five to six years (Ireland et al. 2006; Nelson
and Kerr 2006).
Torney-Purta et al. (2004) begin to distinguish types of participation when
they suggest that the type of engagement with political and social issues
may be related to the different agents of influence, distinguishing between
‘conventional political participation’ and ‘community participation’ such as
volunteer work, charity work and so forth. Others have noted these trends
more vigorously. In Spain, for example, Blanch (2005) describes young people’s
participation in the Galician Nunca Mais (Never Again) activism against eco-
logically disastrous oil spillages on the coastline. ‘The Nunca Mais movement

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was generally supported by a broad spectrum of citizens spanning much of the


centre-left, and although it gradually became an umbrella for anti-government
slogans, its status remained that of a movement’ (Blanch 2005: 66).
He concludes new forms of participation are not conventional, and that

youth are not disinterested in politics in a broad sense, and periodically


become actively involved in movements, volunteering and social activ-
ity. Even though social-capital indicators such as levels of association,
interpersonal trust and political confidence have not increased in Spain,
unconventional participation levels suggest that youth are not politically
alienated.
(Blanch 2005: 66)

Similarly, Siurala (2000) tries to distinguish old and new forms of political
participation, using the terms ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’. Thus the modern
is ‘representative participation and direct participation with all their variants,
such as NGO-based structures, co-management, youth parliaments, school
councils, youth hearings, demonstrations’, while postmodern participation is
‘various types of expressive, emotional, aesthetic, casual, virtual and digital
participation’ (Siurala 2000: 1).
In the UK, young people interviewed by Eden and Roker (2002) were in
favour of citizenship education in British schools on condition that it could
demonstrate relevance to their lives and local communities. The respondents
were not committed to political parties, and, while distrusting politicians, gen-
erally intended to vote. What they wanted discussed in schools were national
politics and voting, racism, sex education and local issues (Griffin 2005: 151).
Other studies found young people wanting discussion on domestic violence,
racism, animal rights and other environmental issues (O’Toole et al. 2003; Henn
et al. 2002).
Active citizenship is, very broadly, about doing things, while passive cit-
izenship is generally seen as related simply to status, to the act of being.
The delineation between the two is under debate (Ireland et al 2006; Nelson
and Kerr 2006), and though there is no international consensus, the model
suggested by Kennedy (2006) may be helpful. He distinguishes four forms
or levels of activity in citizenship. The first level – the level at which those
concerned with the democratic deficit would have us act – is engaging in
voting, belonging to a political party, and standing for office. The second
form of activity lies in social movements, in being involved with voluntary
activities; it is essentially conformist and ameliorative in nature, intending to
repair rather than to address causes. The third form consists of action for
social change: the individual is involved in activities that aim to change polit-
ical and social policies (ranging from letter writing and signing petitions to
working with pressure groups or participating in demonstrations and pressure
groups). Kennedy’s fourth active form is of enterprise citizenship, in which
the individual engages in such self-regulating activities as achieving financial
independence, becoming a self-directed learner, being a problem solver and
developing entrepreneurial ideas.
These distinctions are not necessarily clear-cut, and Nelson and Kerr’s anal-
ysis (2006) demonstrates strong cultural variations in what might be considered
as appropriate ‘active’ citizenship. In some countries many of the attributes
characterized as passive and concerned with accepting status are elements of
active citizenship that are to be encouraged and developed. This may depend

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Alistair Ross and Melinda Dooly

on the particular historical development and configuration of the state: in some


countries (perhaps particularly in Europe) there is a greater perception that cit-
izenship and national identity may now be seen as social constructs, and that
active citizenship may embrace a diverse range of relevant political scenarios in
which to be a ‘politically active citizen’.
Researchers and theorists must consider the way in which ‘political engage-
ment’ is understood. While our research indicates a certain level of scepticism
towards political leaders’ intentions, this does not necessarily cover non-
traditional areas of youth activity and attitudes, in particular online activities
and online communities. While we have quoted assertions that young citizens
have become disengaged and apathetic, there is also evidence to suggest that
they may be engaging in their own ways – with issues that they consider as
relevant to their everyday lives.

METHODS
The work we report here was part of a large study of about 2,800 young people:
700 each in Poland, Spain, Turkey and the UK, and divided between one large
urban context, and one small town or rural locality. In each, we selected four
classes (between 100 to 120 pupils) aged 11–12, 13–14 and 17–18. The field-
work was carried out in 2008–2009. Parental and pupil agreement was obtained
for those under 16 (pupil agreement alone for the older pupils). All data was
made anonymous, including the identities of the participating schools. Pupils
were asked to respond to a multi-part questionnaire that asked about a range
of related topics: their hopes and fears for the future (personal, local, and glob-
ally), with particular reference to socio-political topics (violence and conflict,
economic futures, health, tolerance and diversity); how likely it was that they
would act in particular ways in the future – by voting, for example, or by taking
part in pressure group or NGO activities.
We asked about what kinds of political activities they might engage in
when they were adult. They were offered five different kinds of activity.
Three of these related to easily understandable traditional political activities,
voting, standing for office, and joining a political party. One was specifi-
cally about non-traditional political activity, campaigning or working with a
non-governmental organization. Our fifth activity potentially covered both
traditional and non-traditional activity: ‘talking about politics with friends’.
For each of these they could indicate ‘definite’, ‘possible’, ‘not sure’ or ‘no’.
Responses were entered into an SPSS database and analysed. A chi-squared
test was used to determine levels of confidence, and all data reported here
is significant at the 95 per cent level or greater (p<0.05). The total numbers
responding varied slightly from question to question, but were between 2,302
and 2,344. Following the questionnaires, smaller groups of students were asked
to participate in focus groups to discuss their answers in more detail.

THE FINDINGS OF OUR STUDY


Our research shows that many young people intend to participate on politi-
cal issues, in a variety of ways, both traditional and non-traditional. They hold
strong, articulated opinions on issues which affect their own lives, although
they may demonstrate little patience with political debate, in part because they
feel that politicians follow their own course, independently from people’s lives.
While some may feel that there is little, if anything, to do to change matters,

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others do not. As has been pointed out, it should not be assumed that children
and youth are apathetic. Their lack of participation in traditional political pro-
cesses may be a way of expressing that dissatisfaction and frustration, or they
may be turning to non-traditional means of political and social engagement.
Table 1 shows that over the entire sample 82% of students were ‘definite’
or ‘possible’ future voters, 44.4% thought that they would talk about politics
with friends, 34.2% thought they might join some form of campaigning orga-
nization, 17.5% thought that they might stand for election, and 16.5% thought
they might join a political party.
Only 2.6% of all respondents said that they did not expect to do any of
these, so the great majority of these pupils at least considered that they might
participate in at least one way; and only 7.3% responded ‘unsure’ or ‘no’ to all
five options. Conversely, only 1.6% said that they expected to participate in all
of the five suggested ways.
These overall figures suggest that the great majority of these students con-
sider it possible that they will be ‘politically active’ in some way. However,
within these overall figures there is a considerable degree of variation as to who
intends to participate, depending on how participation is defined. In terms of
overall intention, it should be noted that Turkish young people showed a sig-
nificantly greater propensity to see themselves as politically active in the future.
This is seen more clearly as we analyse each political activity in turn.

Voting in elections
Looking first at the most popular intended political action, participating in elec-
tions, there is a very clear overall difference between Turkey and the UK. Turkish
students are more likely to project themselves as future voters and UK students
least likely, both by statistically significant margins.
This apparent level of political activity in the UK sample is, however, better
understood when looking at the variations in response by age. The 11-year-olds

%
Definite
and
Definite Possible Unsure No N possible

Voting in
elections 55.8 26.2 10.2 7.6 2,344 82.0
Talking about
politics with
friends 16.9 27.5 27.8 27.2 2,320 44.4
Joining a
campaign or an
NGO 11.5 22.7 34.2 31.2 2,320 34.2
Trying to be
elected 7.6 9.9 24.1 58.2 2,313 17.5
Joining a political
party 6.5 10.0 25.1 57.9 2,302 16.5

Table 1: Responses to ‘When you are an adult, which of the following things do you
think you might do?’

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Country

Poland Turkey Spain UK All

Definitely 56% 74% 58% 39% 56%


Possibly 30% 11% 27% 34% 26%
Not sure 8% 7% 11% 14% 10%
No 6% 8% 5% 12% 8%

Table 2: Responses to the question ‘When you’re an adult how likely is it that you
will be voting in elections?’

are much less likely to vote than those of the same age in the other countries,
and at age 17 the intention to definitely or possibly vote is between 89–91% in
all four countries. Figure 1 shows these changes in detail. Why are UK 11-year-
olds so much less likely to think that they will vote than their peers in the other
countries? And what happens between the ages of 11 and 14 that so increases
their propensity to vote?
These results showed very little variation by gender, and there were no
consistent gendered patterns by country or by age.

Trying to be elected
The second potential activity (generally far less popular) was to stand for elec-
tion. Again, the proportion of Turkish students who are either definitely or
possibly considering standing is significantly higher than in the other countries.
While voting intentions appear to increase with age, the intention to possi-
bly stand for election generally seems to decrease with students’ age. This may
reflect a possible increase in political realism linked to age, as older students

100

90
Percentage

80

Poland
70 Turkey
Spain
UK
60
Average

50
11 14 17
Age

Figure 1: Changes in propensity to vote in elections (definite and possible) by age


and country.
Note: scale starts at 50%.

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Young people’s intentions about their political activity

Country

Poland Turkey Spain UK All

Definitely 5.2% 20.8% 3.7% 3.9% 7.6%


Possibly 5.9% 14.8% 7.8% 12.5% 9.9%
Not sure 26.3% 29.5% 19.3% 22.9% 24.1%
No 62.6% 34.9% 69.2% 59.1% 58.0%
N 615 461 643 594 2313

Table 3: Responses to the question ‘When you’re an adult how likely is it that you
will stand for election?’

Country

Age Poland Turkey Spain UK All

10–12 year olds Definitely 6% 24% 4% 4% 10%


Possibly 5% 20% 12% 14% 13%
Not sure 32% 31% 25% 28% 29%
No 56% 25% 59% 53% 47%
13–15 year olds Definitely 6% 12% 5% 4% 6%
Possibly 6% 7% 7% 12% 8%
Not sure 23% 29% 20% 23% 23%
No 65% 52% 69% 57% 62%
16–18 year olds Definitely 4% 25% 2% 3% 6%
Possibly 6% 10% 5% 10% 8%
Not sure 24% 25% 14% 15% 19%
No 66% 39% 79% 69% 67%

Table 4: Respondents’ intentions to stand for election, by country and age.

recognize alternative (or more obvious) ways of taking part in the political pro-
cess. Table 4 shows the data in full, and Figure 2 shows the declining numbers
who are definitely or possibly intending to stand, and the rising numbers of
those who say they do not intend to stand for election.
Males were more likely than females to consider running for office, in each
country, and in each age group (only Polish 17-year-old females were slightly
more likely to seek election than boys).

Talking about politics with friends


Talking about politics with friends was the second most likely predicted activity
in the overall sample. While the Turkish students again seem most predisposed
to this activity, the Spanish students seem less likely to engage in this activity.
However, there are again variations by age, and this, like voting, is an
activity that seems to be considered more probable as students grow older.
This activity is also gendered, though to a much lesser extent than standing
for election. Males are more likely to say that they will do this, and this generally
increases with age.

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-60
60 -40
40 -20
20 0 20 40 60 80

11

Poland 14

17

11

14
Turkey
17

11

14
Spain
17

11

14
UK 17

11

14

Average 17

Possible Definite Will not stand for election

Figure 2: Changes in propensity to stand for election by age and country.

Country

Poland Turkey Spain UK Total

Definitely 14.4% 32.9% 10.5% 13.9% 16.9%


Possibly 29.2% 27.4% 25.0% 28.7% 27.5%
Not sure 28.4% 27.8% 29.4% 25.7% 27.8%
No 28.0% 12.0% 35.1% 30.0% 27.2%
N 617 468 639 596 2320

Table 5: Responses to the question ‘When you’re an adult how likely is it that you
will talk with friends about politics?’

Joining a campaign or an NGO


Taking part in campaigning groups was seen as a potential activity by about
a third of the whole sample. This figure is significantly raised by the Turkish
students’ high levels of positive responses: 58% were definitely or possibly
intending to take part in campaigning activity. In comparison, only 17% of
Polish students intended this. The Spanish and the UK students were more
likely to say that this was a possibility, rather than something that they would
definitely do.
There were variations by age in the responses: broadly, in Turkey, Spain
and Poland older students were less likely to participate, while in the UK
the intention to participate increased with age. At the same time, qualitative

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Young people’s intentions about their political activity

70
-70 60
-60 50
-50 40
-40 30
-30 20
-20 10
-10 0

11
Poland
14
17

11
Turkey 14
17

11
Spain 14
17

11

UK 14
17

11
14
Average
17

Possible Definite

Figure 3: Changes in likelihood of talking with friends about politics when adult, by
age and country.

Country

Poland Turkey Spain UK Total

Definitely 4.1% 30.6% 9.7% 6.2% 11.5%


Possibly 13.0% 26.9% 27.4% 24.2% 22.7%
Not sure 42.4% 22.0% 39.1% 30.1% 34.2%
No 40.6% 20.5% 23.8% 37.7% 31.2%
N 616 468 642 594 2320

Table 6: Responses to the question ‘When you’re an adult how likely is it that you
will join a campaigning group or NGO?’

responses indicated that many students intended to participate in more


‘individual’ activism (e.g. buy responsibly, work for health or environmental
improvements, etc.)

Joining a political party


Joining a political party was generally less popular than campaigning for spe-
cific issues. But there were very significant differences between countries.
Again, the Turkish students are much more enthusiastic than in any of the
other countries, but Polish students’ disaffection with political parties is clearly
evident, as it is, to a lesser extent, in Spain – in both of these countries very
substantial proportions of students said that they would not join a party.

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Alistair Ross and Melinda Dooly

70

60

50

Percentage
40

30 Poland
Turkey
Spain
20
UK
Average
10

0
11 14 17
Age

Figure 4: Changes in likelihood of joining a campaign or NGO when adult, by age


and country (percentage definite or possible).

Country

Poland Turkey Spain UK Total

Definitely 2.9% 16.5% 4.4% 4.8% 6.5%


Possibly 4.7% 14.8% 8.4% 13.5% 10.0%
Not sure 20.4% 28.4% 25.6% 26.9% 25.1%
No 71.9% 40.3% 61.6% 53.0% 57.9%
N 613 461 641 587 2302

Table 7: Responses to the question ‘When you’re an adult how likely is it that you
will join a political party?’

In both Turkey and the UK there appeared to be particular disillusionment


around joining a political party in the middle age group: as they approached
leaving school, their intentions rose. The Polish students seemed particularly
disenchanted with political parties, and the Spanish only slightly less so. It is
particularly noticeable that there are, in almost all instances, more respondents
rejecting the idea of political parties outright than there are those who think it
possible that they might join.
There were also gender differences. Males were more likely to intend to join
political parties than females, in every country.
While the rate of membership to more traditional campaigns was relatively
low, in the qualitative data and focus groups, alternative participation in activ-
ities related to today’s ‘knowledge society’ was mentioned. Their responses
indicated that they are aware of the transformative potential of new technolo-
gies as a means of participation. ‘I would participate in a “cazuela” like we did

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-40
40 -20
20 0 20 40 60 80

11
Poland 14

17

11

Turkey 14

17

11

14
Spain
17

11

14
UK
17

11

14
Average 17

Possible Definite Will not join a political party

Figure 5: Changes in intention to join a political party.

Country

Poland Turkey Spain UK Total

Males 12% 34% 16% 19% 20%


Females 5% 28% 10% 17% 15%

Table 8: Likelihood of joining a political party.

with our SMS messages in the 11-M’ (Spanish focus group of 14 year olds).
The respondent is referring to an ‘underground’ movement, begun with the
diffusion of texts messages sent by cellphones, in which Spanish youth were
urged to demonstrate on the streets of all the major cities leading up to the
2004 elections.

DISCUSSION
These responses show a number of interesting patterns. Intention to take part
in voting seems fairly consistent, and most popular, in all countries, and the
intention to do so rises as these young people approach voting age.
Far fewer young people consider standing for election, or joining a political
party: as students get older any intentions to do so generally decline. This may
be a growing sense of realism in the case of standing for election, but in terms
of joining a political party, this may also reflect growing cynicism about these
political institutions (perhaps coupled with an increasing intention to vote).
It may also indicate a growing awareness of the potential to make social and

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political changes through less conventional means, such as online campaigning


or participating in non-traditional political events.
In terms of ‘conventional’ political activity this data seem to suggest that
the coming generation of voters will not be very different from their immediate
predecessors:

• They show a propensity to vote (at similar levels that have been common
in elections in recent years).
• Most do not intend to run for office – though a small number seem intent
on considering this, and a somewhat higher proportion in Turkey.
• A small number think that they will join a political party – about 6.5%
(4.1%, if one excludes the generally more enthusiastic Turks). But this level
matches adult levels of political party membership in Europe, which has
fallen from 15% of adults in the 1960s (Mair and van Biezen 2001) to an
average of 3.7% (Lister and Pia 2008).

Informal participation is seen as a more likely form of political activity by these


young people. Talking with friends about politics is a more probable activity
than either standing for office or joining a party. This is also more likely to
be a male activity. As students grow older, they feel they will definitely talk
about politics, and are more likely to see this as a definite and possible activity.
Other informal political activity, through campaigning, is also a fairly popular
intended activity – especially with the younger and the older students. This is
significantly more likely to be a female activity. Polish students were, again, very
significantly less likely to see themselves as engaging in this.
The Turkish students were most likely to see themselves as politically
engaged, in both formal and informal politics, at almost all ages. The Polish
students were generally most disaffected from politics of all kinds, formal and
informal. Spanish students seemed more interested in informal activities – talk-
ing and campaigning – rather than working with political parties. UK students
seemed inclined to engage in both formal and informal activities, though not
nearly to the same extent as their Turkish peers.
Formal activities – standing for election and joining parties – appealed gen-
erally more to males than females. Males were also slightly more likely to see
themselves as engaging in political discussion. Females, however, were more
interested in campaigning.

CONCLUSIONS
These findings both support and challenge other studies that suggest that there
is considerable political interest amongst young people in these four countries –
though not necessarily political interest in the conventional sense of traditional
party political activity.
These young people suggest that they will behave politically in very similar
ways to current generations of adults. The majority will participate in elec-
toral activity, but party membership and standing for office will be activities
for small minorities (as they are for most adults). Taking action through cam-
paigns and campaigning organizations will be important for about a third of
these young people, and a possible activity for a further third. Approaching
half of them – 44% – will probably be involved in political discussions with
their peers; suggesting that political apathy amongst youth is chimerical.

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Young people are being politically socialized to act in ways very similar to
adults. The various distinctions between different types of active citizenship,
described earlier, are useful in distinguishing different kinds of activity, and in
identifying the propensity or otherwise of different groups to act in one way or
another: for example, in our survey males seemed somewhat more inclined that
females to participate in ‘conventional activities’, and females to be involved in
less conventional activities. Young people have always been more involved in
direct, issue-focused political action than their elders, who are more engaged
in traditional forms of activity.
These findings support Blanch’s previously cited observations on the Mun-
cia Mais (2005). In Turkey, Lüküslü reports that, despite the affectations of
consumerism, young people still ‘emphasized that they are concerned about
the problems of the country and its future, and that they are interested in what
is going on locally and globally’ (Lüküslü 2005: 34), but see the discourses of
the political realm as old fashioned ‘ossified structures that prevent youth from
expressing itself freely’ (Lüküslü 2005: 34), thus preferring to discuss matters
in spheres they see as non-political. This is challenged by our data, which
suggests Turkish youth have a relatively high propensity to become involved.
Griffin (2005) argues that in the UK, ‘once young people in Britain are invited
to discuss politics in their own terms (thereby widening the definition of poli-
tics and political participation), then there is evidence of much higher levels of
political interest and activity’ (Griffin 2005: 148).
Our findings concur with those of Forbrig (2005), who observes, despite
the negative views of many traditional observers across Europe, there are also
‘[. . .] more optimistic voices [that] stress the changing forms of youth political
participation, away from involvement in conventional democratic institutions
and towards novel patterns of youth engagement’ (Forbrig 2005: 7).

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social equality, New York, NY: Harper and Row.

SUGGESTED CITATION
Ross, A. and Dooly M. (2010), ‘Young people’s intentions about their
political activity’ Citizenship Teaching and Learning 6: 1, pp. 43–60, doi:
10.1386/ctl.6.1.43_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Alistair Ross is currently Jean Monnet ad personam Professor of Citizen-
ship Education and Emeritus Professor at London Metropolitan University. He
directed the EU Academic Network Children’s Identity and Citizenship in Edu-
cation from 1998 to 2008, and was Director of the Institute for Policy Studies in
Education from 2000 to 2009. He has particular academic interests in children’s
social and political learning, in diversity and social equity in education. His
most recent book, A European Education: Citizenship, identities and young peo-
ple (2009) is published by Trentham. He is currently making a study of young
people’s identities in the ‘borders’ of Europe.
Melinda Dooly is currently Head of Graduate Studies for the language and
literature teaching methods department, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
She is the author of various journal articles and books dealing with language

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Alistair Ross and Melinda Dooly

teacher training and citizenship education. She has been a guest teacher at uni-
versities in Europe and the USA and has participated in several international
educational projects. She is the national coordinator (Spain) of the Academic
Network Children’s Identity and Citizenship in Europe (linking over 100 uni-
versity departments in 30 countries (1998–2009). She has recently edited a book
entitled Their hopes, fears and reality: Working with children and youth for the
future (Peter Lang, 2010), based on the study discussed here.
Contact:
Alistair Ross (a.ross@londonmet.ac.uk), Institute for Policy Studies in Educa-
tion, London Metropolitan University, 166–220 Holloway Road, London N7
8DB, UK
Melinda Dooly (MelindaAnn.Dooly@uab.cat), Universitat Autónoma de
Barcelona, Facultat de Ciencies de l’Educacio, Edifici G5-108, Bellaterra
(Barcelona), E-08193, Spain

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CTL 6 (1) pp. 61–75 © Intellect Ltd 2010

Citizenship Teaching and Learning


Volume 6 Number 1
© Intellect Ltd 2010. Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/ctl.6.1.61_1

CARLA L. PECK
University of Alberta
LAURA A. THOMPSON
Acadia University
OTTILIA CHAREKA
St. Francis Xavier University
REVA JOSHEE
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto
ALAN SEARS
University of New Brunswick

From getting along to


democratic engagement:
Moving toward deep
diversity in citizenship
education

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
For much of Canada’s history, diversity has been a defining characteristic of the coun- citizenship education
try and has preoccupied and bedevilled policymakers. Policy and practice in Canada Canada
has moved from attempts to assimilate minority groups to fostering respect and appre- multiculturalism
ciation for diversity. We argue, however, that attention to diversity education remains diversity
superficial and limited. In this article we provide an overview of policy and practice in educational policy

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Carla L. Peck, Laura A. Thompson, Ottilia Chareka, Reva Joshee, and Alan Sears

education about and for diversity in Canada, make connections between that and pol-
icy and practice in citizenship education. We also review findings from research in the
area, and lay out possible directions for moving the field forward. Like other democ-
racies Canada has struggled to balance recognition and respect for diversity with
concerns about social cohesion and we believe Canada’s unique experience in this area
can provide valuable insights to researchers and practitioners in other jurisdictions.

INTRODUCTION
In 1837 the British colonies of Upper and Lower Canada were both torn apart
by rebellions. The following year Lord Durham (1839) was dispatched by the
new Queen Victoria to help sort out the mess and reported:

I expected to find a contest between a government and a people: I found


two nations warring in the bosom of a single state: I found a struggle, not
of principles, but of races; and I perceived that it would be idle to attempt
any amelioration of laws or institutions until we could first succeed in
terminating the deadly animosity that now separates the inhabitants of
Lower Canada into the hostile divisions of French and English.

Until the mid-twentieth century, policy and practice generally followed Lord
Durham’s sentiments in seeking, as much as possible, to stamp out diversity
in favour of a single, shared (English-)‘Canadian’ identity. Since World War
II, official policy has shifted first toward openness and then toward celebra-
tion of Canada’s diversity, including recognition of minority ‘nations’ within
the Canadian state (Sears 2010).
Kymlicka posits that, over the past several decades, this trend toward
greater recognition and accommodation of diversity has been common across
virtually all the western democracies. He argues that this is true in several
respects: increased autonomy for national minorities; a move away from polices
of assimilation of immigrants toward integration; and greater recognition of
the rights of indigenous peoples. Canadian policies have largely followed these
trends and have not been particularly unique. However, ‘Canada is distinctive
in having to deal with all three forms of diversity at the same time’ and ‘in the
extent to which it has not only legislated but also constitutionalized, practices of
accommodation’ (Kymlicka 2003: 374, original emphasis).
In this article we provide an overview of policy and practice in education
about and for diversity in Canada, make connections between that and policy
and practice in citizenship education, review findings from research in the area,
and lay out possible directions for moving the field forward. Like other democ-
racies Canada has struggled to balance recognition and respect for diversity
with concerns about social cohesion and we believe Canada’s unique experi-
ence in this area can provide valuable insights to researchers and practitioners
in other jurisdictions.

THE EVOLUTION OF DIVERSITY POLICIES


Contemporary factors related to globalization, including changing patterns of
migration and citizenship have created ‘a growing awareness of the multi-
ethnic nature of most contemporary nation-states and the need to account

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From getting along to democratic engagement: Moving toward deep diversity in citizenship education

for this aspect of pluralism in public policy’ (Johnson and Joshee 2007: 3). For
Canada this is not a particularly new phenomenon. As Kymlicka notes, ‘issues
of accommodating diversity have been central to Canada’s history’ (Kymlicka
2007: 39). Jaenen, for example, argues that certain conditions of Canada’s his-
torical development make it uniquely suited to pluralism. He posits four factors:
the English-French dualism, which has been ‘a fundamental characteristic of
Canadian society’ (Jaenen 1981: 81) since the Loyalist migration at the end
of the eighteenth century; the more diverse British, rather than exclusively
English, nature of early Anglophone Canada; the separation of church and
state (and relative religious liberty that has always existed in Canada); and the
fact that control over education was made a provincial, rather than a federal,
responsibility.
Joshee and Winton (2007) contend this diversity was recognized early on
in legal and constitutional structures. They note that ‘The Royal Proclamation
of 1763’ recognized aboriginal right to self-government and the ‘Québec Act
of 1774’ ensured that French language and culture would be maintained, even
though the territory of Québec had come under British control. The same ethos
is reflected in the constitutional arrangements that established the Canadian
state in 1867. ‘The founding compact of Canada’, they write, ‘implicitly recog-
nized the value of retaining a connection with one’s ancestral culture’ (Joshee
and Winton 2007: 22). These constitutional arrangements included a division
of powers between the federal and provincial governments largely established
to protect ‘la nation canadienne française’ (Morton 1993: 51) and prevent the
kind of assimilation advocated by Lord Durham.
Since 1867 constitutional reform has broadened the range of national
minorities accorded constitutional recognition and protection, and has also
embedded multiculturalism as an interpretive frame for the constitution (Kym-
licka and Norman 2000; Kymlicka 2003). For example, aboriginal rights, includ-
ing treaty rights, are affirmed in the ‘Constitution Act of 1982’. This act also
establishes English and French as the official languages of the province of New
Brunswick, largely to protect the place of the Acadian People who have a defi-
nite understanding of themselves as a national group within Canada. Central to
the act is The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms with a clause that states,
‘This Charter shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation
and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians’ (Department of
Justice 1982).
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms also has a clause that recog-
nizes and protects Canada’s official language minorities and their educational
rights to French first-language schooling (outside Québec) and to English first-
language schooling (in Québec). While section 23 of the charter provides for
a constitutional guarantee of educational rights at the federal level, Alberta
and Ontario have also introduced provincial policy documents that outline the
role and aims of francophone education in particular. In 2001, the Alberta gov-
ernment introduced a framework for French first-language education in the
province: this specifies the importance of francophone education focusing on
community belonging and pride (Alberta Learning 2001). In 2005, the Ontario
government also implemented a policy for the province’s French-language
schools and francophone community. The Ontario policy specifically mentions
that new admission policies, to take effect in January 2010, were developed
in response to the changing composition of the province’s francophone com-
munity and the need to make French-language schools ‘more welcoming’ to
French-speaking newcomers and to newcomers who speak neither French nor

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Carla L. Peck, Laura A. Thompson, Ottilia Chareka, Reva Joshee, and Alan Sears

English (Ontario Ministry of Education 2009). The Government of Canada, in


its commitment to Canada’s linguistic duality and the future of official language
minority communities, continues to target urban centres in Ontario, Alberta
and New Brunswick to attract and retain more French-speaking immigrants
(Jedwab 2002; Quell 2002).

DIVERSITY IN THE CURRICULUM


Since the nineteenth century in Canada, education has been a central institu-
tion for the implementation of policy in the area of diversity and multicultur-
alism. Joshee (2004) and others have documented shifts in educational policy
and practice related to ethnic diversity over the years, from an emphasis on
assimilation, to more contemporary efforts to promote understanding of, and
respect for, diversity (Bruno-Jofré and Aponiuk 2001; Hébert 2002).
While there is evidence of a retreat from the activist social justice curric-
ula which appeared in some jurisdictions in the 1980s and 1990s, developing
understanding of ethnic diversity is a key goal of education generally, and social
studies education in particular, across the country, and this includes schools
for Canada’s francophone minority communities (Joshee 2004; Osborne 2001;
Sears and Wright 2004). For example, Ontario guides curriculum develop-
ment in all subject areas by stating that the principles of anti-racism and
ethnocultural equity ‘should equip all students with the knowledge, skills, atti-
tudes, and behaviours needed to live and work effectively in an increasingly
diverse world, and encourage them to appreciate diversity and reject discrim-
inatory attitudes and behaviour’ (Ontario Ministry of Education and Training
1993). While this 1993 document applies to all Ontario’s schools (includ-
ing francophone schools), the more recent Aménagement linguistique policy
specifically guides francophone curriculum development in all subject areas
for French first-language schools. One of its principles states that ‘French-
language education is characterized by openness to diversity and contributes
to the development of a sense of belonging to the francophone community
of Ontario, of Canada and of the world’ (Ontario Ministry of Education 2005:
12). The Foundation for the Atlantic Provinces Canada Social Studies Curriculum,
a policy document that outlines a framework for curriculum development in
social studies across Atlantic Canada, sets overall standards for the subject area
in general and the area of diversity in particular (Atlantic Provinces Education
Foundation 1999). One foundation standard states that students should be able
to ‘demonstrate understanding of their own and others’ cultural heritage and
cultural identity’ (Atlantic Provinces Education Foundation 1999: 6). Another
states, in part, that ‘students will be expected to demonstrate an understanding
of culture, diversity, and world view, recognizing the similarities and differences
reflected in various personal, cultural, racial and ethnic perspectives’ (Atlantic
Provinces Education Foundation 1999: 12). The Alberta social studies curricu-
lum (Alberta Education 2005) also clearly identifies diversity as a central to
its educational goals. The programme rationale and philosophy reads, in part:
‘Students will have opportunities to value diversity, to recognize differences as
positive attributes and to recognize the evolving nature of individual identi-
ties’ (Alberta Education 2005: 5). The Alberta social studies programme also
aims to provide learning opportunities for francophone and non-francophone
students alike to understand both ‘the historical and contemporary realities
of francophones in Canada’ and ‘the multiethnic and intercultural makeup
of francophones in Canada’ (Atlantic Provinces Education Foundation 1999:

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From getting along to democratic engagement: Moving toward deep diversity in citizenship education

4). As Sears and his colleagues (Sears, Carke and Hughes 1999: 113) note,
this commitment to ‘the pluralist ideal’ is endemic in Canadian social studies
curricula.
An examination of curricula and standards in social studies education in
Canada reveals a clear assumed progression from knowledge of diversity,
through acceptance and respect, to justice. For most scholars and educators
in the field however, knowledge of difference is not enough: ‘justice demands
the public recognition and accommodation of diversity (Kymlicka and Opal-
ski 2001: 1). The desired end then is not only an understanding of difference,
but also willingness to adapt, to accommodate and to advocate for accommo-
dation (Joshee 2004; Varma-Joshi 2004). Kymlicka contends that diversity and
accommodation of difference is a question on the agenda of a growing number
of countries around the world. He argues, there is ‘a striking worldwide trend
regarding the diffusion and adoption of the principles and policies of multicul-
tural citizenship’ which has reached way beyond the West, to ‘even the most
remote regions of Peru, the highlands of Nepal, and the peripheries of Com-
munist China’ (Kymlicka 2004: xiii). However, Banks notes that ‘the attainment
of the balance that is needed between diversity and unity is an ongoing process
and ideal that is never fully attained’ (Kymlicka 2004: xii). A central concern
wherever cultural policy is discussed is, ‘how can we ensure that the recogni-
tion of diversity does not undermine efforts to construct or sustain common
political values, mutual trust and understanding, and solidarity across group
lines? (Kymlicka 2004: xiii).

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DIVERSITY AND CITIZENSHIP


The centrality of diversity in Canadian history and contemporary circumstances
has been a key factor in shaping policy in citizenship and citizenship education.
In Kymlicka’s words, ‘Learning how to accommodate this internal diversity,
while still maintaining a stable political order, has always been one of the main
challenges facing Canada, and remains so today’ (Kymlicka 2003: 368).
A key component of citizenship in any country is the people’s identifi-
cation with the nation, in other words, their sense of national identity. One
result of the significant diversity present in Canada has been the search to dis-
cover, or create, some sense of shared national identity. An American observer
writes, ‘National identity is the quintessential Canadian issue’. He goes on to
argue, ‘Almost alone among modern developed countries Canada has contin-
ued to debate its self-conception to the present day’ (Lipset 1990: 42). McLean
(2007: 7) documents early twentieth century attempts by federal parliamen-
tarians to create a national education system largely to address a perceived
‘crisis of citizenship’ including the lack of a sense of Canadian national identity.
When the first Canadian ‘Citizenship Act’ was proclaimed in 1947 a leading
advocate of citizenship education wrote, ‘Canada is legally a nation, but the
Canadians are scarcely yet a people’ (Kidd 1947: n.p.). More recent writers have
made the point that, while Canada exists as a state, it is not a nation in the
sense of Canadians sharing a profound sense of ‘group affinity and shared val-
ues’ (Resnick 1994: 6). The fear of deep differences and lack of understanding
among Canada’s disparate peoples and regions has been a dominant theme of
literature in the fields of citizenship and citizenship education in Canada.
Curtis describes this process of ‘public construction’ in nineteenth century
Ontario (Curtis 1988: 111, original emphasis). He argues that in establishing
early public education the state was concerned with the overlapping functions

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Carla L. Peck, Laura A. Thompson, Ottilia Chareka, Reva Joshee, and Alan Sears

of institution building and ‘political characterization of the population’. He also


documents the long and often contested process of centralizing state control
over schools, curriculum and teachers, contending that this was a deliberate
effort to take control of education away from parents and local communities
so the state could be more effective in using education for political socializa-
tion. According to Curtis, the elites who pushed for, and achieved, universal
public schooling in Canada in the nineteenth century were concerned about
‘the creation in the population of new habits, orientations, [and] desires’ that
were consistent with ‘the bourgeois social order’ including ‘respect for legiti-
mate authority’ and for standards of a ‘collective morality’ (Curtis 1988: 366). As
Bruno-Jofré writes, ‘The public school was conceived as an agency for national
unity and social harmony’ (Bruno-Jofré 2002: 114).
The standards of collective morality to be inculcated in early English Cana-
dian schools were essentially British in nature. In Canada’s early years, school
history courses and other subjects focused on Britain and the Empire, and patri-
otic ceremonies and symbols were not directed toward the new nation but
toward the growing empire.

English speaking children were raised with the historical myths of British
nationalism, as conveyed by adapted editions of the Irish National Reader
and authors as diverse as MacCauly and G.A. Hently. What mere Cana-
dian citizenship could compete with the claims of an empire that spanned
the known universe?
(Morton 1993: 55)

DIVERSITY AND CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION


Bruno-Joffre argues that citizenship education in schools, at least until the end
of World War II, was focused on supporting this orientation. During this period,
she writes, ‘the aim of public schools in English Canada was to create a homo-
geneous nation built on a common English language, a common culture, a
common identification with the British Empire and an acceptance of [certain]
British institutions and practices’ (Bruno-Joffre 2002: 113). While this approach
to citizenship education did violence to the linguistic and cultural traditions
of many, it was particularly devastating for Canada’s aboriginal Peoples. Bat-
tiste and Semaganis describe something of this ‘cognitive imperialism’ arguing
it was, and largely still is, an attempt to extinguish ‘Aboriginal conceptions of
society’ (Battiste and Semaganis 2002: 93).
The focus on Britishness as a state constructed, unifying national identity
began to wane during World War II for several reasons, including the decline
of Britain and the British Empire as major forces in the world. Most impor-
tantly, however, it simply was not working. Although early public schooling was
decidedly assimilationist (the ideal of the British Empire and the goal of ‘Anglo
conformity’) it was largely unsuccessful in unifying the population. Non-British
newcomers to Canada did not identify with the empire and clung doggedly to
their ethnic communities and loyalty to distant homelands (Granatstein 1993).
Furthermore, French Canadians in Québec did not identify with the British
Empire, but rather relied heavily on the Catholic Church for governance from
1867 until the 1960s. Given the religious nature of the Québec educational
system, religion was far more important as a social-educational institution
than ‘social studies’ curriculum. To put it more accurately, the Church was

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From getting along to democratic engagement: Moving toward deep diversity in citizenship education

the curriculum: teaching moral and patriotic values was the primary focus of
‘history’ and ‘geography’. As Lévesque writes:

This nation-building approach to history and geography was very much


focused on the survival of the French Canadian nationality and the cleri-
cal ideologies that made this ‘église-nation’ unique in Canada. English
Canada was treated as a separate imperialist nation, with a different
language, culture, and religion.
(Lévesque 2004: 58)

Such a strong religious and nationalistic emphasis on a French-Canadian and


Catholic nation suggested that, when the time came to ‘catch up’ with English
Canadian and American social studies initiatives, Québec would undergo
unprecedented educational reform from the 1960s to the 1990s in order to
‘modernize’ their national-religious society. Currently in Québec, history and
citizenship education does not focus on a nation-building approach, but rather
on a more inclusive and pluralistic approach (Lévesque 2004). Thus, the chal-
lenge remains to develop, teach and learn shared conceptions of citizenship,
history, and identity.
In more recent years, the attempt to create civic cohesion around a largely
British identity has given way to a focus on respecting, celebrating and accom-
modating diversity. While pluralism and inclusion are central to the rhetoric of
social studies and citizenship education policy and programmes across Canada,
we argue it has largely been an iconic rather than a deep pluralism. From the
1970s the idea of education as a doorway for individuals and groups to feel
included in the mainstream civic life of Canada has extended to at least attempt
to include the voices of a range of previously marginalized or excluded groups.
This has resulted in a widespread educational policy framework that promotes
the ‘pluralist ideal’ (Sears, Clark and Hughes 1999: 113). Central to this is an
activist conception of citizenship in which every citizen, or group of citizens,
will have the knowledge, skills and dispositions needed to participate in the
civic life of the country and feel welcome to do so. As Sears and Hughes put it,
good citizens in this conception

are seen as people who are: knowledgeable about contemporary soci-


ety and the issues it faces; disposed to work toward the common
good; supportive of pluralism; and skilled at taking action to make their
communities, nation, and the world a better place.
(Sears and Hughes 1996: 134)

It is important to note that what citizens are being included in, then, is not
citizenship in the ethnic or sociological sense of belonging to a community but,
rather, they are being included in the community of those who participate, who
join in a process.
In this approach the deeper more potentially difficult aspects of difference
are largely avoided, in part because they are complex, difficult to deal with and
have the potential to generate conflict. In studies of policy and practice in sev-
eral Canadian provinces Bickmore found that schools and teachers generally
avoided difficult issues with high potential for conflict including those involving
ethnicity and identity. Instead, they focused on what she calls ‘harmony build-
ing’ and ‘individual skill building’ (Bickmore 2005a: 165), approaches rooted in

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Carla L. Peck, Laura A. Thompson, Ottilia Chareka, Reva Joshee, and Alan Sears

conflict avoidance. The first includes attention to the ‘appreciation of diverse


cultural heritages’ but does not explore the real difference between and among
those heritages.
Bickmore (2005b: 3) argues that teachers largely avoid more difficult
approaches to citizenship inherent in opening up and exploring identity
because their own background, preparation and opportunities for professional
development have not provided them with the tools needed.

To teach for democratization, in the context of student diversity and glob-


alization, requires more substantive knowledge, more skills, and more
comfort with openness and uncertainty than to teach for unquestioned
dominant ‘common sense’. This can feel overwhelming, especially for
novice teachers.
(Bickmore 2005b: 3)

These overlapping desires, to avoid neo-colonialism and social conflict,


have largely underpinned the move to generic approaches to citizenship
education, which do not do justice to the complexities of difference and
accommodation in contemporary life.
In the policy arena this avoidance is sanctioned through the language of
‘social cohesion’. Social cohesion is a term that gained currency in Canada in
the 1990s and is now a key goal of the federal multiculturalism policy (Joshee
2009). In its most benign form, social cohesion is about maintaining a conflict-
free society where citizens put their trust in the state to work on their behalf.
Within recent Canadian policy discussions diversity has been named as a ‘chal-
lenge to social cohesion’ (OECD 2004) and the federal minister for citizenship,
immigration, and multiculturalism has proclaimed that the focus on social
cohesion is important because it prevents young people from new immigrant
communities ‘getting into trouble’ (Kenney 2009a). The minister’s concern is
not that Canadians learn to engage with diversity, and each other, in a deep
and meaningful way but rather than diversity results in ‘ethnic enclaves’ and
leads young people to ‘criminality or extremism,’ which undermines safety and
security (Kenney 2009b). Following from this logic, diversity is something to be
avoided at all costs.
The other limiting aspect of Canada’s approach to diversity in citizenship
education is virtually complete inattention to developing the kinds of trans- or
supra-national understandings of citizenship that globalization makes possible
today alongside national understandings. The Canadian state’s internal strug-
gles with multiple forms of diversity have often led to a national navel gazing
as it struggles to maintain social cohesion and foster some sense of national
identity. There was a surge of interest in global education curricula in the late
1980s and early 1990s (Sears and Hughes 1996) but that has largely waned and
Canadian social studies and citizenship programmes overwhelmingly focus on
Canadian issues, themes and topics. Citizenship education in Canadian schools
still focuses, almost wholly, on creating citizens to operate in the context of the
nation state.
Osler and Starkey discuss balancing complex and cosmopolitan identities.
They write, ‘The young people in our research demonstrated multiple and
dynamic identities, embracing local, national and international perspectives.
An education for national citizenship is unlikely to provide a sufficiently com-
prehensive context for them to integrate their own experiences and identities’
(Osler and Starkey 2003: 252). Similarly, Hébert describes a recent study of

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From getting along to democratic engagement: Moving toward deep diversity in citizenship education

second-generation youth in three Canadian cities who ‘demonstrated their


capacity to engage in three forms of mobility: mobility of mind, body, and
boundary, all forms of mobility responding to globalization’ (Hébert 2010: 235).
In spite of the potential capacity of young people to engage with wider concep-
tions of citizenship, Canada and (recent evidence would suggest) many other
countries (Reid, Gill and Sears 2010) have been paralysed by perceived tensions
between fostering diverse identities and social cohesion, and have not moved
beyond nation-centred approaches to citizenship education.

BREADTH AND DEPTH: A CALL FOR FUTURE RESEARCH


Essential for moving forward toward a citizenship education that engages crit-
ically and productively with Canada’s deep diversity is a more substantial
understanding of just what that diversity is and how people – particularly
students and teachers – conceptualize it. In April 2008, the Association for
Canadian Studies reported that 12.9 million people living in Canada indicated
they had multiple ethnic backgrounds on the 2006 census: an increase of 15 per
cent from 2001 figures (Jedwab 2008: 8). The report stated that, ‘at this rhythm,
by 2021, should the question on ethnicity remain unchanged, the majority of
Canadians will likely be “hyphenated” ’ (Jedwab 2008: 8). Although there are
no clear-cut definitions of ethnicity or ethnic diversity – indeed, Pryor et al.
describe ethnicity as a ‘conceptual maze’ (Pryor et al. 1992: 215) – theorists
agree on a number of characteristics (Barker 1999; Hall 2003). First, ethnic-
ity is fluid and plural in nature. The enunciation of one’s ethnic identity may
change depending on the social, political, and/or cultural context in which one
finds oneself. Second, the development of ethnic identity is both a personal
and social process, which occurs through inter- and intra-group boundary for-
mation. Individuals look not only within themselves, but also ‘within group’
for clues to their ethnic identity. Individuals also take cues from the larger soci-
ety – people, social, and political institutions – to define their identity. Finally,
some of the markers associated with ethnic identity include language, reli-
gion, appearance, ancestry, regionalism, non-verbal behaviour, values, beliefs,
cultural symbols and practices.
We believe that in order to understand an individual’s propensity to accom-
modate diversity we must first understand the variety of ways he/she constructs
or conceptualizes it. If knowledge is the starting point for both respect and jus-
tice, it seems strange to us that there is almost no research in Canada on how
young people or teachers understand ethnic diversity. Constructivist research
in science and mathematics has produced a growing body of knowledge about
the way young people understand important concepts and ideas in those fields.
In social education, history educators have made a significant start at building
the same kind of knowledge base for how students understand historical ideas
and processes (Levstik and Barton 2008; Peck 2009).
Outside of that work, very little has been done to map how young peo-
ple and teachers understand the social world in general and ethnic diversity in
particular. Despite the fact that advocates of multicultural education argue that
‘educators . . . have to have an understanding of how their students under-
stand difference and adjust delivery of the material accordingly’ (Varma-Joshi
2004: 152), little has been done to provide them with that understanding. Very
little research on prior knowledge of topics related to multiculturalism or diver-
sity, in Canada or internationally, exists. Some notable exceptions include the
work of Varma (2000), who found that elementary students in Moncton, New

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Brunswick (NB) envisioned Canada and Canadians as ‘white-only’; Short and


Carrington (1992), whose research with British students found that students
who received religious education had more sophisticated understandings of
the term ‘Jewish’ than those who did not; and Peck and Sears (2005) and Peck,
Sears and Donaldson (2008), who found that NB students lacked sophisticated
understandings of ethnic diversity, with some not recognizing expressions of
ethnic identity (such as wearing the hijab) at all. These studies comprise the
few qualitative studies that focus on understandings of versus attitudes toward
ethnic diversity, and all of these focus on students’ understandings, not those
of teachers. Given that teachers are responsible for interpreting and imple-
menting school curricula generally, and outcomes related to ethnic diversity
in particular, an investigation of their understandings of ethnic diversity seems
warranted.
We do not contend that a simple accumulation of knowledge of diversity
will be the cure for all the diversity-related ills of Canadian society. However,
it seems to us that, without even a basic understanding of what it means to be
Muslim, or Jewish, or Hindu, or francophone, or Jehovah’s Witness, or (fill in
the blank), young Canadians will have difficulty understanding formal forms
of accommodation such as The Charter of Rights and Freedoms or more informal
and local forms of accommodation. They will also have limited sense of how to
engage with the wider world in civic activities beyond the national context.

CONCLUSION
While western liberal-democratic forms of citizenship and civic engagement
are often traced to their presumed origins in ancient Greece, close examina-
tion shows they are very different. As Samons argues, ‘To put it simply, neither
Athenian thought nor Athenian society ever became fundamentally demo-
cratic in the modern sense with its emphasis on political rights rather than
social duties’ (Samons 2004: 11). That is not to say that there is no connection
between the two but it is to argue that democracy is a fluid concept shifting
in meaning and form across both time and contexts. One could hardly expect
the representative democracy of a modern nation state to mirror exactly that
of an ancient city state. Similarly, we should expect that the democracy of a
postmodern globalized world would look different again. A key challenge for
citizenship education in Canada (and elsewhere) is to look beyond modernist
forms to try to anticipate and shape the democracy that is yet to come.

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SUGGESTED CITATION
Peck, C.L., Thompson, L.A., Chareka, O., Joshee, R., and Sears A. (2010), ‘From
getting along to democratic engagement: Moving toward deep diversity in
citizenship education’ Citizenship Teaching and Learning 6: 1, pp. 61–75, doi:
10.1386/ctl.6.1.61_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Carla L. Peck is assistant professor of social studies education in the depart-
ment of elementary education at the University of Alberta. Her research
interests include students’ understandings of democratic concepts, diversity,
identity, citizenship and the relationship between students’ ethnic identities
and their understandings of history. She is currently principal investigator on
an SSHRC-funded research project designed to map students’ and teachers’
understandings of ethnic diversity.
Laura A. Thompson is an assistant professor of social studies and curriculum
studies at Acadia University’s School of Education. Her research interests focus
on exploring how Canadian francophone communities outside Québec inter-
sect with identity formation and notions of belonging within various public
spaces, including educational and cultural heritage institutions.
Ottilia Chareka is an assistant professor in the faculty of education at St.
Francis Xavier University. She obtained her DAUS, M.Ed. and Ph.D. from
the University of New Brunswick. Her areas of specialization are citizenship
education, multicultural education, global education, and human rights educa-
tion. She teaches quantitative and qualitative research methods in education,
programme evaluation and school data management, critical research liter-
acy in education, educational research methods and global education in the
M.Ed. program. She also teaches social studies, inclusive practices and diverse
cultures in the B.Ed. programme.
Reva Joshee is an associate professor and chair of the department of theory and
policy studies of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University
of Toronto where she teaches courses on social diversity and policy studies. Her
research examines issues of citizenship, diversity, and policy in India, Canada,
and the United States. She is co-editor (with Lauri Johnson) of Multicultural
Education Policies in Canada and the United States (2007, University of British
Columbia Press).
Alan Sears is a professor in the faculty of education at the University of New
Brunswick. His research interests include citizenship education, social stud-
ies education, history education and educational policy. He has directed a
number of national studies on the policy and practice of citizenship educa-
tion in Canada. He is currently principal investigator on an SSHRC-funded

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From getting along to democratic engagement: Moving toward deep diversity in citizenship education

research project designed to map young people’s understanding of key ideas


and concepts related to democratic citizenship.
Contact:
Carla Peck, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Social Studies Education
Department of Elementary Education
551 Education South
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB Canada T6G 2G5
E-mail: carla.peck@ualberta.ca
Laura A. Thompson, Ph.D.
School of Education, Box 57
Acadia University
Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada B4P 2R6
E-mail: laura.thompson@acadiau.ca
Ottilia Chareka
St. Francis Xavier University
Faculty of Education
Box 5000, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada B2G 2W5
E-mail: ochareka@stfx.ca
Reva Joshee
Chair, Department of Theory and Policy Studies in Education
Co-Director, Centre for Leadership and Diversity
OISE, University of Toronto
252 Bloor Street West
Toronto, ON Canada
M5S 1V6
E-mail: rjoshee@oise.utoronto.ca
Alan Sears
Faculty of Education
University of New Brunswick
P.O.Box 4400
Fredericton, NB E3B 5A3
Canada
E-mail: asears@unb.ca

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CTL 6 (1) pp. 77–90 © Intellect Ltd 2010

Citizenship Teaching and Learning


Volume 6 Number 1
© Intellect Ltd 2010. Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/ctl.6.1.77_1

GREGORY P. FAIRBROTHER
The Hong Kong Institute of Education

Alternative policy measures


for improving citizenship
education in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Despite adjustments to Hong Kong’s citizenship education since the 1990s transition citizenship education
period to Chinese sovereignty, survey research and public opinion suggest that citizen- Hong Kong
ship education, as currently practised in Hong Kong, shows considerable continuity policy instrument
with the pre-1997 period and is not achieving intended results in areas such as the curriculum
development of national identity and active citizenship among students. This article active citizenship
aims to contribute to explanations for such ineffectiveness and to determine whether national identity
there are more effective government policy measures which could improve the provi-
sion of citizenship education. Specifically, the article explores the question of whether
the Hong Kong government should mandate a compulsory, independent subject of cit-
izenship education at the secondary school level. Based on interviews with sixteen
education leaders from government bodies, education concern and advocacy groups,
teachers’ unions, citizenship education-related teachers’ associations, student asso-
ciations, political parties, and academia, it addresses more specific questions about
the intended outcomes of citizenship education, the role of government in attempt-
ing to achieve those outcomes, the strengths and weaknesses of current citizenship
education practice, suggested methods for improving upon ineffective practices, and
the possibility of (and obstacles to) mandating an independent citizenship education
subject. The article concludes that while making citizenship education compulsory
would address many concerns about its current ineffectiveness, the independent sub-
ject approach would not necessarily help to achieve improved outcomes and would
raise other substantial concerns from the education community and society at large.

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Gregory P. Fairbrother

INTRODUCTION
The goal of this article is to explore the question of whether the Hong Kong
government should mandate a compulsory, independent subject of citizenship
education for secondary schools. It does so by reporting the views of educa-
tion leaders on specific questions about the role of government in attempting
to achieve citizenship outcomes, the strengths and weaknesses of current citi-
zenship education delivery, suggested methods for improving upon ineffective
practices, and the possibility of (and obstacles to) mandating an independent
citizenship education subject. The article bases its discussion of citizenship
education upon Janoski’s definition of citizenship as ‘passive and active mem-
bership of individuals in a nation-state with certain universalistic rights and
obligations at a specified level of equality’ (Janoski 1998: 9). Along these lines,
citizenship education first covers teaching and learning about membership
in the nation state, including national identity, national history and culture,
national values and morals, and other knowledge and attitudes shared by
members. Second, citizenship education functions to arm learners with knowl-
edge of and attitudes toward citizens’ shared rights and duties, including those
of political participation.
Since 1985 the Hong Kong government has recommended that schools
convey citizenship education through one of three approaches: permeation,
whereby relevant content is incorporated into the teaching of multiple subjects
throughout the school curriculum; as an integrated subject, such as integrated
humanities or social studies; or, as an independent school subject (Morris and
Morris 2001). In support of implementation of any of these modes, the govern-
ment issued civic education guidelines in 1985 and 1996 and renewed direction
on moral and civic education in the 2002 Basic Education Curriculum Guide
(Fairbrother 2006a). The merely advisory nature of these guidelines, however,
has resulted in considerable diversity in the interpretation of the aims of citizen-
ship education, disparity among schools in attention to implementation, and
community and scholarly concern about the appropriate balance among civic,
moral, democratic, and patriotic emphases (Cheng 2004; Fairbrother 2006a;
Law and Ho 2004; Lee and Sweeting 2001; Leung and Ng 2004; Leung 2008;
Morris and Morris 2001; Tse 2007; Yuen and Byram 2007).
These concerns about the nature and implementation of citizenship educa-
tion have been compounded by research findings and community perceptions
of numerous inadequacies with regard to the citizenship knowledge and atti-
tudes of Hong Kong youth. Comparative research has found that youth are
relatively weak in knowledge of and positive attitudes toward the nation (Fair-
brother 2008), relatively politically passive and disengaged (Kennedy, Hahn
and Lee 2008), and below international means with regard to economic and
social responsibilities, positive attitudes toward the nation, and support for
women’s political rights, even as they are above international means in civic
knowledge and trust in government and the media (Lee 2003). Popular per-
ceptions of youth within the Hong Kong community have focused on the
weakness of their social morality, civic consciousness, political understanding
and interest, national pride, and numerous other social and political attitudes
(Fairbrother 2005).
Accompanying these concerns have been numerous calls in Hong Kong
society and political circles for citizenship education to be instituted as a com-
pulsory, independent subject in the secondary school curriculum (Fairbrother
2006a). In essence, these calls are for the government to shift from the policy
instruments of capacity building measures and decentralization to a mandate,

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Alternative policy measures for improving citizenship education in Hong Kong

in the interest of securing more effective implementation of citizenship educa-


tion (McDonnell 2004; McDonnell and Elmore 1987). This would bring Hong
Kong into line with other societies using a compulsory, independent subject
approach to citizenship education (Torney-Purta, Schwille and Amadeo 1999).
However, because such a move would also move Hong Kong’s citizenship
education practice closer to that of Mainland China, there has been concern
in some sectors that an independent, compulsory subject would amount to
indoctrination (Fairbrother 2006a).
This article does find that concern about indoctrination is one aspect of
resistance to an independent, compulsory approach to citizenship education
among leading educators, but also that this is but one of several more practical
concerns about effective implementation. These concerns are revealed through
interviews with sixteen education leaders from government bodies, education
concern and advocacy groups, teachers’ unions, citizenship education-related
teachers’ associations, student associations, political parties, and academia, as
one part of a large project addressing the question of what Hong Kong’s educa-
tion policymakers, relevant interest groups, principals, and teachers view as the
most appropriate and effective form of citizenship education for Hong Kong in
terms of its aims, content, and delivery.

METHODS
The following sections report the views of sixteen education leaders on the
following questions:

• How can the government best support the achievement of expected


outcomes of citizenship education?
• What are the strengths of current citizenship education practice?
• What current practices in citizenship education are relatively weak or
ineffective?
• How could citizenship education be improved?
• What would be the potential for an independent, compulsory subject of
citizenship education?

The sample of interviewees was drawn based on an open-ended socio-metric,


by which interviewees were selected based on their reputations in the field
while allowing for an enlarged sample as interviewees recommended others
who could provide insight into the relevant issues (Kennedy, Lo and Fairbrother
2004).
Interviews, conducted in Cantonese, were carried out between April and
August 2009, with respondents assured of anonymity and confidentiality.
Interviewees were most familiar with the permeation and integrated sub-
ject approaches adopted by most Hong Kong secondary schools, and mainly
discussed the independent subject approach as a potential alternative.
The interviews were intended to be exploratory, with the objective of gain-
ing insight into the nature of attitudes on the issue of curricular approach,
and the interview schedule was semi-structured along the lines of the above
research questions. Analysis of the responses consisted of identifying and
closely examining portions of responses according to the main themes of
expected citizenship education outcomes, strengths and weaknesses of cur-
rent practice, areas and potential methods for improvement, and obstacles

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Gregory P. Fairbrother

to moving toward an independent subject approach. Interviewees’ responses,


based on a small sample, were taken not to be representative of any larger
groups, but rather to demonstrate a range of views on the questions at hand.
In the following presentation, therefore, actual numbers of responses are not
reported, lest they give an impression of broader levels of support for one or
another view. Also, because of the qualitative nature of answers, without a
quantitative instrument allowing interviewees to indicate their level of agree-
ment or disagreement, it is not possible to indicate the comparative strength of
their views.

THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT IN ACHIEVING CITIZENSHIP


EDUCATION OUTCOMES
In discussions, interviewees addressed the question of how the Hong Kong
government could support the achievement of numerous outcomes, including
national identity, critical thinking, and knowledge of rights and responsibili-
ties. Their answers emphasized the importance of placing citizenship education
on the policy agenda, as well as mandates and inspection, capacity building
measures, and the devolution of curriculum delivery. First, noting that policy
implementation in Hong Kong was a largely top-down process, the govern-
ment, and the Education Bureau in particular, was called upon to place citi-
zenship education more squarely on its policy agenda. With policy only partly
dependent upon pressure from the public and the Legislative Council, Hong
Kong’s executive-led government would be able to swiftly implement any mea-
sure. While some interviewees claimed that the government had already done
much to support citizenship education (most recently with priority accorded to
‘national education’ and an overall review of moral and civic education within
the 2001 and 2002 curriculum and basic education reforms), others felt that
strong government action on citizenship education was hindered by political
considerations, resulting in, for example, a very narrow approach to national
education. Others felt that the government did not regard citizenship educa-
tion as important, exemplified by an apparent lack of clear vision, the absence of
relevant consultations or policy documents in comparison to previous admin-
istrations, no comprehensive planning or evaluation, no standard curriculum,
and the inclusion of moral and civic education in the curriculum only as one of
five ‘other learning experiences’.
One option mentioned by several interviewees would be for the gov-
ernment to mandate for all schools an independent, compulsory subject of
citizenship education, as it had done with the subject of liberal studies in
the senior secondary curriculum. Such a move would be followed by schools
and textbook publishers making the necessary arrangements to accommodate
the change, and by the government inspecting schools to ensure that imple-
mentation was taking place. The implications of this potential measure will be
elaborated toward the end of the article.
An alternative policy instrument currently utilized by the government to
support schools’ implementation of citizenship education is that of capacity-
building, including the provision of a set curriculum and relevant resources.
Building upon 1985 and 1996 guidelines on civic education, in 2002 the Cur-
riculum Development Council (CDC) designed and since then has encouraged
the implementation of a ‘moral and civic education’ curriculum framework.
The CDC recommends this central curriculum to schools as a reference, with

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schools encouraged to make use of and adapt it to the needs of their teachers
and students. It provides the direction, approach, and strategies for moral and
civic education, emphasizing both moral and civic education through a holistic,
values-based approach. This framework was revised, updated, and expanded
in 2008.
Some interviewees commended the government for providing additional
resources for citizenship education since Hong Kong’s return to Chinese
sovereignty in 1997. First, it has sponsored and organized professional develop-
ment programmes for teachers, including short-term programmes, seminars,
and workshops. Second, it has developed additional teaching and learning
resources with a regular updating of online resources for schools’ use. Third,
the Education Bureau itself has organized various citizenship-related activi-
ties for students. Particularly prominent has been the provision of resources
for national education, with study tours to Mainland China organized and
subsidized by the government.
Despite these measures, several interviewees felt that resourcing was insuf-
ficient and that the government needed to increase the level of support to
schools and teachers. As an example, there has been no teaching load reduction
for citizenship education coordinators in schools, who are left with little time to
design coherent programmes. Financial resources provided by the government
are also limited, and comprehensive training for teachers is lacking.
For other interviewees, the government’s resourcing of specific citizenship
education activities was problematic. For some, government involvement in
the provision of citizenship education was viewed as interference, because of
its conservative nature. Specific mention was made of the inadvisability of
the government’s organization and sponsorship of study tours to Mainland
China for teachers and students. Such resources should instead, according
to some interviewees, be provided directly to schools to be used at their
own discretion. A related issue was that of content, with concerns that these
tours would only highlight China’s positive achievements without touching
upon the sensitive issues of censorship, freedom of expression, and one-
party rule. Therefore, the government was advised by some to continue and
expand the current practice of funding non-governmental organizations to
develop citizenship-education teaching materials and programmes. On the
other hand, this approach was alternatively viewed by some as evidence of gov-
ernment neglect and an abdication of its leading role in citizenship education
provision.
A related policy instrument at the government’s disposal for promoting
the implementation of citizenship education is the devolution of authority
for implementation to organizations and schools. Along these lines, inter-
viewees explained that with only a few schools actually operated by the
government, most Hong Kong schools are government-subsidized but actually
operated by a variety of school sponsoring bodies, which each enjoy a relatively
high degree of autonomy in implementing certain education policies. Under
these circumstances, while the government provides the planned curriculum,
decisions on its actual implementation are devolved to schools, mediated
by their sponsoring bodies (see also Morris and Morris 2001). The result is
considerable diversity in citizenship education practice, ranging from conser-
vative to anti-establishment, with schools permitted to adapt the curriculum
framework according to the mission, vision, and tradition of their sponsoring
bodies as well as the views of school leaders and the needs of teachers and
students.

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THE STRENGTHS OF CURRENT CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION PRACTICE


This autonomy, flexibility, and diversity in delivery was viewed by some inter-
viewees as one of the key macro-level strengths of Hong Kong’s citizenship
education provision, given Hong Kong’s complex political and social conditions
under ‘One country, two systems’. Within the limits of the ‘education ordinance
and education regulations’ – the legal basis by which the government guards
against biased political education in schools and calls on teachers to present
information only in an unbiased, objective, and rational manner (see Fair-
brother 2006b) – schools and teachers are free from government interference
to make decisions on how to deliver citizenship education. They may choose
among permeation, integrated subject, and independent subject approaches;
choose to emphasize local, national, or global perspectives; and choose the
appropriate blend of Chinese or western concepts based on diverse overseas
models of citizenship education. Within the general approaches, schools are
offered the choice of delivery through the subjects of economic and public
affairs, social studies, integrated humanities, civic education, or other relevant
subjects, and are free to decide upon appropriate pedagogies, extra-curricular
activities, and teaching materials. Among the teaching materials and teacher-
training programmes available are those produced and organized by a variety
of concerned non-governmental organizations of diverse religious and political
backgrounds.
The independent subject approach was mentioned by some as an effec-
tive practice in that it guaranteed that citizenship education enjoyed a set
proportion of the school timetable. Others considered that treating citizen-
ship education as a form of whole-school education was particularly effective
since its scope was very broad, relevant to numerous school subjects, and
encompassing of knowledge, skills, and values. In this respect, citizenship edu-
cation effectively integrated classroom learning and practical activities, as well
as both the formal and hidden curriculum, as recommended in the 1996 civic
education guidelines. An interdisciplinary, permeation approach was seen as
effective, based on a perception of the successful cultivation of citizenship
qualities among the latest generation. In this way, citizenship education, and
in particular elements of national education, could be infused into nearly all
school subjects, ranging from economic and public affairs to Chinese history,
geography, biology, and chemistry.

THE INEFFECTIVENESS OF CURRENT CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION


PRACTICE
Discussions with interviewees revealed a plethora of perceptions of weak-
nesses and ineffective practices in citizenship education. Some weaknesses
were specifically attributed to the government’s overall management of citizen-
ship education. One aspect of this overall strategy, the granting of autonomy to
schools to choose a specific curricular approach, was seen by some as a prob-
lem because it offered schools too much discretion as well as a choice between
two ineffective curricular approaches.
As described earlier, there were perceptions of a general neglect of citi-
zenship education by a government lacking the will to implement it properly.
Specific criticism was made of the broad scope of citizenship education, which
hindered teaching in the absence of clear government guidelines. Hong Kong’s
approach was described as unorganized, unsystematic, ad hoc, and neglectful

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Alternative policy measures for improving citizenship education in Hong Kong

of a clear progression of intended outcomes for different grade levels. Fur-


thermore, government policy was seen as inconsistent and dependent upon
political considerations of the time. These factors made it difficult for teachers
to know what to teach and created worry about moving citizenship education
practice in the wrong direction.
Thus, while the autonomy granted to schools in citizenship education
delivery was perceived by some as a strength, for other interviewees it sig-
nified the government’s foregoing of its own responsibility. Autonomy was
also seen as creating a series of other problems. First, the variation among
schools accompanying autonomy was viewed by some as problematic, with
different schools teaching similar topics through different curriculum and activ-
ities, implying different understandings of citizenship education. Second and
more problematic, autonomy meant variation in the level of attention paid
by different schools, with conscientious schools organizing numerous activ-
ities and ambivalent ones few. Third, autonomy left too much to chance,
with provision dependent upon individual schools’ will, effort, and the abil-
ity and personality of individual school leaders. All of this meant that it was
nearly impossible to comprehensively assess and measure schools’ citizenship
education performance.
Autonomy in implementation was also interpreted by some as contributing
to the potential for biases or imbalance in specific emphases of citizenship edu-
cation in different schools, seen as a reflection of a lack of societal consensus
on major socio-political issues. Some considered citizenship education con-
tent to be overly moralistic and focused on ethics, with schools focusing their
efforts on the relatively safe arenas of family, community, moral, and sex educa-
tion. Others saw current citizenship education discourse as too politicized and
critical. Along this line, inappropriate practices included inviting politicians or
radio talk-show hosts to give talks to students, discussing controversial politi-
cal events such as the Tiananmen Incident, and even using newspaper articles
for class discussion, all because of the potential for anti-government, negative
bias.
Related to this was considerable discussion of potential bias reflective of
two of Hong Kong’s major political camps: the pro-democracy camp and the
pro-Beijing patriotic camp. Bias toward the democratic camp was seen as exem-
plified by an overemphasis in citizenship education on human rights and the
rule of law, and a neglect of national history, education about contemporary
China, and the encouragement of students to support Chinese government
policies. Others conversely perceived that education in democracy and human
rights were neglected, especially after 1997, pointing to some schools’ percep-
tion of human rights education as subversive and worries that students taught
more about their rights would abuse them. Along similar lines, there were per-
ceptions of an increasing overemphasis on national education and propaganda,
to the detriment of ‘civic education’, creating potential for schools to promote a
submissive citizenship. Some criticized national education for being one-sided
and inconsistent with reality, particularly by only presenting China’s positive
achievements. Patriotic rituals such as the flag-raising ceremony were singled
out as formalities with no educational purpose other than indoctrination.
As discussed earlier, some interviewees perceived the whole-school perme-
ation and integrated subject approaches as a strength. Others saw the choice of
these approaches granted by school autonomy as creating a variety of problems,
implying that autonomy and choice basically resulted in further ineffectiveness.
The permeation approach was explicitly mentioned as ineffective by several

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Gregory P. Fairbrother

interviewees. According citizenship education only very limited space in the


curriculum was seen as insufficient, especially compared to societies where it
constituted a formal subject in the curriculum, such as Mainland China, Tai-
wan, and the United States. The result was perceived to be unrealized learning
outcomes.
Fundamentally, the permeation approach was viewed as according cit-
izenship education only superficial treatment. It was described as diluted,
perfunctory, piecemeal, unsystematic, ridiculous, laughable, infrequent, frag-
mented, and limited. The permeation approach was seen to represent an overall
neglect of citizenship education, with few schools allocating significant time for
related education and activities, only conducting it in their spare time. Some
interviewees perceived that schools were ambivalent and unwilling to exert the
effort at best, and engaged in self-censorship at worst. This type of situation
resulted from schools’ own lack of civic consciousness and ideals and an instru-
mental approach to education as human resources training. Schools’ numerous
priorities were seen to rest outside citizenship education, with emphasis instead
placed on students’ academic results, preparing for public examinations, and
other activities that improved schools’ reputation and enhanced their account-
ability to the public. Permeation, integrated approaches were seen as having no
lasting impact on students, making it difficult for students to engage in deep
thought about citizenship issues, and providing them with few opportunities
to express their own opinions.
Within schools, the non-compulsory, integrated nature of citizenship edu-
cation affected teachers’ attitudes as well. Few teachers saw it as useful,
important, or meaningful and were thus reluctant to teach it. Teachers of
established subjects in the curriculum paid little attention to integrating into
fixed subject syllabuses non-examined citizenship education elements, and saw
their primary responsibility as faithfully teaching their subjects and preparing
students for examinations. Teachers lacking in civic consciousness and ideals
would also lack the passion to motivate their students to understand diffi-
cult and potentially sensitive concepts and issues. There was even a perception
that teachers (most of whom had grown up during Hong Kong’s colonial era)
lacked national identity and were concerned more with their own rights than
contributing to the nation.
The lack of attention accorded by schools and teachers to whole-school
approaches to citizenship education was seen as affecting students’ attitudes
toward it. For the most part students were not interested in citizenship educa-
tion, treated it as unimportant, lacked the motivation to participate in related
activities, and were often bored by it. This was because the subject was not
examined, students had often learned related content in earlier stages of edu-
cation or in other activities, and because many teaching materials being used
were outdated.

IMPROVING CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION


Some interviewees maintained that any reform of and improvement in
Hong Kong’s citizenship education practice would require substantial societal
change and democratization. Other more realistic suggestions for improve-
ment reflected the very problems with citizenship education identified above,
but revealed the lack of consensus even among this small group of intervie-
wees. Citizenship education content could be improved by increased emphasis
either on morals and values or on civic and political issues. An overemphasis on

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content concerned with democracy, law, and rights could be assuaged by more
content on national education and responsibility, and vice versa. Alternatively,
a good balance among different concepts and elements could be sought and
related teaching resources more evenly distributed. While some felt that citi-
zenship education should be made more relevant to students’ daily lives, others
suggested the enhanced use of patriotic rituals. Others saw improvement com-
ing more from a stronger emphasis on critical thinking, even encouraging
students to be more critical of China, with discussions of both positive and neg-
ative events in Chinese history fostering a more comprehensive understanding
of their nation among students. One interviewee concluded that citizenship
education should transcend the political divisions in society to strive to be
unbiased, balanced, critical, and factual.
Interviewees suggested several ways the government could increase its
support for citizenship education. The provision of enhanced teacher training
and the production of additional teaching resources (and funding to non-
governmental organizations to produce an even wider variety) would help to
demonstrate that the government acknowledged the importance of citizen-
ship education. Another government measure would be to issue new clear
guidelines to schools and develop a curriculum with clear targets for each
grade level to meet students’ needs and avoid repetition and overlap of cur-
ricular content. Even more broadly, it was suggested that the government
establish a task force to comprehensively review citizenship education pol-
icy, conduct consultation, and develop a revised overall plan for citizenship
education.
For some interviewees, such a plan should maintain the spirit of autonomy
granted to schools to implement citizenship education according to their needs
and strengths, a strategy again perceived as less subject to government con-
trol. Citizenship education would continue to be school-based, but would be
clearly distinguished from teaching to prepare students for public examination.
Rather than mandating an independent compulsory subject, some compulsory
components of citizenship education could be formally integrated into subjects
throughout the existing curriculum, ensuring that all students would learn basic
citizenship concepts. Such an enhanced permeation approach would help to
foster students’ interdisciplinary understanding and thinking skills, in addition
to fostering their civic consciousness.

THE POTENTIAL FOR A COMPULSORY, INDEPENDENT SUBJECT OF


CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION
For other interviewees who viewed permeation and integrated subject
approaches as empty talk and fundamentally unfeasible because of a lack of
room within existing subject curricula to infuse further content on citizenship,
citizenship education would only be improved with the mandate of an inde-
pendent, compulsory subject, placing it on par with other school subjects. This
approach would help to ensure a comprehensive, systematic method of deliv-
ery, with a well-structured curriculum, clear guidelines, and targets for student
achievement in each grade. The subject could consist of several modules cover-
ing, for example, key concepts of national identity, rights and responsibilities,
the rule of law, ethics, and family values. This approach is similar to that of
Mainland China and Taiwan; content would focus on the core principles of
citizenship, but would be delivered not only through classroom teaching but

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Gregory P. Fairbrother

also through games, field trips, project learning, dialogue, enquiry, discussion,
debate, drama, and exchange programmes. One alternative would be to at
least formalize Chinese history as an independent compulsory subject rather
than the current approach of infusing its content into the subject of integrated
humanities.
Supporters of a compulsory, independent subject expected that with the
government taking the lead in this way, other supporting features would follow.
For example, textbook publishers would publish citizenship education text-
books and teaching materials; the subject would be taught by teachers with
specialist training; and students’ achievement would be assessed, providing
extrinsic motivation for students to focus attention on learning. It was also
suggested that assessment measure not only knowledge but also take into
consideration students’ moral attitudes and behaviour.
To make such a move, and to enhance the effectiveness of citizenship edu-
cation, a number of obstacles would need to be overcome. First, if assessed,
an independent subject would need to manage Hong Kong’s examination
culture and emphasis on knowledge acquisition, memorization, and the recita-
tion of facts. Related to this would be concerns of citizenship education
amounting to ideological indoctrination, one-sided national education, value
standardization, and government intervention. Suggestions for overcoming
these obstacles included emphasizing the development of students’ critical
thinking skills and the use of a variety of pedagogies and activities. This, in
turn, would require overcoming the obstacle of a lack of qualified teachers
with specialist knowledge and able to make use of non-traditional pedagogies,
through government planning and support for citizenship-education teacher
training.
An additional obstacle would be the perennial concern about a lack of cur-
riculum space for an additional independent subject, with the time allocated
to other subjects needing to be reduced or other subjects eliminated. Related
to this would be the question of the slippery slope, with other integrated and
permeated subjects also potentially clamouring for compulsory, independent
status. This in turn raised the fundamental question of the very rationale for
mandating an independent subject, with interviewees asking what the objec-
tive criteria were for such a move and whether teachers and students would
understand the purpose of the subject. Interviewees also noted that an addi-
tional shift in education policy could be viewed with resentment and resistance
among schools, parents, and students.
Interviewees also noted that experience had shown that only a few schools
had voluntarily chosen the independent subject approach to citizenship edu-
cation, raising the issue of school autonomy in choosing citizenship education
curricular approaches. With a mandated independent subject, schools would
lose this autonomy, would have less flexibility in implementation, and would
potentially have different understandings of the subject based on their back-
grounds and sponsoring bodies. There was also a related concern about a
compulsory, independent subject going against what was seen as a worldwide
trend towards curriculum integration.
A final obstacle to mandating an independent subject would be the lack
of societal consensus over its value and content. Interviewees predicted that
under Hong Kong’s current political and social circumstances, planning for
the citizenship education curriculum would involve heated public debate and
substantial difficulties in reconciling diverse opinions. These difficulties would,
potentially, not end with the mandate: different school sponsoring bodies

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would still understand the concept of citizenship differently and there would
be continuing societal contention over its delivery.
Overcoming these last obstacles would require concerted effort on the
part of the government. Extended consultation over the content would be
required, and the government, schools, and teachers would need to work
closely together to decide how to deliver the subject. The government would
also need to demonstrate its determination, publicly recognize and empha-
size the importance of citizenship education, and strongly encourage its
implementation.
Supporters of an independent subject were optimistic about its potential,
noting that the government had been successful in mandating the subject of
liberal studies in the recently reformed senior secondary school curriculum.
Others, however, were less hopeful, stating that the larger political environ-
ment would not permit such a move until Hong Kong had made further
progress toward democratization and rid itself of traditional values and colonial
ideology through generational change.

CONCLUSION
This article set out to answer the question of what Hong Kong’s education
policymakers and relevant interest groups view as the most appropriate and
effective form of citizenship education for Hong Kong in terms of its aims,
content, and delivery. It has specifically focused on whether the Hong Kong
government should mandate a compulsory, independent subject of citizenship
education for secondary schools. The article concludes by taking each section
above as an angle from which to view this question.
From the first angle of policy instruments at the disposal of the govern-
ment, it is clear that Hong Kong relies on capacity building and devolution
of authority to schools for implementation, rather than a mandate. The inter-
view data presented in this article first suggest that a potential shift in policy
instrument would first require the government to place citizenship education
more firmly on its policy agenda than is currently the case. With regard to the
advantages of specific instruments, McDonnell and Elmore (1987) suggest that
mandates are the instrument most likely to produce compliance with and uni-
formity of efforts toward intended goals. With regard to current policy, however,
while there appeared to be concern among some interviewees that capacity-
building measures and resources provided by the government were insufficient,
the level of resourcing was not such that implementation was significantly hin-
dered. Similarly, while devolution of implementation to schools appeared to
result in diversity in the nature and level of delivery, because of the Hong Kong
education system’s well-established tradition of autonomy, such diversity with
regard to citizenship education was, to some extent, actually valued more than
condemned.
Viewing the question from the second angle of the strengths of current citi-
zenship education practice, we can ask the question of whether a mandate of a
compulsory, independent subject would significantly enhance those strengths.
Many of the strengths identified in interviews existed regardless of the cur-
ricular approach, and school autonomy and the permeation and integrated
subject approaches were explicitly identified by some interviewees as strengths
in themselves. While some viewed a compulsory, independent approach as
a strength, it was again unclear whether, on balance, this approach would
outweigh the benefits of other approaches.

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Gregory P. Fairbrother

From the third angle of weaknesses of citizenship education practice, we


can ask the question of whether a mandated compulsory, independent sub-
ject would resolve the major issues. On one hand, it is possible that such a
move would help to make citizenship education more systematic, uniform,
focused, and balanced, and encourage schools, teachers, and students to treat it
more seriously. Here, however, we could break up the question to ask whether
what is important is the mandated and compulsory nature of citizenship edu-
cation or, alternatively, the independent subject approach. From the specific
weaknesses identified, it appears that a mandate of compulsory citizenship
education (accompanied by clear direction and firm guidance) would improve
on ineffective practices, but that an independent subject alone would not do so.
From the fourth angle of recommendations for the improvement of citi-
zenship education, we can ask whether a mandated compulsory, independent
subject would better achieve improvement. Again the answer to this question
appears to require examining the mandate and compulsory nature of delivery
separate from the curricular approach. Many of the suggestions offered were
peripheral to the curricular approach, and most boiled down to stronger orga-
nization, direction, balance, support, and resourcing. A mandate of compulsory
citizenship education could contribute to these, but again an independent
subject alone would not necessarily do so.
The final section of the article explicitly addressed the question of the advis-
ability and implications of mandating a compulsory, independent subject of
citizenship education. In conclusion, we can first ask whether the identified
benefits of doing so would also be achievable through other approaches. Look-
ing closely at these identified benefits, it would appear that the improvements
might not take place without a government mandate of some form of compul-
sory citizenship education, but that they could actually come from varying cur-
ricular approaches and would not necessarily require an independent subject.
With regard to overcoming the various obstacles to a shift of government pol-
icy and curriculum approach, interviewees themselves suggested appropriate
methods, drawing attention to concerted effort, determination, and resources.
The only obstacle to a mandated compulsory, independent subject that would
be impossible to overcome would appear to be any strong sentiment for school
autonomy in making decisions on the delivery of citizenship education.
Given the numerous considerations at the levels of society, government
policy, the education system, schools, curriculum, pedagogy, teachers, and stu-
dents explored in this article, there appears to be insufficient support for the
idea of the Hong Kong government mandating a compulsory, independent
secondary school subject of citizenship education. More worthwhile to improve
citizenship practice and outcomes, however, would appear to be a mandate that
some form of citizenship education be compulsory, with decisions on how to
deliver it within this requirement left up to schools. The possibility of such a
move occurring, however, given the range of opinion in society represented by
the interviewees in this study, would seem to depend upon the appearance of
strong policy advocates in Hong Kong’s evolving political context.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research upon which this article is based was funded by a Public Pol-
icy Research Funding Scheme project (HKIEd8001-PPR-3) of the Hong Kong
Research Grants Council. Kerry Kennedy and Leung Yan Wing provided
valuable feedback and Ng Hoi Yu provided invaluable research assistance.

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SUGGESTED CITATION
Fairbrother, G.P. (2010), ‘Alternative policy measures for improving citizenship
education in Hong Kong’ Citizenship Teaching and Learning 6: 1, pp. 77–90, doi:
10.1386/ctl.6.1.77_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Gregory P. Fairbrother is associate professor in the department of social sci-
ences and associate dean (research and postgraduate studies) of the faculty of
arts and sciences at The Hong Kong Institute of Education. His primary areas
of research include citizenship education, political socialization, education pol-
icy, and student political attitudes in Hong Kong and Mainland China. His
most recent research has dealt with the politics of citizenship education pol-
icymaking and implementation in Hong Kong; the influence of schooling and
critical thinking on Hong Kong and Chinese students’ national attitudes; and
provincial-level citizenship education policy implementation in China. He is
the author of Toward Critical Patriotism: Student Resistance to Political Education
in Hong Kong and China (2003, Hong Kong University Press).
Contact:
Gregory P. Fairbrother
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
10 Lo Ping Road
Tai Po, New Territories
Hong Kong
E-mail: gfairbro@ied.edu.hk

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CTL 6 (1) pp. 91–105 © Intellect Ltd 2010

Citizenship Teaching and Learning


Volume 6 Number 1
© Intellect Ltd 2010. Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/ctl.6.1.91_1

PENNY ENSLIN AND NICKI HEDGE


University of Glasgow

A good global neighbour:


Scotland, Malawi and global
citizenship

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Used to express the international aspirations of Universities Scotland, the idea of global citizenship
the good global neighbour is reflected in the 2005 ‘Cooperation Agreement’ between good neighbour
Scotland and Malawi and represents a challenging metaphor for global citizenship. partiality
We develop a critical but sympathetic account of the idea of the good global neigh- globalism
bour and its uptake in Scotland. The notion of the global neighbour is identified as fences
a form of qualified moral partiality, appropriate to the shifting understandings of borders
geographical borders occasioned by globalization. In this article, we highlight that Scotland-Malawi
this qualified partiality is reflected in Scottish policy, and its historical basis is also partnership
described. Finally, in considering a potential postcolonial criticism of this deployment
of the idea of the good global neighbour, we reflect on implications for higher education
policy in Scotland and its implicit assumptions about global citizenship.

GOOD GLOBAL NEIGHBOURS


The term ‘good global neighbour’ has been used by Universities Scotland
(2007a), the body that represents Scotland’s higher education institutions
(HEIs), in describing their collective aspiration to friendship and understand-
ing with the rest of the world. This goal seems to accord with the more specific
aim declared in the Cooperation Agreement between Scotland and Malawi

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Penny Enslin and Nicki Hedge

1 The signing of the 2005 (Scottish Government 2005a) to work together in a civic coalition for their
Cooperation mutual benefit. Jack McConnell, then First Minister of Scotland, declared that
Agreement followed
the launch, in 2004, of the agreement ‘intertwines our small countries to a shared future together’.
the Scotland Malawi In doing so McConnell pointed to the duty of elected politicians as ‘citizens
Partnership (see
http://www.scotland-
of the world’ to be ‘good neighbours’, playing their part in addressing global
malawipartnership.org/) challenges (Scottish Government 2005b: 8).
which coordinates The notion of the global neighbour indicates a shift from long entrenched
and provides services
to a number of assumptions about relations between citizens – from fellow citizens within the
organizations and domestic confines of a sovereign nation state to a much wider, global frame.
individuals involved in A global perspective is now widely regarded as a necessary feature of citi-
initiatives with
Malawians, in close zenship education (Dower 2003; Osler and Starkey 2005). Under globalized
collaboration with the conditions, expansive conceptions of citizenship of the kind espoused in the
Scottish government.
We take the terms of
Scotland-Malawi agreement are now commonly depicted in national policies
the 2005 agreement as on education and on international development, in which assumptions about
a civic vision for closer associations between national citizens and those of other sovereign
Scotland’s partnership
with Malawi. states are explicitly or implicitly present. Yet, having acknowledged this shift in
our conception of citizenship, the idea of the global neighbour demands closer
scrutiny, given the common use of the term ‘neighbour’ to refer to someone
living close by, and of the term ‘neighbourhood’ as the area in which we live.
And what is it to be a good neighbour to those not physically proximate, espe-
cially as the term ‘neighbour’ usually connotes physical proximity but can also
suggest moral distance?
The metaphor of the good global neighbour is a complex if not puzzling
one. In the critical conceptual exploration that follows we will largely support
the broad assumptions underpinning the idea of the good global neighbour as
expressed in Scottish government policy, while raising and addressing some
potential issues that need to be addressed in developing a defensible under-
standing of the concept. In this discussion we begin with an account of the
Scotland-Malawi agreement and the aims and assumptions declared to under-
pin that partnership. We then explore the idea of the global neighbour, noting
how its emergence indicates a shift in international ethics from those of the
bounded Westphalian state to the more nuanced forms of partiality created by
globalization. In concluding with an assessment of how Scottish universities
appear to be pursuing the objective of being good global neighbours, we will
consider the potential objection that the good global neighbour is merely the
expression of either an ethically suspect politics of benevolence or competi-
tive self-interest. Although this discussion takes Scotland as its example, as the
professional context in which the authors are positioned, our intention is to
raise and address challenges of global citizenship likely to be relevant to similar
contexts and transnational initiatives.

THE SCOTLAND-MALAWI AGREEMENT


The Cooperation Agreement of 2005, endorsed and extended since 2007 by
the now Scottish National Party-led (SNP) minority administration, set out
to reflect a partnership1 in which combined expertise and skills would fight
poverty and support Malawi in pursuit of its ‘Millennium Development Goals’
(MDGs). Targeted at the broad streams of civic governance, sustainable eco-
nomic development, health and education, the partnership’s educational ini-
tiatives include support for teacher education and exchanges, twinning schools
and higher education institutions, vocational and further education, and sup-
port for empowerment of vulnerable groups. ‘Good neighbours’ here are clearly

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not those in close spatial proximity (Edinburgh and Lilongwe are some 8482 2 In 2008, the Malawi
kilometres from each other), but are linked instead by a shared history that ‘Millennium
Development Goals
began with the missionary work of David Livingstone; thus we are told that for Report’ is rather more
‘150 years Scots have worked with the people of Malawi, helping them develop optimistic, suggesting
some of the MDG
basic education and health systems’ (Scottish Government: Scotland’s Links targets – eradicating
with Malawi, n.d.). extreme poverty and
Notwithstanding these commonalities, there are striking inequalities hunger, achieving
universal primary
between these two countries. The Scottish Government’s ‘Malawi Economic education, reducing
Brief’ notes that ‘Malawi is one of the ten poorest countries in the world with child mortality,
an income per person of around $160 per year: 170 times less than the aver- combating HIV/AIDS,
malaria and other
age Scot’s income’ (2005c: 8). Scotland and Malawi are comparatively small diseases, ensuring
countries, but with a population more than double that of Scotland, Malawi’s environmental
sustainability and
economy is only a little over 1% of the size of Scotland’s. Further compar- developing a global
isons point to significant differences with, for instance, the number of Malawian partnership for
HIV/AIDS orphans approximating the population of Edinburgh, life expectancy development – are on
track and all goals are
half of that of the average Scot, children under five 27 times more likely to die likely to be met with
than those in Scotland, one qualified teacher for every 95 pupils compared to the exception of
one for every 14.9 pupils in Scotland, and some 60% of the population living universal primary
education, which is
below the poverty line in Malawi. Currently Malawi ranks 160 out of 182 coun- projected to be only
tries on the United Nation’s (2009) human development index with the United ‘potentially feasible’.
Kingdom ranking at 21. In 2005, when the Scotland-Malawi agreement was
signed, the World Bank suggested that Malawi was unlikely to reach any of the
MDGs by 2015 apart from primary school enrolment.2
Malawi’s aspiration to fulfil such development goals indicates challenges
for the exercise of citizenship, whether understood in terms of the role that
education plays as both a citizen right and in promoting opportunities for its
exercise, or in relation to achieving those levels of health and material prosper-
ity that enable the full exercise of citizen rights. That Scotland’s citizens, while
facing their own collective problems as an unequal post-industrial society, do
not have to aspire to a similar set of development goals, sums up both the
inequalities between these two countries and the conditions of global injustice
in which their friendship is enacted. Alexander McCall Smith, author and donor
to the Malawi appeal, starkly acknowledges this: ‘Scotland and Malawi are old
friends. We are rich; they are not’ (McCall Smith 2005: 1). Such inequalities
between the partners could make for an unequal if not patronising relationship,
a risk to which we return later.
Against this backdrop, in the Scotland-Malawi agreement there is much
emphasis on principles of equality, reciprocity and mutual benefit. The agree-
ment refers to the relationship between the two countries as a reciprocal
partnership based upon increased collaboration, sharing experiences and skills,
recognition of the needs of the two countries, and their long-standing friend-
ship. The emphasis on mutuality is notable, expressed in references to a
reciprocal partnership in which mutual needs are recognized as the cooper-
ating partners’ collaboration enables them to learn from each other, helping,
supporting, exchanging, sharing, linking and twinning. The Scottish govern-
ment described its friendship and partnership with Malawi as not only ‘unique
and historic’; the agreement between the two countries was ‘for the long
term . . . signed in a spirit of tolerance, solidarity and respect’. For McConnell
the partnership would not only benefit Malawi, for the relationship would
‘make Scotland a better place too’ (Scottish Government 2005b: 8).
Following the transition to SNP leadership in 2007 the agreement remains
intact, with the government committed ‘to developing the special relationship

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that exists between our two countries as a distinct programme’ (Scottish


Government 2009) within its international development policy (Scottish Gov-
ernment 2008a). That policy reflects a commitment to advance ‘Scotland’s
place in the world as a responsible nation by building mutually beneficial
links with other countries’ (Scottish Government 2008a). The policy notes the
‘distinctive contribution’ Scotland can make to developing countries as it rec-
ognizes its ‘global responsibility’, supporting the work of the UK Department
for International Development (DFID) but ‘building upon both the historical
and contemporary relationships that exist between Scotland and many coun-
tries within the developing world’, through development that will ‘in turn help
support an inclusive society in Scotland’. Key values and principles underpin-
ning the international development policy locate the needs and priorities of
developing countries as ‘paramount’ suggesting that whilst ‘Scotland will learn
and benefit from the experience of working in partnership with developing
countries . . . these benefits will not detract from the development strategies and
priorities identified by developing countries’.
Committing some £3 million a year to its work with Malawi, in the spending
review period from 2008 to 2011, the partnership will reflect the develop-
ment policy ‘emphasis on country-led identification of need, organizational
and institutional capacity building and community-led development’ (Scottish
Government 2008a). There is a continuing emphasis on mutuality of concern
and benefit, alongside a balance of power and directionality. One neighbour,
Scotland, is not responsible for setting the agenda in Malawi; rather the work
of the partnership will reflect the ‘development priorities of the Government of
Malawi and the intelligence gained from the independent review of projects in
Malawi’ (Scottish Government 2009).
Implicit in this partnership lies a set of aspirations about relations between
the citizens of Scotland and Malawi. But what, in a global context, are we to
understand by the claim that this evolving policy is an expression of neigbourli-
ness? Scrutinising the idea of the neighbour, we find a concept of considerable
complexity in relation to who one’s neighbour is, how one relates to them, what
we owe our neighbours – whether proximate or distant – and why. In common
usage, a neighbour is someone who lives nearby. Yet their proximity does not
necessarily mean either intimacy or extensive obligations; even good neigh-
bours may enjoy and indeed prefer relationships that are polite but bounded,
hence the common belief that ‘good fences make good neighbours’.

THE IDEA OF GLOBAL NEIGHBOURS


Considering this idiom in the context of changing conceptions of territorial
borders, John Williams (2003: 25) notes the continuing intuitive appeal of bor-
ders as fences that promote peaceful interaction. Invoking Robert Frost’s poem
‘Mending Wall’, in which two neighbours agree that to repair a wall will provide
a physical border to keep separate their properties and thereby allow them to be
good neighbours, Williams likens this to a scenario in international relations in
which ‘even the most friendly states know where the border lies and recognize
there may be circumstances where controls along it are necessary’ (Williams
2003: 26). But in his treatment of the diminishing salience of sovereign borders,
Williams observes that political geography has challenged the reified image of
territorial borders as fences between sovereign spaces, noting how territorial
borders can be usefully reconsidered in normative international relations the-
ory as social practices and institutions (Williams 2003: 27). As demarcations

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between national and international politics have become blurred, territorial


borders no longer mark a point at which ethical considerations end. That
ethics has become a legitimate topic in international relations is prominently
acknowledged between Scotland and Malawi, though this is not without its
problems, as we will show.
The traditional Westphalian sovereign state acting in its own self-interest –
or exclusively in the interests of its own citizens – still largely dominates con-
ceptions of political membership and of duties of justice. But a growing number
of commentators (e.g. Moellendorf 2002, Pogge 2002, Fraser 2008) have con-
tributed recently to a remapping of the boundaries of justice on a more global
scale. With its attendant shifts in the ways that space and time affect human
lives, globalization poses a fundamental challenge to traditional political the-
ory’s assumption that nation states can be regarded as self-sufficient, bounded
communities (Scheuerman 2006). Nation states have only limited control over
a growing number of cross-territorial activities and social relations. The dissi-
pation of the previously clear distinction between domestic and foreign affairs
raises the issue of whether normative political commitments can be realized
domestically while not also achieved globally and is echoed in the Scottish
government’s statement: ‘it is simply intolerable that when we in the devel-
oped world have so much, so many in your world have so little’ (Scottish
Government 2005b: 8).
Such loosening of boundaries applies not only to territorial and ethical
fences between states. The concept of neighbourhood seems to become both
more fluid and more extensive. If the idea of neighbourhood implies social
networks and interaction (Forrest 2009) then we must ask what neighbour-
hood means under current conditions. Pointing to the application of Marshall
McLuhan’s ‘global village’ (McLuhan 1967: 63), Forrest notes the United
Nations’ international appropriation of neighbourhood. Exemplified in White-
head’s statement that ‘the global village becomes the global neighbourhood
as a moral space through which to manage the complex economic, political
and ecological problems of the planet’ (Whitehead 2003: 277), Forrest suggests
it ‘continues to invoke positive attributes of mutuality, solidarity, connected-
ness and a sense of shared responsibility and destiny’ (Forrest 2009: 140). The
language of global neighbourliness expressed in the Scotland-Malawi agree-
ment inclines towards this expansive conception of neighbourhood. Yet whilst
acknowledging today’s ‘spatially diffuse and overlapping social networks’ For-
rest concludes that the local neighbourhood retains its status ‘as a key site for
the routines of everyday life which appear to be an important part of our social
identity’ (Forrest 2009: 139).
Forrest is not alone in voicing this caution. Geography remains salient. Its
boundaries and scales cannot be dismissed and need ‘to be reconceptualized
perpetually in order to understand their material/discursive meaning in the
transforming world’ (Paasi 2004: 542). While some would prefer to treat geo-
graphical boundaries as ethically contingent rather than as bearing intrinsic
worth, Williams argues that there are good reasons for believing that ‘borders,
including territorial ones, do possess ethical value that whilst not absolute, eter-
nal and constant, is nevertheless deeply seated in conceptions of ethics and
community that cannot be overlooked easily in the name of cosmopolitan stan-
dards’ (Williams 2003: 33). He associates the continuing relevance of sovereign
borders with the ‘need for division in human ethical life’ (Williams 2003: 38),
returning us to the scene of Frost’s neighbours agreeing to repair a broken
wall, unnecessary for any other reason than to preserve good neighbourliness.

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Accordingly Williams defends a separation of us and ‘Other’, of inside from


outside, of foreign from domestic and, importantly for this article, he suggests
such borders and boundaries ‘divide those to whom we owe primary allegiance
from those who come second (if anywhere) in moral calculation; they divide us
from them’ (Williams 2003: 38).
At this point we acknowledge an area of considerable controversy in con-
temporary normative political theory, marked out on the one hand by a position
we might describe as universalist or globalist – that is that duties of global
justice are owed impartially and equally to all, across national boundaries, to
the extent that neighbourliness as global justice demands a radical redistribu-
tion of resources from rich to poor states. This stance contrasts clearly with the
assumption that the neighbours to whom we owe duties of partiality are limited
to fellow citizens of the sovereign Westphalian state, already noted as chal-
lenged by the implications of globalization. We suggest that other possibilities
lie between these two alternatives, turning to Marilyn Friedman’s (1993) qual-
ified defence of partiality as a way to understand Scotland’s moral relationship
to its global neighbour, Malawi.
Noting that special attentiveness and responsiveness in close personal rela-
tionships is inevitable, Friedman points to ‘genuine impartiality’ as ‘humanly
unachievable’ (Friedman 1993: 37). But what of partiality towards our neigh-
bours? In a narrow interpretation (for Friedman) decisions on whether neigh-
bours need special moral attention depend ‘both literally and metaphorically,
on where we live’ (Friedman 1993: 56), suggesting that our neighbours (and
partiality towards them) extends only to those one knows – those in close
proximity in preference to ‘unknown strangers’ (Friedman 1993: 58). For know-
ing something of a person will render it more likely that she can be cared for
or assisted effectively. Nonetheless such ‘considerations modify, but they do
not override or even substantially diminish, the moral importance of social and
economic conditions in determining how practices of partiality should be orga-
nized society-wide’ (Friedman 1993: 58) and Friedman warns that partiality, if
not paralleled by the redistribution of wealth or resources, will likely lead to
‘the integrity and fulfilment of only some persons, but not all’ (Friedman 1993:
59). Friedman argues that the issue of global moral concern relates to ‘whether
concern for distant and unknown people is an immediate moral motivation of
the social self’ (Friedman 1993: 87) concluding, reluctantly, that there are moral
limits to the social self.
Where, then, does this leave our account of the possible meanings and
utility of the metaphor ‘the good global neighbour’? That Friedman notes
some reasons to favour the interests of ‘neighbours and acquaintances, even
those with resources, over the interests of unknown strangers’ (Friedman 1993:
57–8) returns us to the relationship, current and historical, between Scotland
and Malawi. Whilst the Scotland-Malawi agreement acknowledges a contin-
uing need for some ethical division in emphasizing its primary duty to use its
‘powers for the betterment of the people of Scotland’, complete partiality in
their favour would have considerable implications for those excluded and so
a form of expanded moral partiality is adopted. Although Malawi’s people are
geographically distant, a shared history and the reduction of distance occa-
sioned by globalization mean they are not unknown strangers. The agreement
eschews the polarities of a now ethically discredited Westphalian self-interest
and the practically impossible demands of an all-encompassing globalism.
Scotland’s duties of partiality enable it to behave as a good global neigh-
bour to a chosen partner with whom it enjoys ‘a long history of collaboration’

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(Scottish Government 2005a). Having made sense of the idea of Scotland as a 3 McKenzie points to ‘the
greatest paradox of
global neighbour to Malawi, we now turn our attention to a consideration of all’, that the British
the basis for such neighbourly partiality. Empire, far from being
a means of creating a
common British
national identity,
made it possible for
SCOTLAND AND MALAWI AS GLOBAL NEIGHBOURS nations like Scotland
to foster their own
The ‘long history of collaboration’ referred to in their 2005 Cooperation Agree- ethnic identity:
ment alludes to a complex association between Scotland and Malawi that defies ‘Perhaps the Empire
was more notable in
simplistic analysis and is imbricated in both Scotland’s colonial past and its con- preserving a plurality
temporary aspirations to a social democratic identity as a ‘responsible nation’ of British identities
(Scottish Government 2009: 26). While the agreement traces Scotland’s asso- than in welding
together a common
ciation with Malawi to David Livingstone, it is important to note that there is imperial tradition’
more to their history than friendship and collaboration and it also defies sim- (McKenzie 1998: 230).
plistic treatment as merely a history of colonialism, exploitation and oppression.
Scotland’s relationship with Malawi began with ‘David Livingstone’s appropri-
ation of East and Central Africa for Scotland’ in a role that cast him as a hero of
the British Empire (McKenzie 1998: 222). Scottish missionaries played a central
part in drawing the indigenous population of what was to become Malawi into
the British Empire and the colonial economy.
Yet the Scots missionaries who followed Livingstone played an ambigu-
ous role, in bringing the native population into the empire, in generating local
leadership for the independence struggle, and in their relationship with the
Malawian state after independence. Between the 1891 declaration of a British
protectorate over Malawi and the eventual emergence (in the 1990s) of critical
opposition from churches in Malawi to Hastings Banda’s authoritarian rule, ‘the
churches have often provided the most effective civil opposition to the extremes
of government. In the early colonial period this opposition came most actively
from the Scottish missionaries. . .’ (Thompson 2005: 575).
Although Scottish missionaries played a part in the British colonization of
Malawi, subsequently, from the early days of the Protectorate, the missionar-
ies came to be seen as siding with the natives against the administration and
voicing concerns about relations between European settlers and the indigenous
population (for example, opposing the imposition of a hut tax and the system
of forced labour, encouraging Africans in ideas above their station (Thompson
2005)). This was a history of opposition from missionary and local Christians
to unjust policies. Relationships with the authorities and white settlers were
sometimes tense, with missionaries perceived as siding with the Africans and
against European interests. Scottish mission schools were the pre-eminent
providers of education for the emerging African elite, some of them as ministers
of the local Presbyterian Church.
At the same time Scotland’s historical relationship with Malawi played its
part in the development of Scottish identity. These two small countries did
become associated through Scotland’s role in the creation of the British Empire
and so the partition of Africa by the major European powers. Scots were indeed
influential in all the colonies (McKenzie 1998), as explorers, soldiers, ministers,
traders, administrators, teachers, doctors and scientists. Glasgow and Dundee
were imperial cities, building the empire and profiting from it. Yet Scotland’s
role in this empire must be read too, in the context of the historical background
to her reciprocal partnership with Malawi, as a facet of her continuing quest
for a political identity,3 and in the geo-political context of devolution in which
sovereign borders are more fluid, defined by an expanded set of neighbourly

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4 Jefferess is strongly relationships that do not depend on referencing England as the significant,
critical of the proximate other.
examples of ‘global
citizenship’ he cites, But, in the twenty-first century, postcolonial and post-devolution context,
defending instead a there are now further questions to ask about the ‘good’ element in the idea
form of cosmopolitan of the good global neighbour. Having made some sense of the idea of moral
citizenship. We
acknowledge this partiality to a non-proximate but known neighbour associated with Scotland
issue, but do not through a history that has complex significance for both parties, what does it
engage with the
distinction in this
take, to be good? Can a history of imperialism and colonialism be transcended?
article. For our We attempt to address this big question by turning our attention in conclusion
purposes here, we towards the example of higher education, in relation to implicit conceptions of
treat global and
cosmopolitan as citizenship in public policy.
interchangeable.

ON BEING A GOOD GLOBAL NEIGHBOUR


Discerning an imperial project in the recent discourse of global citizenship4 ,
David Jefferess emphasizes the unequal relations that prevail between ‘those
who help and those who are in need of being helped’ (Jefferess 2008: 27). For
Jefferess, ‘as an ethics of action the global citizen is defined as one who helps
an unfortunate Other’ (Jefferess 2008: 28), identified as one in need of uplifting
and in receipt of benevolence, if not pity. This makes for an ethics that dis-
guises the unequal material circumstances between the active, privileged party
and the recipient of aid. This framework, furthermore, elides the imperial his-
tory that created current global relations. ‘ “Our” convenience continues to be
largely dependant on “their” exploitation’ (Jefferess 2008: 33). This line of cri-
tique may dismay those in pursuit of global friendship, but it should not be
read simply as a dismissal of initiatives like the Scotland-Malawi partnership.
While Jefferess warns of the pitfalls of global citizenship initiatives, which are
susceptible to the politics of benevolence, his version of cosmopolitanism offers
three anti-imperial criteria which, we suggest, are reflected in elements of the
Scotland-Malawi agreement: ‘commitment to diversity, self-awareness, and an
openness to new ideas’ (Jefferess 2008: 30).
We take the first of these, commitment to diversity, as a criterion that raises
the principles underpinning a relationship cast in terms of global neighbourli-
ness. While the agreement does not explicitly cast itself as about diversity as
such, it does espouse a wide set of principles, highlighting the aims of mutual
benefit, equality, reciprocity, tolerance, solidarity and respect. More specifically,
commitment to diversity is discernible in both the emphasis on the role of
Malawians in identifying needs, priorities and community-led development
strategies, and in the statement previously noted that ‘[Scotland’s partnership
with Malawi will] help support an inclusive society in Scotland’.
Acknowledging that its partnership with Malawi can help foster inclu-
siveness in Scotland can also be read as reflecting Jefferess’ second criterion
(openness to new ideas), which is referenced in the agreement as a ‘recipro-
cal partnership based upon increased collaboration, sharing experiences and
skills, an opportunity to learn from each other’ (Scottish Government 2005a).
This is also prominently addressed in the 2008 ‘Review of projects’ (Scottish
Government 2008b), which emphasizes complementarity between the ‘strong
technical expertise of the Scottish partner and a strong regional knowledge of
the Malawian partners with inputs encouraged from both during inception and
implementation phase’ (Scottish Government 2008b, executive summary, point
5: 28). The partners are cast as bringing equal but different knowledge to their
collaboration (Scottish Government 2008b: 4). The report argues that

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The notion of a mutual relationship rather than of a donor/recipient rela-


tionship is important for people in Malawi so that partnerships are not
seen to be one way. Furthermore, people in Scotland can learn from the
way in which their Malawi counterparts respond to the challenges in their
country and adapt technologies and techniques to meet needs.
(Scottish Government 2008b: 7)

We suggest that learning from partnership should be more expansively inter-


preted than this and will return to this observation in our conclusion. Yet such
statements promise to substantially address the kind of postcolonial critiques
to which partnerships like the one under discussion could be vulnerable. They
also address the third criterion under consideration: self-awareness. We have
already alluded to the need to take account, in assessing the idea of Scot-
land as good global neighbour, of this civic project as a facet of developing
Scotland’s sense of nationhood in a globalized world. Such self-awareness is
evident in the review’s stipulation that one of its policy-level outcome indica-
tors is ‘Scotland’s identity as a responsible nation’ (Scottish Government 2008b:
26). From the perspective of educational implications for Scotland and its citi-
zens, we find this third criterion the most significant and challenging. No doubt
self-awareness can be prompted by exchanges, twinning and the experience of
Scottish participation in development projects for those Scots who enjoy such
opportunities. But how demanding should we make this criterion? This ques-
tion takes us back to Universities Scotland as exponents of the actual metaphor
of the ‘good global neighbour’. The Scottish government’s interpretation of its
relationship with Malawi provides one expression of what it might mean to be a
‘good global neighbour’. We have largely endorsed this interpretation, though
we believe the metaphor has further potential as an idea whose imaginative
interpretation could yield further, radical implications. But now we turn to a
contrasting reading by Scotland’s HEIs (as expressed by their representative
body, Universities Scotland).
Identifying six challenges for the future in ‘Helping to Transform Scotland’,
Universities Scotland discusses the sixth challenge, ‘Scotland’s world standing’,
largely in terms of global competitiveness:

Increasing globalization means that it is essential that Scotland can


attract the best people to live and work here, and that it can export
successfully to the world’s fast-growing economies. Building Scotland’s
reputation as a home of enterprise, of learning and discovery, of cre-
ativity and innovation, of dynamic cities and environmental integrity,
is central to developing a strong international profile. Other key ele-
ments in the profile include establishing Scotland as a good global
neighbour, promoting Scotland’s culture, and enhancing mutual under-
standing and friendship between the people of Scotland and the rest of
the world.
(Universities Scotland 2007a: 11)

This statement encapsulates what we see as a severe tension at the heart


of Universities’ policy on internationalization, despite their avowed commit-
ment to a role in establishing Scotland as a good global neighbour, which sits
uncomfortably alongside the emphasis on developing Scotland’s export-driven
economy, and the place of foreign students in this enterprise.

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Pointing to Scotland’s success in growing its international student mar-


ket ‘especially given increasing competition’, Universities Scotland (2008a)
proclaims Scottish universities to be amongst ‘the most internationalized’,
well-placed to ‘compete at a world-class level to succeed within the new
environment’ of increasing ‘globalization of economies and societies’. Higher
education is one of the strongest contributors to Scotland’s international status,
according to Universities Scotland (n.d.), with over 27,480 international stu-
dents in Scotland comprising some 12 per cent of full-time students in Scottish
universities. Such international provision, added to non-credit bearing course
income and support grants, earned Scotland’s HEIs £189 million in 2005/2006
(Universities Scotland 2008a). In 2007, one in five students were from over-
seas, paying £181 million in international fees with ‘an estimated £172m fed
into Scotland’s economy’ and one job created for every three overseas students
(Universities Scotland 2008b).
With HEIs’ overall combined income set at some £2.1 billion in 2005/2006,
Universities Scotland is keen to point out that only around 51 per cent of this
was derived from core public funding. This is because HEIs have diversified
their sources of income, raising ‘almost half themselves on the strength of their
performance and reputation both nationally and internationally in the form of
international tuition fees, research contracts, consultancy and other services’
(Universities Scotland 2008c). Generating ‘nine per cent of Scotland’s service
sector export earnings which makes it larger than Scotland’s land, water and air
transport industries’ (Universities Scotland 2008c), there is every indication that
in a tight fiscal environment the sector will strive to increase its income from
international students at a time in which public sector financing is predicted to
be austere. Accordingly a recent Universities Scotland paper, ‘Innovating our
way out of recession’, notes that ‘universities should be recognized as the sev-
enth key industry sector given their priority position within the government
economic strategy and in recognition of their contribution to the country’s
economic, cultural and social wellbeing’ (Universities Scotland 2009: 9). That
report suggests that universities might be seen as ‘a £2 billion plus business,
spending over £500m per annum on goods and services and directly employ-
ing approximately 34,000 people’ stressing that they will ‘continue to work hard
to grow international student recruitment, and with support, are well-placed to
do so’ (Universities Scotland 2009: 9).
Against that backdrop of looking to overseas students as revenue sources
rather than neighbours, Universities Scotland (2008a) points to ‘centuries of
experience in developing effective international partnerships’ although this
claim is immediately followed by references to such partnerships’ role in pro-
viding a ‘a strong attraction-factor internationally, whether that is attracting
international students and companies to Scotland or companies, governments
and organizations overseas seeking our services’. Whilst Universities Scotland
claim that higher education ‘offers, like no other sector, the opportunity for
the internationalization of Scotland as a nation’ that internationalization is
predominantly uni-directional, flowing into Scotland as revenue from exports
of ‘more than £400 million worth of services’ (Universities Scotland 2008a).
It is, however, noted that work overseas includes that in developing nations
in which higher education initiatives contribute to capacity-building in sup-
port of public services with international engagement helping ‘to empower
people to facilitate change as well as working in partnerships that have a long-
term sustainable impact’ (Universities Scotland 2008a). In this respect, and
combined with student mobility programmes, we are told that the Scottish

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higher-education sector helps ‘to further countries’ ability to build and increase 5 Whilst our own university
capacity by transferring skills, knowledge and expertise as tools for academics makes much of its
improving position in
and students alike’(Universities Scotland 2008a) in its work with over half of national and
the world’s nations. Additionally, universities delivered a third of all projects international league
from the Scottish government’s International Development Fund in 2007. Such tables, its 2006–2010
Learning and Teaching
activity may well go some way to establishing a more neighbourly, less one- strategy (University of
sided economic relationship between Scotland and its global neighbours, but Glasgow 2009) is focused
as much on providing an
the rhetoric of revenue generation is predominant. Even when diversity is internationally relevant
alluded to, it tends to be expressed with a competitive edge. A Universities learning experience to
Scotland report on ‘Wellbeing Scotland’ highlighted the contribution of ‘the our students by providing
them with learning
diversity of nationalities within Scotland’s student population’ with its 15.6 per opportunities abroad, by
cent of Scotland’s students of non-UK domicile giving Scotland ‘a greater pro- ensuring diversity of the
portion of international students than anywhere else in the UK’ (Universities student and staff
populations, by
Scotland 2007a: 7).5 developing an
We have discussed elsewhere (Enslin and Hedge 2008) the implications for internationally relevant
curriculum, and through
global justice of the neo-liberal imperatives that drive the ‘internationaliza- engagement and mutual
tion’ of UK universities and we recognize the fiscal pressures that impel their development with
internationalization strategies to set so much store by the contribution of inter- strategic partners around
the world as it is on
national fees to their prosperity. On the evidence considered here imperatives inward recruitment.
to compete threaten to undermine Scottish universities’ aspiration to be good Noteworthy, here, is the
global neighbours. We question the extent to which HEIs in Scotland collec- university’s aspiration to
‘provide graduates
tively adopt an interpretation of the ‘good global neighbour’ that accords with equipped for global
the Scotland-Malawi agreement’s sensitivity to Jefferess’ cautionary criteria. In citizenship’. So, too, that
strategy seeks to
sum, we find an emphasis on national interests that sits uncomfortably with the ‘increase the university’s
post-Westphalian ethic considered earlier as a feature of global neighbourli- reach and standing in
ness. Furthermore, we fear an interpretation of the value of diversity tied too learning and teaching
internationally, and
narrowly to this preoccupation with national and institutional economic com- develop the university as
petitiveness. These factors prompt doubt about the consequent extent to which a culturally diverse
our HEIs can be genuinely open to new ideas of the kind likely to result from learning community’.
The fiscal continues to
pursuing the meaning of ‘good global neighbour’ (beyond its most immedi- drive but is explicitly
ate neo-liberal appeal). Having said this, we hasten to note that many of the supplemented, at
institutional level, by
Scotland-Malawi partnership’s projects are based in Scottish universities, as concerns for global
well as other sectors in Scottish civil society. Nor do we doubt that diversity citizenship and attention
policies and innovative curriculum development in individual HEIs promote to ways in which the
diversity occasioned by
elements of good global neighbourliness of the types raised here. internationalization
It is in regard to Jefferess’ most challenging criterion – self-awareness – that might benefit home
our gravest concerns occur. For a more reflective understanding of attunement students.

to the demands of being a good global neighbour, and indeed of educating 6 The authors
acknowledge the
citizens about its meaning, would surely temper Universities Scotland’s cele- comments received
bration of the sector’s global competitiveness; given how much this rests on when an earlier
income from international students, many from countries facing development version of this article
was presented at the
challenges similar to Malawi’s, in an unjust global system whose rules have 16th International
been fixed by rich nations to ensure their own continuing competitiveness. Of Conference on Learning,
all institutions we would look to universities for deep and difficult reflection on Barcelona, 1–4 July
2009.
the very idea of what it is to be a good global neighbour, to recognize the oppor-
tunities to ‘learn more about ourselves. . .looking at ourselves in the lenses of
the other’ (Nussbaum 1996: 11). As well as seeking the views of Malawians
on their partnership with Scotland, this could start with Paul Standish’s sug-
gestion that the otherness of the neighbour might usefully be conceptualized
by acknowledging our own strangeness (Standish 2007). In this way the idea
of the good global neighbour is ultimately an educational issue that prompts
radical reflection on what it means to be a global citizen.6

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There is much scope for taking up the idea of the good global neigh-
bour in citizenship education. Scotland’s vision of itself as a responsible nation
implies an approach to citizenship education that loosens, but need by no
means eliminate, national domestic commitments to include others beyond
traditional territorial boundaries. Yet its partiality to Malawi as a chosen partner
addresses potential objections to education for global citizenship by interpret-
ing it in terms of modified partiality instead of an impractical globalism that
demands that young people take on a potentially daunting responsibility for all
of humanity.
Apart from suggesting an obvious place for such approaches to citizen-
ship education as twinning schools and exchanges, there are wider curricular
implications, pointing to the importance of political, economic and cultural
geography as well as the history of colonialism to foster understanding of the
context of such reciprocal relationships. This approach to citizenship education
would, however, not sit easily with an ethos of education for the global com-
petitiveness of the domestic economy. Given the inequalities between Scotland
and Malawi noted at the outset, Jefferess’ criteria have radical implications
for ensuring citizenship education in Scotland that avoids the pitfalls of a
neo-colonialist politics of benevolence. Besides the crucial demands of a com-
mitment to diversity, self-awareness and openness to new ideas, if reciprocity
is genuinely pursued it would require equalization of opportunities for youth in
both countries to access citizenship education. Reciprocity that extends beyond
new citizen identities and ethics prompts us to ask if equality of provision is not
also essential.

REFERENCES
Dower, N. (2003), An Introduction to Global Citizenship, Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Enslin, P. and Hedge, N. (2008), ‘International students, export earnings and
the demands of global justice’, Ethics and Education, 3: 2, pp. 107–119.
Forrest, R. (2009), ‘Who cares about neighbourhoods?’ International Social
Science Journal, 59: 191, pp. 129–141.
Fraser, N. (2008), Scales of Justice: Re-imagining Political Space in a Globalizing
World, New York: Columbia University Press.
Friedman, M. (1993), What Are Friends For? New York: Cornell University Press.
Jefferess, D. (2008), ‘Global citizenship and the cultural politics of benevolence’,
Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices, 2: 1, pp. 27–36.
Malawi Government (2008), Malawi Millennium Development Goals Report,
Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, http://www.undp.org.
mw/images/publications_and_reports/mdgs/Millennium_Development_
Goals_2008.pdf. Accessed 7 December 2009.
McCall Smith, A. (2005), ‘Scotland and Malawi – Building Hope for the Future’,
Scottish Government News Archive, 1 November, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/
News/News-Extras/malawi. Accessed December 7 2009.
McKenzie, J. M. (1998), ‘Empire and National Identities the Case of
Scotland’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series: 8,
pp. 215–231.
McLuhan, M. [and Fiore, Q.] (1967), The Medium is the Massage, New York:
Bantam.
Moellendorf, D. (2002), Cosmopolitan Justice, Boulder: Westview Press.

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Nussbaum, M. (1996), ‘Patriotism and cosmopolitanism’, in J. Cohen (ed.),


For Love of Country: Debating the limits of patriotism, Boston: Beacon Press,
pp. 3–17.
Osler, A. and Starkey, H. (2005), Changing Citizenship: Democracy and Inclusion
in Education, New York: Open University Press.
Paasi, A. (2004) ‘Place and region: looking through the prism of scale’, Progress
in Human Geography, 28: 4, pp. 536–546.
Pogge, T. (2002), World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities
and Reforms, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Scheuerman, W. (2006), ‘Globalization’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stan-
ford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2008 edition, htttp://plato.stanford.edu/
archives/fall2008/entries/globalization/. Accessed 7 December 2009.
Scottish Government (2005a), Co-operation Agreement between Scotland and
Malawi, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/International-
Relations/internationaldevelopment/malawi/agreement. Accessed 7
December 2009.
Scottish Government (2005b), Report of the Conference ‘Malawi After Gleneagles:
A Commission For Africa Case-Study’, The Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh,
4–5 November, http://www.scotland-malawipartnership.org/documents/
7-MalawiConferenceReportwithphotos.doc. Accessed 7 December 2009.
Scottish Government (2005c), Malawi Economic Brief: May 2005, http://www.
scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/06/09132146/21482. Accessed 7 Decem-
ber 2009.
Scottish Government (2008a), International Development Policy, http://
www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/International-Relations/
internationaldevelopment/internationaldevelopmentp. Accessed 7 Decem-
ber 2009.
Scottish Government (2008b), Independent Review of Scottish Government Inter-
national Development Fund Projects Focused on Malawi, Edinburgh: Scottish
Government Social Research, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/
2009/01/16092515/10. Accessed 7 December 2009.
Scottish Government (2009), Malawi Development Programme,
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/International-Relations/
internationaldevelopment/idffundingguidance/malawidevprog. Accessed 7
December 2009.
Scottish Government (n.d.), Introduction – Scotland’s Links with Malawi,
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/International-Relations/
internationaldevelopment/malawi/introduction. Accessed 7 December
2009.
Standish, P. (2007), ‘Who Is My Neighbor? Skepticism and the Claims of Alter-
ity’, Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, 34th Annual
Meeting, Columbia, USA, 8–10 March, http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/
mleldrid/SAAP/USC/DP14.html. Accessed 7 December 2009.
Thompson, T. J. (2005), ‘Presbyterians and Politics in Malawi: A century of
interaction’, Round Table, 94: 382, pp. 575–87.
United Nations (2009), Human Development Report 2009 – Malawi, Human
Development Index (2007 figures) http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/
country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_MWI.html. Accessed 7 December 2009.
United Nations (2008), Millennium Development Goals, http://www.undp.org.
mw/images/publications_and_reports/mdgs/Millennium_Development_
Goals_2008.pdf. Accessed 7 December 2009.

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Universities Scotland (2007a), Helping to Transform Scotland – 2007 Spending


Review: Universities Scotland’s Case, http://www.universities-scotland.ac.uk/
uploads/publications/Transforming%20Scotland%202007.pdf. Accessed 7
December 2009.
Universities Scotland (2007b), Wellbeing Scotland – The contribution of higher
education to Scotland’s wellbeing, http://www.universities-scotland.ac.uk/
uploads/publications/Wellbeing%20Scotland%202007.pdf. Accessed 7
December 2009.
Universities Scotland (2008a), ‘International Briefing’, http://www.universities-
scotland.ac.uk/uploads/briefings/International%20Briefing.pdf. Accessed 7
December 2009.
Universities Scotland (2008b), ‘Increase in international students’, News
Archive, http://www.universities-scotland.ac.uk/index.php?mact=News,
cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=34&cntnt01returnid=23. Accessed 7
December 2009.
Universities Scotland (2008c), Briefing: What is higher education?, http://www.
universities-scotland.ac.uk/uploads/briefings/What%20is%20higher%
20education%20brief%20NEW.pdf. Accessed 7 December 2009.
Universities Scotland (2009), Innovating our way out of recession, http://www.
universities-scotland.ac.uk/uploads/publications/Innovating%20our%
20way%20out%20of%20recession.pdf. Accessed 7 December 2009.
Universities Scotland (n.d.), ‘Our Contribution’, http://www.universities-
scotland.ac.uk/index.php?page=our-contribution. Accessed 7 December
2009.
University of Glasgow (2009), ‘Learning and Teaching Strategy’, http://www.
gla.ac.uk/services/planning/staff/public/learningandteachingstrategy/.
Accessed 7 December 2009.
Whitehead, M. (2003) ‘Love thy neighbourhood – rethinking the politics of
scale and Walsall’s struggle for neighbourhood democracy’, Environment
and Planning A, 35: 2, pp. 277–300.
Williams, J. (2003), ‘Territorial Borders, International Ethics and Geography: Do
Good Fences Still Make Good Neighbours?’, Geopolitics, 8: 2, pp. 25–46.

SUGGESTED CITATION
Enslin, P. and Hedge, N. (2010), ‘A good global neighbour: Scotland, Malawi
and global citizenship’ Citizenship Teaching and Learning 6: 1, pp. 91–105, doi:
10.1386/ctl.6.1.91_1

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Penny Enslin is Chair of Education at the University of Glasgow and Emer-
itus Professor at the School of Education, University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg. Her research interests are; education for democratic citizenship;
gender and education; liberalism; higher education; deliberative democracy;
cosmopolitanism; peace education; social justice.
Nicki Hedge is the Director of Learning Innovation in the Faculty of Educa-
tion, University of Glasgow. She is responsible for courses in advanced research
methods at doctoral level and teaches mainly on the Doctorate in Education

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programme. Nicki’s research interests and activity centre on internationaliza-


tion and inclusion, gender in education, and the role of affect and emotions in
learning and teaching.
Contact:
Professor Penny Enslin, Faculty of Education, University of Glasgow, St.
Andrew’s Building, 11 Eldon Street, Glasgow G3 6NH.
E-mail: P.Enslin@educ.gla.ac.uk
Dr Nicki Hedge, Faculty of Education, University of Glasgow, St. Andrew’s
Building, 11 Eldon Street, Glasgow G3 6NH.
E-mail: n.hedge@educ.gla.ac.uk

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CTL 6 (1) pp. 107–115 © Intellect Ltd 2010

Citizenship Teaching and Learning


Volume 6 Number 1
© Intellect Ltd 2010. Book Reviews. English language. doi: 10.1386/ctl.6.1.107_5

BOOK REVIEWS

Books relevant to the scope of the journal are welcome for review at any time.
Please send one copy of the book you would like to be reviewed to the reviews
editor Professor Mitsuharu Mizuyama at the following address:

Kyoto University of Education,


1, Fukakusa-Fujinomori, Fushimi, Kyoto, Japan, 612-8522

If you are interested in becoming a reviewer for Citizenship Teaching and Learn-
ing, please contact Mitsuharu Mizuyama by e-mail: mizuyama@kyokyo-u.ac.jp

ENGAGING YOUNG PEOPLE IN CIVIC LIFE,


JAMES YOUNISS AND PETER LEVINE (EDS), (2009)
1, Nashville, USA: Vanderbilt University Press, 304 pp.,
ISBN-13: 978-0826516503 Paperback, £29.95

Reviewed by Liz West, University of Cumbria

This is a thought-provoking book. It is collection of articles that grew out of


meetings regarding youth civic engagement in the US between researchers,
policymakers and professional advocates held at the Catholic University of
America, Washington DC. The editors make clear that the meetings sought
to define how ‘evidence could be connected to specific recommendations and
how best to place research and policy ideas before the public and decision mak-
ers with the power to influence strategies and programs’ (2009: 2). As such,
there is a clear sense of the book being a call for action.

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The first section focuses upon research on civic engagement in US schools


while the second section focuses upon engaging young people beyond school
programmes. The first chapter starts by countering ‘myths’ regarding youth
participation and argues for an approach that emphasizes ‘youth’s potential
instead of their problems’ (2009: 5). Carmen Sirianni and Diana Marginean
Schor’s research on how city governments in Hampton, Virginia and San
Francisco sought to promote youth civic participation illustrates how crucial
this shift in perspective was to initiatives. Chapter 2 (by Joseph Kahne and
Ellen Middaugh) synthesizes a research project into how schools can counter
inequalities in civic engagement amongst urban populations. Their research
concludes that far from challenging inequalities linked to socio-economic sta-
tus, academic attainment and familial educational achievement, schools might
be accentuating these inequalities through the unequal provision of opportu-
nities for civic engagement. They argue for a more inclusive approach but note
that this goes beyond the remit of schools alone, which presages the chapter
by James Gimpel and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz. This notes that experience
of institutional injustice serves to weaken any inclination to participate: the
authors therefore call for a redistribution of resources and a commitment to
rooting out corrupt practices in order to ‘convey the message that participation
is worthwhile’ (2009: 98).
The third section offers comparative studies of citizenship education and
civic engagement programmes beyond the US, notably in Western Europe
and Canada. This diversity of contexts provides a stimulus for reflection on
how we define ‘civic engagement’ and how context, political constitutions and
cultural norms influence definitions of and sites for youth participation. For
example, Henry Milner’s review of young people’s electoral participation in
Canada and Scandinavia notes that the definition of ‘civic engagement’ dif-
fers according to context. Milner distinguishes between ‘civic engagement and
electoral participation’ (2009: 188), and argues that the former is highlighted
in US studies in contrast to the other countries. The third section brings the
focus back onto schools and education for democracy and citizenship with Marc
Hooghe and Ellen Claes’ concise comparative review of policies followed by the
Netherlands, Belgium, and France. In this section, David Kerr and Elizabeth
Cleaver also provide an overview of the history of recent citizenship education
initiatives in England.
The diversity of contributions is one feature that could make this book
of value to students and tutors on programmes of educational studies and
youth work, as well as those interested in the development of citizenship
education. Read as a whole, the reader is prompted to ask further questions
about the studies. For example, it would be interesting to explore the corre-
lation between participation in the youth commissions examined in Sirianni
and Schor’s study and the characteristics of those young people most likely
to participate in civic action as outlined in other chapters. It would also be
useful to interrogate further the argument by Gimpel and Pearson-Markowitz
regarding the importance of developing integrated facilities including hous-
ing. Non-US readers would no doubt find further clarification of the details of
educational pathways, such as the AP programme, helpful. The editors note
the optimism about youth participation in the wake of the 2008 presidential
primaries and this book poses the challenges and opportunities that are now
presented.

Contact: Liz.West@cumbria.ac.uk

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KNOWING OUR PLACE: CHILDREN TALKING ABOUT POWER,


IDENTITY AND CITIZENSHIP,
JUDITH GILL AND SUE HOWARD, (2009)
Camberwell, Vic., Australia: ACER Press, 186 pp.,
ISBN-13: 978-0864318725, Paperback, £36.50

Reviewed by Libby Tudball, Monash University

This is an important book for many reasons. First, the book represents the prod-
uct of a long period of collaborative research undertaken by authors, Judith
Gill and her late colleague Dr Sue Howard, and provides a lasting testament
to their view that educational researchers must rigorously listen to and take
into account the voices and experiences of children. Together they examine the
ways in which children think and speak about their world, and provide rich
insights into questions of citizenship through their data analysis (and their dis-
cussions in relation to existing related theories). They also add considerably to
our theoretical understanding of how children come to a sense of belonging in
their community of nation, family, classroom and school. Second, as Professor
Cedric Cullingford writes in the foreword to the book, the research ‘pays due
regard to the ideas of children and the influences on them’ (2009: vii) and pro-
vides powerful insights into how ‘children understand the concept “otherness”,
of the clashes between people and the assertiveness of the self against what is
defined as different in other people’ (2009: ix). Third, issues of power, iden-
tity and citizenship in Australia have been under-researched from Australian
young people’s perspectives, yet the ideas and questions explored also have
universal relevance, particularly in a time when values and education for active
and informed citizenship are receiving increased attention across the world, as
core elements of school education.
The authors agree that while the fundamental aim of the book is to identify
and describe aspects of children’s thinking as they grapple with their develop-
ing sense of being in the world, and how they feel about their own country,
the findings from their research provide implications for citizenship education.
It is made clear that children learn about society through the structures of the
school, they learn about power through observations of teachers and principals
in hierarchical positions, and they learn about rules, rights and responsibilities.
They also learn through their peers. Cullingford notes that in giving children a
voice, the authors ‘provide a liberating experience that bolsters their resilience
but, importantly, it also uncovers the fact that children already have a strong
sense of reality’ (2009: x).
Knowing our place also provides interesting analyses of the open and the
hidden experiences, and the unofficial and personal experiences of schooling
for children, where real notions of citizenship are developed. In the chapters,
selected experiences from data drawn from over 400 young people in South
Australia present the children as ‘knowers’. The authors see the children ‘not
[as] empty vessels waiting to be filled with the relevant facts, but as young
people actively engage in constructing their understanding of how their society
works’ (2009: 3). The insights are a joy to read, and the reader is easily engaged
in the children’s views and the authors’ analyses. For example, in Chapter 1
they describe how children’s constructions of power, politics and democratic

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citizenship are like the impact of a pebble thrown into a pond, which creates
ever increasing concentric circles as the children develop their perceptions and
understanding. It is fascinating to see (in the early chapters) how much can be
learned from two 5 year-olds, and throughout the book, through so many other
voices.
Other chapters raise questions about the importance of schools providing
opportunities for young people to explore what it means to be Australian, and
their own identity, but also to look beyond the nation from an early age, and to
be given opportunities to ‘think globally’ as citizens of the world.
This book should be widely read in the educational community by teach-
ers, teacher educators and policymakers, and also by parents. The findings in
Chapter 4 show that schools can function as a bridge between what is learned
in the home and the wider community. In Chapter 5, an interesting discus-
sion is provided about the critical importance of place and space in children’s
constructions of the world. For educators, one finding is that there should be
further development of school curriculum related to knowledge of society and
culture. This will enable children to develop their own views on social issues,
and to empower them to develop better understanding of Australia as a socio-
political entity with a past and a future, in an increasingly globalizing world.
Chapter 9 notes that children relish the opportunity to engage in discussion
of real ideas. In the final chapter, the authors make the case for continuing
research in the adolescent years in issues of power, identity, community and
citizenship. This book provides powerful insights that add to our knowledge
about how children learn, what they know, and how much children can tell us
about their learning as young citizens.

Contact: Libby.Tudball@Education.monash.edu.au

CITIZENSHIP: A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION,


RICHARD BELLAMY (2008)
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 133 pp.,
ISBN 978-0-19-280253-8, Paperback, £7.99 $11.95

Reviewed by Shigeo Kodama, The University of Tokyo

In these days of globalization and post-industrialization, public education faces


two different social pressures: the pre-eminence of the market initiated by
neo-liberalism on the one hand, and the rise of technocratic and bureau-
cratic control defended by the old type of social democracy on the other. It
is at this point that a new kind of citizenship education is sought for the pur-
pose of breaking down the dichotomy of neo-liberalism and old-type social
democracy.
In this book, Richard Bellamy tries to break the dichotomy by highlighting
the irreducibly political nature of citizenship. According to Bellamy, previous
general introductions to citizenship have a tendency to suffer from focusing
narrowly on the social, moral, or legal aspects of citizenship at the expense
of its political dimension. This book is an attempt to reintroduce the political
dimension of citizenship.

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For example, neo-liberals regard the free market as sufficient to ensure


equal rights, whereas social democrats are more likely to wish to see a pub-
licly supported social security system for assuring the equality of rights. As a
result of such a political disagreement, ‘the rights of citizenship have to be seen,
somewhat paradoxically perhaps, as subject to the decisions of citizens them-
selves’ (2008: 14). Bellamy calls this paradoxical aspect of citizenship the ‘right
to have rights’.
This paradox, Bellamy says, rests on our rights as citizens being dependent
on exercising our basic citizenship right to political participation in cooperation
with our fellow citizens. By focusing on the paradox and political dimension
of citizenship, this book makes it possible to see citizenship not as a static,
ready-made concept, but as a more dynamic idea.
In that sense, it could be said that this book poses a very interesting posi-
tion concerning the political thought of citizenship: a position which is similar
to that of Hannah Arendt, who, in her The Origins of Totalitarianism, equated the
‘abstractedness’ of ‘Men’s Rights’ with the concrete situation of those popula-
tions of refugees that had fled all over Europe after World War I (Rancière 2004).
Like Arendt, Bellamy poses a polemical statement against the static theory of
human rights.
This book is useful and suggestive not only for people who are researching
the theory of citizenship, but also for teachers and general readers who are
interested in citizenship education all over the world.

REFERENCE
Rancière, J. (2004), ‘Who Is the Subject of the Rights of Man?’ The South Atlantic
Quarterly, 103: 2/3.

Contact: skodama.p.u-tokyo.ac.jp

THE INTERNET AND DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP:


THEORY, PRACTICE AND POLICY,
STEPHEN COLEMAN AND JAY G. BLUMLER (2009)
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 232 pp.,
ISBN: 978-0521520782, Paperback, £14.99

Reviewed by Ian Davies, University of York

This is an extremely good book that will be of interest and value to all those
who have a professional and/or academic interest in citizenship education. It
is well organized, fluently written, based on cogent incisive arguments with
supporting evidence and sensible, practical recommendations that aim at the
achievement of a better democracy. The authors are well-respected figures. It is
the best book I have read for quite some time: it is essential reading.
What is the central argument? ‘The premise of this book is that democ-
racy is in trouble and that the Internet possesses vulnerable potential to
improve public communication’ (2009: 166). The authors suggest that the
seeming disenchantment of citizens with the processes and institutions of the
democratic state need to be recognized and action should be taken. In a context

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in which relationships between politicians and citizens are in flux and polit-
ical communication is currently weak, digital media, the authors argue, have
the potential to improve public communications and enrich democracy. The
Internet is seen as ‘an empty space of power which is both vulnerable to state-
centric (and, for that matter corporate) strategies and open to occupation by
citizens who have few other spaces available for them to express themselves in
constructive democratic ways’ (2009: 9).
Coleman and Blumler are not unaware of the challenges that any attempt
to promote deliberation will face. There are potential problems, both funda-
mentally, with deliberation as a form of political engagement, and in relation to
the process of facilitating deliberation through the use of new technologies. In
relation to deliberation itself, Coleman and Blumler are not starry-eyed ideal-
ists. They recognize the arguments that highlight the difficulties of democratic
engagement: the numbers of citizens in any modern polity are large and hard
to reach; individuals may not always be able to deal with complex problems;
outcomes will not satisfy all, and so on. In this situation it seems risky to take
political involvement and engagement seriously (as opposed to continuing to
use the rhetoric of democracy in order to merely continue with the exercise of
power by elites in representative democracy). In the face of these and other
arguments, the authors declare that ‘we are sceptical about the claims and
demands of deliberative democracy. We are happy to settle for a more deliber-
ative democracy’ (2009: 38). This is an attractively realistic position, from which
they explain that they wish to encourage and take seriously forms of public talk.
They feel that governments should operate on the basis that there is room for
discussion to feed into policy formation, legislation, policy scrutiny and post-
legislative review.
They also recognize that new technologies do not offer a panacea. They
know that potentially new political processes that might be associated with
engagement through new technologies could simply be absorbed into exist-
ing hierarchical environments. Perhaps there is little that is, in itself, new in
supposedly ‘new’ technologies (although the scale of involvement and the pro-
cesses that allow it may, if things go well, not have been seen before). It is
possible that new technologies are still more available to those who occupy
privileged positions in society and even if computers were more evenly dis-
tributed than they are now it would still be those who already have political
skills who would make most use of them. It might become an initiative that is
more libertarian rather than liberal. But all of this is directly or indirectly rec-
ognized and the argument for the ‘vulnerable potential’ of the Internet to be
recognized by innovative policy action is very attractive.
In order to achieve their goals the authors suggest that ‘a key aim of this
book is to argue for an institutional innovation that could nurture critical citi-
zenship and radical energy, while at the same time opening up representative
governance to a new respect for public discourse and deliberation’ (2009: 3).
This initiative turns out to be an online civic commons that they have argued
for in previous publications. The proposal is here outlined and developed, in
part, by reference to recently gathered empirical data and also by responses to
those who have commented upon their earlier positions. Such an online civic
commons would allow for several key shifts. They want virtual co-presence
(between politicians and citizens and between citizens), networking across dif-
ferent contexts, and improved dialogue in which people explain their own
positions. This is to be a finely balanced initiative: an online community that
is publicly funded but politically independent, radically transformative but not

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idealistically utopian, combining virtues of amateurism with professionalism


(2009: 175–6). It does not intend to repeat the failures of ‘e-democracy from
above’ (in which political elites simply look for support) but to avoid prob-
lems faced by the leaders of some radically intentioned initiatives (which have
looked for e-democracy from below).
There are some issues and omissions. No book can deal with everything and
I looked for more than the passing references given here about education. Cole-
man wrote a very good appendix to the ‘Crick Report’, which introduced the
key ideas about citizenship education prior to the introduction of the national
curriculum for citizenship into England and Wales, and so there is some very
relevant experience in education to draw from. But beyond a very general con-
cern with public education (and what would not come into that category?) this
book will not supply any real help to professionals looking to assist with the
development of political literacy. Perhaps implicitly a point is being made about
the need for public funding for an initiative that is not restricted by the very
many disadvantages of state education?
There is a sense, in this generally very well organized book, of perhaps too
many lists of ideas with outlines of potential advantages and disadvantages.
Connected to this is a feeling that some of the suggestions are phrased in ways
that could brook very little disagreement (and this can be seen in some of the
statements referred to above, which may be read by some as wanting to have
your cake and eat it too).
But these are weak criticisms. The authors are not educationalists and this is
not a book about education and certainly not a book about schooling. They are
tremendously impressive as they anticipate criticisms and develop persuasive,
carefully phrased and evidence-based arguments. Their well-written work is
aimed at the achievement of a very good cause. They want a
transition from a counting democracy where citizens are valued only as
aggregated voters to an accounting democracy in which before and after
voting people’s accounts of who they are, how they live and what they
want are accorded fundamental political value.
(2009: 41)

Who could disagree?


This is a very readable academic text with contemporary political resonance
that will have an impact. Excellent.

Contact: id5@york.ac.uk

SOCIAL STUDIES TODAY: RESEARCH AND PRACTICE,


WALTER PARKER (ED.) (2009)
New York and London: Routledge/Taylor Francis Group, 280 pp.,
ISBN-13: 978-0415992879, Paperback, £23.99

Reviewed by Elizabeth Washington, University of Florida

Walter Parker’s edited book offers a series of essays on some of the most press-
ing current issues in social studies. His stated purpose for the book is to assist

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school practitioners, policymakers, and researchers to take a fresh look at these


issues and to think through some of the field’s most intriguing questions, with
the help of some of the field’s top scholars. The book’s setting is primarily the
United States; however, Parker argues that the book can be useful elsewhere in
that it provides points of contrast and comparison as well as by addressing a
number of universal questions.
Parker sets the stage for the book’s thought-provoking discussion by
asserting the following:

• Research and practice are ‘interdependent and on an equal footing’ (2010:


ix), and together they equal learning.
• Social studies are at the heart of any good curriculum, from the earliest
grades onward, ‘because it is where students learn to see and interpret
the world’ (2010: 3); students who do not have access to social studies are
‘intellectually and socially disabled’ (2010: 4).
• Social studies means different things to different people – thus the con-
trasting models of ‘social science’ and ‘social education’.
• Social studies has been a lightning rod in the ‘culture wars’ that have taken
place in many US schools, where controversies grow from disagreement
over whether schools should change or preserve the status quo, who should
decide what is taught, and what should be included in the curriculum.
• Social studies have suffered as the result of the school accountability and
high-stakes testing movement that began in the late twentieth century.

The book’s 23 chapters are organized within five thematic sections. Section one
includes five chapters that focus on the purpose of social studies. First, William
Stanley explores the issue of whether social studies educators should transmit
(preserve) the social order or transform it through criticism. Second, Ronald
Evans provides a useful historical overview of the American ‘social studies wars’
from the 1916 Report of the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Edu-
cation to the ‘revival’ of history in the curriculum during the 1980s. Next, Keith
Barton and Linda Levstik wrestle with the ongoing question of why some
teachers engage in historical interpretation with their students, while others
expect their students to reproduce historical information. In the fourth chapter,
S. G. Grant describes how American teachers are responding to high-stakes
testing mandates. Finally, Bruce King, Fred Newmann, and Dana Carmichael
explore the implications of authentic intellectual work for knowledge construc-
tion as well as for the research and policy arenas, and they provide examples of
what AIW might look like in students’ academic work.
Section two, ‘Perspective Matters,’ comprises four chapters: essential prin-
ciples of education for diversity by James Banks and seven co-authors (who
are all members of the Multicultural Education Consensus Panel); culturally
responsive instruction by Kathryn Au; the status of gays and lesbians in the
social studies curriculum by Stephen Thornton; and the relationships between
social identity (e.g. race, gender) and learning national history by Terrie Epstein
and Jessica Schiller.
The chapters in Section three delve into current issues within specific social
disciplines. Sam Wineburg and his co-authors discuss their research on the
influence of popular culture – specifically, the influence of the film Forrest
Gump – on students’ historical understanding, especially with regard to both
collective memory and collective occlusion. Bruce Vansledright addresses the

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questions of what it means to think historically and how one teaches histori-
cal thinking. Within the field of geography education, Sarah Bednarz, Gillian
Acheson, and Robert Bednarz examine ‘best practices’ that teachers can use
to help develop students’ map skills and spatial- thinking abilities – in other
words, their ‘carto-literacy’. Jere Brophy and Janet Alleman’s chapter on the
teaching of cultural universals – e.g. shelter, clothing, food etc.– in the early
grades argues that children can systematically build their knowledge of how our
social system works and enhance their decision-making abilities. Joseph Kahne
and Ellen Middaugh offer a model of a high quality civic education curricu-
lum and discuss how it can be made accessible to all students. Finally, Simone
Schweber tackles the difficult topic of ‘Holocaust fatigue’ in today’s schools
and offers suggestions for teaching the Holocaust in a way that generates deep
understandings of the subject matter.
In ‘Global Matters,’ the fourth section, Merry Merryfield and Masataka
Kasai explore how teachers are responding to globalization; Margaret Smith
Crocco uses the case of the novel Shabanu to show how literature can be used
to teach about Muslim women; Ross Dunn describes competing and conflict-
ing models of teaching world history; and Carole Hahn reports on her research
on teaching civic engagement in Denmark, Germany, the US, the Netherlands,
and England.
The final section, appropriately named ‘Puzzles’, explores such questions
as whether discussion in social studies is worth the trouble (Diana Hess), what
constrains meaningful social studies teaching (Catherine Cornbleth), what con-
nection exists between curriculum and instruction (Avner Segall), and whether
tolerance can be taught (Patricia Avery).
Parker concludes by weaving together the myriad strands of the book into
a compelling model for ‘a proper curriculum for democracy’ that ‘requires the
study and practice of democracy’ (2010: 258). He identifies the key resources
social studies educators need and indeed already have, as well as the three
actions that he considers key to achieving this goal. In precise, elegant lan-
guage, he makes the case for orienting the social studies curriculum toward the
cultivation of ‘enlightened political engagement’. Social studies today: Research
and practice is a landmark contribution to the field as well as essential reading
for policymakers, scholars, and practitioners alike.

Contact: yeager.proteachprof@gmail.com

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June 16, 2010 9:52 Intellect/CTL Page-116 CTL-6-1-Finals
NOTES FOR AUTHORS
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Ratcliffe, M. and Grace, M. (2003), Science Education
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