Global citizenship education: a sociological critique

This paper considers the recent focus on citizenship within education by taking curricular reform within Scottish secondary schooling as a case study. In Scotland the Curriculum for Excellence reform places citizenship as one of four main capacities that pupils must work towards as part of their education. A central theme in this reform is the need for students to take a global perspective and work across different disciplines. In this model of citizenship education learners are enabled to develop their sense of citizenship identity in response to a fast-paced world of innovation and change. Citizenship is therefore linked to a futurist agenda, where the learner-citizen is positioned as an ongoing project, as something to be worked at or perhaps worked on. However, this kind of notion of agency is an expression of an ideological construction of the citizen as a flexible resource for society. Such citizens are active in the sense of being adaptive to change through utilizing intellectual skills but without a sense of identity grounded in one's commitments or reflexive engagement with different forms of understanding. The paper offers a critical assessment of this learner-citizen discourse as focusing on ratiocination rather than relational identity.

Global citizenship: an education or an identity?

This paper considers the recent focus on citizenship within education by taking curricular reform within Scottish secondary schooling and its linkage with higher education as a case study. In Scotland the Curriculum for Excellence reform places citizenship as one of four main capacities that pupils must work towards as part of their education. Likewise, there has been a move in within the Scottish higher education Enhancement Themes framework to include citizenship as part of graduate attributes that students work towards as they progress through their courses. A unifying theme in these reforms is the need for students to take a global perspective and work across different disciplines by, for example, considering how knowledge relates to wider issues such as in relation to sustainable development, e-democracy or human rights. One feature that unites these disparate areas is that, above all, students must learn to be active through the acquisition of appropriate knowledge and skills. In this model of citizenship education, learners are enabled to develop their sense of citizenship identity in response to a fast-paced world of innovation and change. Citizenship is therefore linked to a futurist agenda, where the learner-citizen is positioned as an ongoing project, as something to be worked at or perhaps worked on. However, this kind of notion of agency is an expression of an ideological construction of the citizen as a flexible resource for society. Such citizens are active in the sense of being adaptive to change through utilizing intellectual skills but without a sense of identity grounded in one’s commitments or reflexive engagement with different forms of understanding. The paper offers a critical assessment of this learner-citizen discourse as focusing on ratiocination rather than relational identity.

The flexible citizen: education and citizenship

This paper considers the recent focus on citizenship within education by taking curricular reform within Scottish secondary schooling and its linkage with higher education as a case study. In Scotland the Curriculum for Excellence reform places citizenship as one of the four main capacities that pupils must work towards as part of their education. This is echoed to some extent within higher education through the Enhancement Theme reforms and the focus on graduate attributes. A unifying theme in these reforms is the need for students to work across different disciplines, to develop a cross-disciplinary perspective on the world by, for example, considering issues of sustainability in relation to scientific or technological developments. In this model of curriculum development teaching staff are considered as agents of change, enabling learners to develop their sense of citizenship in response to a fast-paced world of innovation and change. This kind of change is objectified as a need that must be responded to and met if tomorrow’s citizens are to be able to not only cope, but thrive in the world in which they inhabit. As such, the citizen is positioned as an ongoing project, as something to be worked at and worked on. However, this kind of notion of agency cloaks an neoliberal ideological construction of the citizen as a flexible resource for society, and usually in relation to economic output. The paper seeks to subject this construction of the citizen to critical scrutiny in relation to the idea that, in education, learners are developing their ability to be creative and enquiring in order to be adaptive to change.

Assessing a Methodological Proposal for the Design, Creation and Evaluation of Learning Objects Oriented to Educators with Diverse Educational and Technological Competencies

This paper describes a methodological proposal for the design, creation and evaluation of Learning Objects (LOs). This study arises from the compilation and analysis of several LO design methodologies currently used in Ibero-America. This proposal, which has been named DICREVOA, defines five different phases: analysis, design (instructional and multimedia), implementation (LO and metadata), evaluation (from the perspective of both the producer and the consumer of the LO), and publishing. The methodology focuses not only on the teaching inexperienced, but also on those having a basic understanding of the technological and educational aspects related to LO design; therefore, the study emphasizes LO design activities centered around the Kolb cycle and the use of the ExeLearning tool in order to implement the LO core. Additionally, DICREVOA was used in a case study, which demonstrates how it provides a feasible mechanism for LO design and implementation within different contexts. Finally, DICREVOA, the case study to which it was applied, and the results obtained are presented

Tecnologias de informação geográfica e promoção do pensamento espacial crítico: estratégias transdisciplinares em educação para o desenvolvimento sustentável no 3º CEB

Perante a fragilidade da atual conjuntura mundial nos contextos económico, social e ambiental, urge a necessidade de educar os novos cidadãos para a sustentabilidade, pelo conhecimento interativo do local onde vivem e do mundo que os integra. “Ensinar a pensar” e a encontrar soluções criativas sustentáveis, torna-se incontornável. Reconhecendo-se que este propósito carece da integração do conhecimento presencial no território, e a importância das competências de saber pensar o espaço e intervir no meio, partilhadas pela Educação Geográfica (EG) e pela Educação para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável (EDS), onde a dimensão “Espaço” é crítica e aglutinadora das aprendizagens, no presente trabalho propõe-se dar resposta à questão de como desenvolver o Pensamento Espacial Crítico, com recurso a Tecnologias de Informação Geográfica (TIG), de forma a promover aprendizagens significativas em EDS, ao nível do 3.º Ciclo do Ensino Básico (CEB) e no contexto da Escola Básica de Campia. Tendo como grande finalidade a inovação das práticas educativas, espera-se com esta investigação contribuir para o alargamento de fronteiras do conhecimento em Multimédia em Educação e da EG, assumindo-se a importância desta no domínio da EDS, estimulando o Pensamento Espacial (PE), o Pensamento Crítico (PC) e a forma como os alunos e restante comunidade educativa olham e atuam sobre o meio. Face à finalidade apresentada e dado o caráter inovador da presente investigação, adotou-se a metodologia de investigação-ação (I/A), no contexto do paradigma sóciocrítico, de pendor qualitativo. Este estudo foi desenvolvido por intermédio de uma Oficina de Formação, em dois ciclos de I/A, tendo como objetivo a conceção e implementação de estratégias transdisciplinares de ensino e aprendizagem (E/A) em EDS, visando o desenvolvimento de capacidades de PEC e sendo suportadas por TIG. Foram concebidos diversos instrumentos de recolha de dados, para cada ciclo de I/A, e o corpo de dados foi analisado essencialmente através da técnica de análise de conteúdo e pontualmente através da análise estatística de cariz descritivo. O modelo de análise de dados centrou-se numa análise SWOT para identificação das forças, fraquezas, oportunidades e ameaças, e numa matriz TOWS para identificação das ações a empreender entre os ciclos de I/A. Propõe-se, para o efeito, um referencial teórico didático para o conceito de PEC, através de uma taxonomia de capacidades e competências resultante da implementação dos ciclos de I/A. Os resultados obtidos permitem observar que: i) a EG, pelas competências que preconiza e pelo enfoque da dimensão espacial, é potencialmente aglutinadora das aprendizagens, no currículo do 3.º CEB, e pode favorecer a transdisciplinaridade, essencial na EDS; ii) as estratégias de ensino e aprendizagem assentes na EG e com recurso a TIG são promotoras de aprendizagens significativas em EDS pelo desenvolvimento de capacidades de PEC. Contudo, as limitações evidenciadas na investigação suscitaram, através dos ciclos de I/A, a redefinição do percurso formativo proposto e dos instrumentos de recolha de dados concebidos, bem como a introdução de melhorias à taxonomia de PEC desenvolvida no âmbito da presente tese. Entre outras limitações discutidas (como a resistência à utilização de tecnologia em contexto de E/A), salientamos uma limitação sistémica, inerente aos atuais contextos educativos formais (currículo, distribuição do serviço docente, etc.), que desincentiva uma efetiva implementação de estratégias transdisciplinares e do trabalho colaborativo entre professores. Apesar das limitações elencadas consideramos que este estudo contribui para um aprofundamento do conhecimento sobre a potencialidade das TIG na promoção de competências e capacidades de PEC dos alunos, nomeadamente pelo avanço na clarificação das mesmas, plasmadas no instrumento desenvolvido no âmbito desta tese (taxonomia de PEC). Como disseminação desta investigação, salienta-se que o referido instrumento integrará o referencial teórico de um projeto europeu Erasmus + (ENAbLE), para suporte à conceção dos dispositivos didáticos que acompanharão uma aplicação de TIG que será concebida especificamente para o contexto de E/A.

Cultural citizenship and its implications for citizenship education: Chinese university students’ civic experience in relation to mass media and the university citizenship curriculum

A growing body of research has argued that university citizenship curricula are inefficient in promoting civic participation, while there is a tendency towards a broader citizenship understanding and new forms of civic engagements and citizenship learning in everyday life. The notion of cultural citizenship in this thesis concentrates on media practices’ relation to civic expression and civic engagement. This research thus argues that not enough attention has been paid to the effects of citizenship education policy on students and students’ active citizenship learning in China. This thesis examines the civic experience of university students in China in the parallel contexts of widespread adoption of mass media and of university citizenship education courses, which have been explicitly mandatory for promoting civic morality education in Chinese universities since 2007. This research project raises significant questions about the meditating influences of these two contexts on students’ perceptions of civic knowledge and civic participation, with particular interest to examine whether and how the notion of cultural citizenship could be applied in the Chinese context and whether it could provide certain implications for citizenship education in China. University students in one university in Beijing contributed to this research by providing both quantitative and qualitative data collected from mixed-methods research. 212 participants contributed to the questionnaire data collection and 12 students took part in interviews. Guided by the theoretical framework of cultural citizenship, a central focus of this study is to explore whether new forms of civic engagement and civic learning and a new direction of citizenship understanding can be identified among university students’ mass media use. The study examines the patterns of students’ mass media use and its relationship to civic participation, and also explores the ways in which mass media shape students and how they interact and perform through the media use. In addition, this study discusses questions about how national context, citizenship tradition and civic education curricula relate to students’ civic perceptions, civic participation and civic motivation in their enactment of cultural citizenship. It thus tries to provide insights and identify problems associated with citizenship courses in Chinese universities. The research finds that Chinese university students can also identify civic issues and engage in civic participation through the influence of mass media, thus indicating the application of cultural citizenship in the wider higher education arena in China. In particular, the findings demonstrate that students’ citizenship knowledge has been influenced by their entertainment experiences with TV programs, social networks and movies. However, the study argues that the full enactment of cultural citizenship in China is conditional with regards to characteristics related to two prerequisites: the quality of participation and the influence of the public sphere in the Chinese context. Most students in the study are found to be inactive civic participants in their everyday lives, especially in political participation. Students express their willingness to take part in civic activities, but they feel constrained by both the current citizenship education curriculum in universities and the strict national policy framework. They mainly choose to accept ideological and political education for the sake of personal development rather than to actively resist it, however, they employ creative ways online to express civic opinions and conduct civic discussion. This can be conceptualised as the cultural dimension of citizenship observed from students who are not passively prescribed by traditional citizenship but who have opportunities to build their own civic understanding in everyday life. These findings lead to the conclusion that the notion of cultural citizenship not only provides a new mode of civic learning for Chinese students but also offers a new direction for configuring citizenship in China. This study enriches the existing global literature on cultural citizenship by providing contemporary evidence from China which is a developing democratic country, as well as offering useful information for Chinese university practitioners, policy makers and citizenship researchers on possible directions for citizenship understanding and citizenship education. In particular, it indicates that it is important for efforts to be made to generate a culture of authentic civic participation for students in the university as well as to promote the development of the public sphere in the community and the country generally.

CIL 2.1963 – Lex Salpensana, bronze tablet with a municipal law concerning citizenship and manumission

Photograph and translation

Exporting the racial republic: African colonization, national citizenship, and the transformation of U.S. expansion, 1776-1864

The effort to create a colony of African Americans on the west coast of Africa was one of the most celebrated and influential movements in the United States during the first half of the 19th century. While historians have often viewed African colonization through the lens of domestic anti-slavery politics, colonization grew from an imperial impulse which promised to transform the identities of black colonists and indigenous Africans by helping them to build a democratic nation from the foundation of a settler colony. By proposing that persons of African descent could eventually become self-governing subjects, the liberal framework behind colonization offered the possibility of black citizenship rights, but only within racially homogenous nation-states, which some proponents of colonization imagined might lead to a “United States of Africa.” This dissertation examines how the notion of expanding democratic ideals through the export of racial nationhood was crucial to the appeal of colonization. It reveals how colonization surfaced in several crucial debates about race, citizenship, and empire in the antebellum United States by examining discussions about African Americans’ revolutionary claims to political rights, the bounds of US territorial expansion, the removal of native populations in North America, and the racialization of national citizenship, both at home and abroad. By examining African colonization from these perspectives, this dissertation argues that the United States’ efforts to construct a liberal democracy defined by white racial identity were directly connected to the nation’s emerging identity as a defender and exporter of political liberty throughout the world.

Gender and Citizenship under New Labour

Abstract To what extent has citizenship been transformed under the New Labour government to include women as equal citizens? This chapter will examine New Labour’s record in terms of alternative conceptions of citizenship: a model based on equal obligations to paid work, a model based on recognising care and gender difference, and a model of universal citizenship, underpinning equal expectations of care work and paid work with rights to the resources needed for individuals to combine both. It will argue that, while New Labour has signed up to the EU resolution on work-life balance, which includes commitment to a ‘new social contract on gender’, and has significantly increased resources for care, obligations to work are at the heart of New Labour ideas of citizenship, with work conceived as paid employment: policies in practice have done more to bring women into employment than men into care. Women’s citizenship is still undermined – though less than under earlier governments - by these unequal obligations and their consequences in social rights.