Civic and Citizenship Education in Volatile Times: Preparing Students for Citizenship in the 21st Century [1st ed.] 978-981-13-6385-6;978-981-13-6386-3

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-viii
Framing Civic and Citizenship Education for the Twenty-First Century (Kerry J Kennedy)....Pages 1-16
What Kind of Future in What Kind of World? (Kerry J Kennedy)....Pages 17-27
Building on Civic and Citizenship Education’s Achievements (Kerry J Kennedy)....Pages 29-44
Civic and Citizenship Education for the Future (Kerry J Kennedy)....Pages 45-63
Developing a Research Agenda to Support CCE in the Future (Kerry J Kennedy)....Pages 65-80

Citation preview

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN EDUC ATION CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Kerry J Kennedy

Civic and Citizenship Education in Volatile Times Preparing Students for Citizenship in the 21st Century

SpringerBriefs in Education SpringerBriefs in Citizenship Education for the 21st Century

Series Editor Kerry J Kennedy, Curriculum and Instruction, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/16233

Kerry J Kennedy

Civic and Citizenship Education in Volatile Times Preparing Students for Citizenship in the 21st Century

123

Kerry J Kennedy The Education University of Hong Kong Hong Kong, New Territories, Hong Kong University of Johannesburg Johannesburg, South Africa

ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Education ISSN 2524-8480 ISSN 2524-8499 (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Citizenship Education for the 21st Century ISBN 978-981-13-6385-6 ISBN 978-981-13-6386-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6386-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019930969 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

I would like to dedicate this book to my students, past and present. Working with them has been a journey of exploration, learning and results. These results have impacted on the field of citizenship education and hopefully also on the communities from which my students came. Working with doctoral students is a great privilege. Of course, there are conventions and protocols to which they must conform. Eventually, however, the time comes when they share with you that one idea, that one insight, that one breakthrough that sets them on the road to charting new territory and new ideas. The challenge is then to keep up with them as they cruise ahead with their ideas and to support them as they make their unique contributions to the world of theory, or to policy or to practice or all three of these. It has been a pleasure to see the sense of community that develops as students move through their programs, work together, support each other and become happy in each other’s achievements. I have also seen this sense of community continue as students graduate and move into postdoctoral studies and early career academic positions. The friendships last as these young people commence careers that will undoubtedly be successful and will benefit not only themselves but their respective societies as well. I have been privileged to be part of this community of scholars. They will surely make a difference in a world that is badly in need of their insights, their skills and their talents. I must also thank The Education University of Hong Kong which has supported my research for the past 18 years. From the very first day, there has been an environment that regarded civic and citizenship education as important. There has always been a critical mass of colleagues working in the area (not always the same people over that time, some have moved on, but others have come), and this has made conversations easy and collaboration a way of life. There have been opportunities for interdisciplinary work especially with measurement colleagues who led me to explore the relationship between the numbers and the social and political theories to which they pointed. It is difficult to imagine a more supportive working environment, and I am very grateful to have been a part of it.

v

vi

Preface

What follows in this book is a serious exploration of the challenges facing a volatile world and the ways that civic and citizenship education might address some key issues. It is the beginning of a conversation, but hopefully not the end. It is only as we talk together as democratic communities that we can learn not only how to support democracy but also to defend it. This is our challenge for the future. Hong Kong

Kerry J Kennedy Professor Emeritus, Department of Curriculum and Instruction/Centre for Governance and Citizenship The Education University of Hong Kong Distinguished Visiting Professor, Faculty of Education University of Johannesburg

Contents

1 Framing Civic and Citizenship Education for the Twenty-First Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Protecting Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Theoretical Framings of CCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Case 1: CCE in Australia: The Evolution of a National Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Case 2: The United States of America: Secularism and the Civic Mission of Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7 Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 What Kind of Future in What Kind of World? . . . . . . . 2.1 CCE—A Tool of the State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Changing Contexts for Changing Times—What Might the Future Hold? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Globalization and Global Citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 Neoliberalism’s ‘Self-regulating Citizen’ . . . . . 2.3.2 Global Citizenship—Skill or Value? . . . . . . . . 2.4 Populism—A New Voice with an Old Message . . . . . 2.5 Fundamentalisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Social Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7 Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . .

1 1 3 4

....

8

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

11 14 14 14

......... .........

17 17

. . . . . . . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 27 27

3 Building on Civic and Citizenship Education’s Achievements . . 3.1 CCE as a Component of the School Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Varieties of Civic Engagement—Social, Political and Digital 3.3 The Future of Democratic Political Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

29 30 31 34

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .

vii

viii

Contents

3.4 Civic Enablers—Supporting Future Civic Engagement . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...

45

. . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

47 50 52 53 55

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

56 57 58 59 61 62

....

65

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

66 68 69 72

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

73 76 78 78

4 Civic and Citizenship Education for the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Lessons from Current CCE Programs—International Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.1 The Content of CCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.2 Time Allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.3 Results of CCE Assessments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 What Kind of Citizens Will Be Needed in the Future? . . . . . . 4.3 Democracy Under Threat: What Kind of Citizens for the Future? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Framework for CCE in the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 School Learning Environments Will Be Characterized by . . . . 4.6 Community Learning Environments Will Be Characterized by 4.7 Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Developing a Research Agenda to Support CCE in the Future 5.1 The Focus of Current CCE Research and Why It Needs to Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Suggested Framework for Future CCE Research . . . . . . . . . 5.2.1 Theory—Why Citizenship Education . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.2 Sites—Where Citizenship Education Take Place . . . . 5.2.3 Social Media—An Urgent Priority for Future CCE Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.4 Civic Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

36 43 43

Chapter 1

Framing Civic and Citizenship Education for the Twenty-First Century

Abstract This chapter outlines the broad theoretical approaches that underpin civic and citizenship education (CCE) and provides case studies of two democratic states (Australia and the United States of America) to show how CCE develops as a response to unique contexts of time, place and values. The focus of the chapter is CCE for democratic education, but there is an acknowledgment that CCE is also of interest to authoritarian regimes that use it largely to bolster regime legitimacy. CCE for democratic education, on the other hand, seeks to consolidate democratic processes and values in the belief that free institutions and tolerant attitudes are the best way to enable nations to progress and indeed survive. The case studies included here show how democratic consolidation came, over time, to represent the major aim of CCE. Yet there is a new narrative of ‘democratic deconsolidation’ (Foa and Mounk, 2016) suggesting that democracy seems to be losing its appeal among some groups thus posing new problems for CCE in the future. Keywords Democracy · Citizenship · Civic and citizenship education · Consolidation · Historical development · Democratic deconsolidation

1.1 Introduction Whether in Ancient Greece, Rome, China or India, older generations have always sought to inculcate in young generations their expected duties, obligations and responsibilities in order to ensure the maintenance of the existing order, its values and its priorities. The targets of these kinds of civic expectations were usually a ruling class, often consisting largely of men, who at times viewed their civic responsibilities as a necessary condition of their status and position in society. Maintaining the status quo was in the interest of these ruling classes and it was to this end that informal civic learning was directed usually in forms of education available only to the ruling class. In Europe, the American and French Revolutions in the eighteenth century represented seismic shifts in political change, shifts that were not felt in Asia. Yet these political changes did little to expand social inclusion so that slavery, gender © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 K. J Kennedy, Civic and Citizenship Education in Volatile Times, Springerbriefs in citizenship education for the 21st century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6386-3_1

1

2

1 Framing Civic and Citizenship Education …

discrimination and electoral politics, such as they were, continued to exclude not just large sections of the population from participation but in the case of slavery visited some of the most inhumane treatment ever countenanced against fellow human beings. These early political revolutions did not create socially just and equitable societies, despite their nod toward democratic values and institutions and the trappings of minimal forms of electoral democracy. The advent of mass schooling in the nineteenth century to meet the needs of growing industrialization in Great Britain, Europe, the United States and Australia expanded opportunities but did little to develop democracy. The products of such schooling were worker-citizens rather than democratic citizens and what forms of civic learning they experienced were little different from the class-based system of earlier times. Loyalty, patriotism and hard work were regarded as civic virtues, and these were drilled not so much from formal lesson of civic education but in flag-raising ceremonies, pledges of allegiance and patriotically inspired holidays (Independence Day in the United States, the Queen’s Birthday in Great Britain (and in British colonies like Australia, Canada and New Zealand), Bastille Day in France). In addition, there was also the moral element of such education whether from a religious or secular perspective—the world has always needed ‘good’ citizens who do the ‘right’ thing. There were, of course, debates about the qualities of such citizens and the respective roles of secular and religious values in public systems of education. But there was little debate about the neo-Aristotelean purposes of schooling to shape character, to develop virtues, civic or otherwise and to ensure social stability. It was left to the twentieth century, reeling from the effects of the First World War, to develop a civic education with broader purposes, especially relating to democracy, social inclusion, tolerance and more equitable societies. Such a development was by no means universal and results were not achieved quickly. By century’s end, many countries with some commitment to liberal democracy and its values were still working through ways to make these explicit for young people. An important side effect of this new focus was the belief that the school curriculum could be used to secure these ends. It could be in the form of a separate subject, often called Civic Education (but also terms such as citizenship education, moral education and political education have been used). In some education systems, the focus on civic learning was not represented by a school subject but used as a theme that was meant to be fused into other school subjects like History, Geography or English. In addition to a single subject or integrated forms of civic education, extracurricular activities might also be used (as they were in the past) to highlight important civic learning opportunities. These can include flag-raising ceremonies, visits to parliamentary institutions and guest speakers who have some political experiences to share. This diversity of formats does not belie the importance of civic education: rather, it suggests that schools have become important sites for the civic education of young people in the search for broader social and political purposes, especially as the twentieth century progressed. So important did civic learning become to nations and their citizens that in 1975 the first international attempt to assess what young people knew was made by a team of researchers (Torney, Oppenheim, & Farnen, 1975). Subsequent attempts were made in 2001 (Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald, & Schulz, 2001), 2009 (Schulz, Ainley,

1.1 Introduction

3

Fraillon, & Losito, 2010) and 2016 (Schulz et al., 2017). Testing both civic knowledge and civic values, these international assessments have attempted to provide some indication of what young people know, believe and plan to do as future citizens. It is a recognition that civic education is significant and has an important role to play in the education of young people. The above narrative has focused on the development of civic education in the context of a gradual recognition that democracy itself needs to be supported if it is to be maintained. There are other narratives that highlight the importance of civic education for other purposes—to support authoritarianism, dictatorships and other non-democratic forms of political association (see, for example, Chong, Kennedy, & Cheung, 2018; Kennedy, Fairbrother, & Zhao, 2014; Wang, 2019). It is important to understand these but they will not be the focus of this book. Hopefully, the issue of non-democratic civic and citizenship education will be taken up in another volume in the Civic and Citizenship Education in the Twenty-First Century Series. The remaining chapters, therefore, will highlight civic education for democracy and the challenges it faces in the twenty-first century.

1.2 Protecting Democracy In the second decade of the twentieth century, Woodrow Wilson wanted to make the world ‘safe for democracy’ and much of the century witnessed concerted efforts to do just that. Democratic globalists took this mission so seriously that often they supported direct intervention in the affairs of independent nation states to promote democracy worldwide. At the same time, antidemocratic forces were also strong throughout the twentieth century. Often the clashes between the ‘forces of democracy’ and opposing ideologies such as fascism and communism are portrayed as a popular binary. Yet the world is still not ‘safe for democracy’. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, The Guardian (8 December 2015) warned in a newspaper editorial that ‘the combination of global economic uncertainty, mass migration and jihadi terrorism is taking a growing toll on liberal democracies across the world’. Mouffe (2016) added to this warning the threat of populism when he highlighted what he saw as Europe’s ‘crisis of liberal democracy’. Making the world ‘safe for democracy’, therefore, is an ongoing struggle on the part of liberal democracies and it can be seen in retrospect that there are two sides to the struggle. One is external, represented by the belief that democracy is part of the natural order of things and therefore should be spread universally. This is the view of ‘democratic globalists’ who seek to ‘blanket’ the world with democracy (Krauthammer, 2004, p. 15). Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is quoted as an example: ‘the spread of freedom is … our last line of defense and our first line of attack’ and former President George W. Bush is described as an equally strong supporter. Krauthammer (2004, p. 17), a well-known US conservative, described himself as a ‘democratic realist’ who supported external action ‘that intervenes not everywhere that freedom is threatened but only where it counts—in those regions where the

4

1 Framing Civic and Citizenship Education …

defense or advancement of freedom is critical to success in the larger war against the existential enemy.’ It is a neat distinction within the neoconservative camp, but the rationale and outcomes of globalism and realism are the same: Liberal democracy must be defended by external action whenever it is seen to be under threat. The unanswered questions in this assumption are related to the assumed significance of the threat and the extent of action that should be sanctioned in making the world ‘safe for democracy’. The other side of the struggle might be classified as internal as liberal democracies seek to shore up support for democracy within their own borders. Within each liberal democratic nation state, there are elections, support for human rights, the rule of law and other democratic values. For democracy to survive within the nation state, these values are seen to be in need of consolidation. In addition to modeling democratic processes, concerted efforts are made to ensure that young people growing up will be exposed to these values, come to appreciate them, advocate for them and as a result become democratic citizens of the future. Schools, therefore, become important social institutions to achieve democratic consolidation and programs of civic and citizenship education (CCE) the means by which this end might be achieved. How this process should work in the twenty-first century and what might be both the barriers and pathways to success will be the focus of this book. There are two key questions that will be addressed throughout: • Is the issue of democratic consolidation any different at this point in the twenty-first century than at any other time? and • Is making the world ‘safe for democracy’ still a legitimate aspiration? In addressing these questions, it is important to understand that CCE is not a neutral or simple component of the school curriculum. It can be constructed by different theoretical frameworks and historical contexts that have created its different forms wherever it is implemented. What follows is an attempt to identify those frameworks and contexts and their impact on CCE.

1.3 Theoretical Framings of CCE While there is a general view that schools, and public schools in particular, have a role to play in the political socialization of young people, the focus and extent of such efforts have provoked debate. Westbrook (2005) argued, for example, that schools in the United States seemed to have veered away from their civic mandate to pursue more utilitarian purposes. Yet not everyone viewed this as a problem. Leo Strauss and his students, for example, promoted a two-tier system of civic education: one for the elites who would steer democracy and the other for the common people who were simply expected to imbibe its values (Burns & Connelly, 2010). Straussians, therefore, had few expectations about the civic competence of citizens apart from the importance of voting. At the other end of the spectrum were the Deweyan progressives, of whom Westbrook

1.3 Theoretical Framings of CCE

5

(2005) is one, supporting public participation in the civic life of the nation along lines advocated by traditional republicanism (Pettit, 1997). Consequently, progressives see an important role for schools in preparing active citizens for future participation. The tension between the conservative and progressive views of the role of school and the nature of civic education has characterized debate in the United States over many years. On the one hand, the minimalist conservatives supported the obligation to vote and the need to accept the values decided by the elites while the progressives advocated for more active participation in the civic life of the nation. The lines of the debate elsewhere have been quite similar. There have certainly been those like the conservatives in the United States advocating the importance of studying history as a school subject—especially the history that showed progress and development rather than the history that shows racism, discrimination and class wars. The conservative argument has been run in places as diverse as Australia and Hong Kong. In different Western countries, including Australia, there has also been a look backward to Judeo Christian traditions and their contribution to values along with an appreciation of the country’s British parliamentary institutions. Conservatism has taken many different forms. It was based on an assumption of shared values, a focus on harmony rather than diversity and the production of a docile citizenry grateful for the past and trustful of the future and those who will manage it. Ironically, such an argument can be used to support a role for CCE in both democratic and authoritarian societies. Yet conservatives are not alone in claiming how society can best function. Many European countries, for example, maintain a strong progressive tradition that advocates a more liberal or republican view stressing the importance of citizenship participation as an important outcome of school CCE programs, participation that includes but goes beyond voting in elections. Studies at the school level have shown that developing this participatory culture is often seen as the key attribute of school-based CCE. Nevertheless, public discourse shows that both conservative and progressivist voices can be heard on the issue and the contexts that create such voices need to be well understood. Despite these different approaches to CCE, there is a commonality between conservative and progressive views. It is to do with what Merriam (1931, p. 35) called ‘the essential elements in the texture of group cohesion’. How do groups come together and how do they stay together? Conservatives answer this question with reference to the values of the past that they assume will provide the foundations for the future. Progressives, on the other hand, believe that future citizens must actively construct the future and that the best way to do this is by active participation in the political and social life of society. This issue is of relevance in societies that are diverse and where the commonalities are not immediately clear in terms of social characteristics such as religion, language, values and family structures. What binds citizens and what rents them asunder? This was really Merriam’s (1931) central question, although expressed here somewhat more colorfully to highlight the issue. The consequential question is what kind of CCE is needed to address the issues of both cohesion and diversity so that one does not override the other. This remains a fundamental question for liberal democracies.

6

1 Framing Civic and Citizenship Education …

Viewed in this way, however, CCE can be positioned differently within distinctive theoretical positions. While conservatives and progressives provide different answers to Merriam’s question, neither has recognized that the question itself poses a problem. Post-structuralist theorists, however, have identified what they see as the problem with Merriam. Luke (1990, p. 253), views Merriam’s focus on ‘cohesion’ more akin to Foucault’s ‘disciplinary technologies’, the purpose of which is ‘making citizens’ who will support the democratic state rather than any alternative. Critical of traditional approaches to CCE, whether they are conservative or progressive, post-structural theorists view the consolidation of democracy itself as a tool of the state designed to produce docile citizens content with the status quo. Post-structuralists themselves will often hold a more radical view of the citizen, but they argue that current attempts at CCE are more likely to stress tradition, conformity and stability in a democracy rather than revolution and renewal. Luke (1990, pp. 253–254) concluded that: as reductionist categories within predictive theories for producing ‘true’ and ‘false’ statements about political stability, legitimacy and support, the political culture/political socialization discourse be seen as a new system of rules. Hence its interpretation tends to complement the “general politics” of truth in the East-West struggle for power by affirming disciplinary practices underpinning liberal capitalist democracies.

In other words, CCE’s role is to consolidate the values and practices of the democratic state that for both post-structuralists and critical theorists is linked to support for capitalism. With this interpretation, CCE becomes an instrument of state power to wield over docile citizens. Such an argument needs to be carefully considered, but as Li (2015) has shown recently state capacity to control CCE varies considerably. In the democratic and semi-democratic states, she studied (Taiwan and Hong Kong) the state’s capacity to control CCE was shown to be considerably constrained while she concluded that an authoritarian state, such as the People’s Republic of China, had much greater capacity to direct the form and function of CCE. The role of the state in the formation of CCE is clearly an important issue to consider, as is the state’s capacity to direct and control what it sees as the desirable outcomes for civic learning. Yet some researchers have thrown doubt on whether schools ought to have a role in CCE (Merry, 2018; Murphy, 2007; Van der Ploeg & Guérin, 2016). CCE is seen to have predetermined outcomes which are not consistent with broader intellectual outcomes that seek to equip students to make their own decisions rather than uncritically adopt whatever citizenship narrative a school seeks to impose. Merry (2018, p. 2), for example, argued that such narratives are often ‘elitist and racialized’. This raises important questions about the role of schools in democratic societies, how the ‘democratic narrative’ is constructed and the extent to which it can meet the needs of a diverse society. As will be shown throughout this book, however, schools must learn how to confront the challenge since to abrogate responsibility for CCE is no longer an option. These different and often conflicting theoretical constructions of CCE might be speculative and even distracting from the practical task of developing school programs for CCE. Yet a note of civic urgency has recently been introduced to the debate.

1.3 Theoretical Framings of CCE

7

Foa and Mounk (2016) have pointed out that recent international surveys have identified not just declining support for democracy’s institutions, such as electoral participation, party politics and conventional forms of civic engagement, but for democracy as a regime type. They showed that over time respondents in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, where support for democratic regimes has traditionally been high, have shown increasingly less support for democracy in general and less concern about living in an authoritarian regime. They point to the surge in support for rightwing political groups in those countries and in Europe and Australia. They refer to declining support for traditional democratic regimes as the ‘deconsolidation of democracy’ (Foa & Mounk, 2016, p. 15). This analysis is in line with other analyses that in general refer to the ‘crisis of democracy’ (Geiselberger, 2017) and the need to respond to it (Azmanova & Mihai, 2015). Appardurai (2017, p. 1), for example, has referred to ‘democracy fatigue’ and while Blühdorn (2014) has pondered whether we are witnessing ‘the erosion or the exhaustion of democracy’. What is more Blühdorn and Butzlaff (2018) have argued that what is now characterized as ‘the crisis of democracy’ may well be a permanent feature of a new post-democracy landscape. CCE cannot ignore these political trends that will be discussed in more detail later in this book. Yet the main point to note is that the so-called crisis of democracy, represented by ‘deconsolidation’, is exactly the opposite effect that CCE is designed to achieve in relation to preparing young people for citizenship. As mentioned earlier, CCE’s role in liberal democracies has traditionally been to consolidate democracy and its institutions in contexts where the superiority of democracy is usually taken for granted. This book will not explore this ‘taken for grantedness’ or the varying conceptions of democracy that are evident both theoretically and practically. That would be an important study for another book. Yet if Foa and Mounk (2016) and others are to any extent correct, then nothing can be taken for granted and CCE in its traditional form becomes a counter narrative in times where democracy is under stress and a means to prepare young people for an unpredictable and uncertain future. Against this background and considering the various theoretical frames that seek to inform it, what follows reviews the role and function of CCE with a special focus on how it has developed over time and how it might be shaped in the future. Two cases will be presented, that of Australia and the United States, because they provide different examples of how liberal democracy has developed and changed and how CCE developed with it. The preparation of citizens has always been a central issue for both countries. In the Australian case, this concern was shown even prior to independence from British colonial rule (Kennedy, 2007). Yet CCE has emerged in different ways in these different contexts. Wherever it exists, CCE is always influenced by the contexts in which it is embedded and takes forms that reflect specific national priorities and values. The purpose of the remainder of this chapter, therefore, is to frame CCE as a context-dependent phenomenon taking multiple forms and seeking to meet local priorities as they emerged from specific contexts. The narrative in both cases is largely one of democratic consolidation. Yet different theoretical impulses influencing CCE

8

1 Framing Civic and Citizenship Education …

can be seen over time leading to its status. As the new forces of deconsolidation take their place internationally, implications can be drawn for the future role of CCE.

1.4 Case 1: CCE in Australia: The Evolution of a National Perspective It did not seem to occur to those who nurtured Australia from colony to independence at the beginning of the twentieth century that new forms of civic and citizenship education (CCE) might be needed to induct young citizens into new political forms, new allegiances and new ways of thinking about Australia’s place in the world. Prior to the Federation of the Australian colonies in 1901 there had been a kind of protocivics reflecting a ‘growing commitment to democracy and responsible government, the promotion of loyalty to individual colonies, loyalty to the British Empire and a moralistic element that sought to produce “good” citizens’ (Kennedy, 2007, p. 104). After federation, however, there was little difference between the old colonies and the new federation in terms of their orientation to Great Britain, the British Empire and citizenship. This latter point requires some explanation. Australian citizenship as a distinct form did not result from the Federation of the Australian colonies. The Australian-born remained British subjects until 1949 and the passing of the Australian Citizenship Act that introduced for the first time ‘the local national status of Australian citizenship acquired by birth, descent or grant’ (Pryles, 1981, p. 40). Yet even this step was not really a reflection of national sentiment or popular outcry seeking greater local autonomy. Rather, it was the result of a Commonwealth-wide initiative that sought to expand citizenship categories in former British colonies (Kennedy, 2001, p. 21). Its main impact was seen to be on immigration rather than the development of a new Australian identity (Pryles, 1981). This historical context is important to understand because it shows how citizenship issues were of very little priority in a newly federated and independent Australia in the early years of the twentieth century. In those years, there was a certain taken for grantedness about citizenship, and it is probable that the term itself was rarely used. A visit to Australian schools in those years would have found students singing the British national anthem; if it happened to be the 24th of May there would have been a half day holiday to celebrate Empire Day (that coincided with Queen Victoria’s birthday); and the British flag was safely embedded as part of the Australian flag (as it still is till this day!) The approach to civic education in this context was explained in this way (Kennedy, 2007): This British/Empire orientation was reflected in civic education programmes that focused on the qualities of good citizens and Australia’s role as a loyal member of the Empire. History was the key school subject that had a civics orientation and often History and Civics were linked as a single subject in the curriculum. There were arguments for more integrated approaches to civics, but disciplinary perspectives remained strong throughout this period. Civics can best be described in this period as “Empire civics” - British in orientation and substance reflecting a tenuous independence from a still dominant colonial power. (p. 104)

1.4 Case 1: CCE in Australia: The Evolution of a National Perspective

9

This ‘Empire civics’ did not prevent schools from engaging in ceremonies to commemorate Australia’s engagement in the First World War and especially the Gallipoli campaign. Perkins (2014) has provided evidence to show that such ceremonies were underway just one year after the campaign and were both community and school events. While Australian involvement in the Gallipoli campaign has gone on to become part of Australian nation building, it was essentially part of an English war strategy involving Australian troops, so it was not at odds with the Empire narrative. Bates (2013) put it this way: for the decades following 1915, the imperial context of Anzac Day had been fundamental to the rituals and meaning of 25 April; newspapers, for example, commonly placed the King’s or Queen’s message on the front page and the day was inextricably linked with Australia’s military contribution to the British Empire. (pp. 24–25)

At the same time, as Perkins (2014) showed, the initial commemorations were strongly linked to the values of Christianity, so there was nothing radical about commemorating such an event. It simply supported the Empire narrative. Textbooks of the time also supported this narrative (for example, Alice Hoy’s Civics for Australian Schools and Walter Murdoch’s The Australian Citizen), but it was a narrative supplemented with references to emerging democratic institutions, the virtues of obedience and sacrifice and the needs for stability in a changing world. Yet there was also a darker side to the narrative as highlighted by Davidson (1997). There was the racism of the White Australia Policy and attitudes to indigenous Australians, gender inequality relating to the role of women in the workforce and class differentiation that seemed to support the role of those ‘born to rule.’ This suggests that in the post-federation years up to the Second World War Australia was an emerging democracy very much in the shadow of the British Empire, grappling with significant social issues, confronted with financial turmoil at the end of the 1920s and global catastrophe at the end of the 1930s. These issues, of course, were reflected in civics textbooks and by implication civics classrooms. As Davidson (1997, p. 82) reminded us, young people coming of age in Australia after the Second World War had grown up with a steady diet of this kind of citizenship preparation. Yet the post1945 world was a different world characterized by immense social change, economic challenges and cultural uncertainties all of which should have influenced CCE. As will be shown below, however, this was not to be the case, at least until the 1990s. An Australian historian characterized the above changes: By about 1960, however, it was clear that Australia had almost become an American satellite, although many of the trappings of imperial loyalty remained. But the main props of the British association - defence and foreign policy - had been knocked away; and the proportions of British trade, migration and capital investment had all declined, as had British cultural and technological influence. Contacts with Asian countries were growing steadily. The old Australian isolationism had gone forever, in the sense that modern communications increasingly exposed the continent to international ideas and fashions. (Serle, 1973, p. 180)

European immigration started to flow in the early 1950s contributing toward a less British and more multicultural population, secondary education became available to all students rather than a select few and Australia’s foreign policy pivot to the United

10

1 Framing Civic and Citizenship Education …

States that had commenced during the Second World War continued. Yet it has been commented that during this period ‘civics … seemed to go underground’ (Kennedy, 2007, p. 104). In New South Wales, for example, the 1941 History, and Civics and Geography syllabuses were replaced in 1952 by an integrated social studies curriculum for primary schools. There were strong civics dimensions to this new curriculum and much of the subject-based content was retained as was the assumption of links to the Empire and the British monarch. Yet basically civics education as a separate area disappeared in the post-war period. This trend to dispense with civics was reinforced by successive curriculum documents in the 1970s and 1980s where the emphasis was on ‘investigation’ and processes of learning rather than specific content so that even traditional content disappeared. As Kennedy (2007, pp. 104–105) commented ‘this is not to say that there was no informal civic education taking place in schools’ including rituals and ceremonies such as flag raising, ANZAC Day and, in the 1950s at least, even Empire Day. The point to note, however, is that despite the rapidly changing social context, Australia’s changing place in the world and the press of technological change including globalization, there was no specified civic knowledge or civic skills permeating Australian classrooms. The school curriculum became ‘civics free’ in the post-war period. This gap in the provision of CCE in Australian schools was noted by Thomas (1994) when he reviewed the history of civics education as part of a wide-ranging review (Civics Expert Group, 1994) commissioned by the then Prime Minister, Paul Keating. The review marked a revival of CCE based very much on Keating’s view that it was time for Australia to sever the British connection and become a republic. To achieve this end required knowledge of Australia’s civic institutions, political structures and global positioning. In receiving the report, Keating (1995) unabashedly advocated what a revived CCE could achieve: A comprehensive civics and citizenship education program is the best start we can have. We can give young Australians knowledge of their past and a sense of where they belong in the story. We can tell them about the gift of Australian democracy and how it should be defended. We can imbue them with a faith in the core values of Australia not a conformist ideology, but an awareness of the principles of freedom and tolerance which are still emerging in our community. If we can do this we can help to keep ownership of the Australian political system with the Australian people. We can keep the democracy alive and that old value of egalitarianism functioning and with new meaning, with women and new migrants and Aboriginal Australians included in the ethos that used to keep them out.

A new political party replaced the Keating Labor Government in 1996 with no less support for CCE although with a different vision for the future, a different perspective on the past and a more conservative perspective on the role of citizens in society. This view was summarized by Kennedy (2008) commenting on new Minister David Kemp’s announcement of the new government’s civic education initiative: The speech looked back to and valorised the development of democratic institutions in Australia consequent upon British possession of the land and its existing peoples. It highlighted the advances and achievements that were seen to have been made to the present time and signalled a fundamental commitment to the teaching of Australian history. It announced that the civics and citizenship education program, now to be called Discovering Democracy,

1.4 Case 1: CCE in Australia: The Evolution of a National Perspective

11

would refocus its efforts on ensuring that young people were aware of and appreciative of the institutions of the past that have shaped present day Australia. Knowledge of the growth of democracy in Great Britain and Europe were seen as a fundamental prerequisite for young Australians entering the twenty-first century. (pp. 182–183)

Thus, the reintroduction of CCE reflected how it could be politicized and how it could be made to reflect different theoretical positionings. What was on offer, however, was a long way from the Empire narrative of the early twentieth century, the retraction of CCE altogether in mid-century and the tentative starts to reinstate CCE in the 1990s. It is ironic, however, that despite this recommitment to civic education by both sides of Australian politics, there is no longer a democratic consensus in Australia on major issues such as asylum seekers, marriage equality, or the creation of an Australian republic. There is considerable disillusion with mainstream political parties and a tendency to support minor parties that are often willing to pursue an antidemocratic agenda. At the same time, international terrorism continues to pose a threat, even on Australian soil. These remain significant challenges for schools and the CCE programs they offer.

1.5 Case 2: The United States of America: Secularism and the Civic Mission of Schools Great Britain’s Australian colonies evolved as independent entities voting to join together as the Commonwealth of Australia whereas the North American colonies actively rebelled against their colonial masters to come together as the United States of America. As shown above, Australia’s colonial heritage lingered well into the twentieth century, but what of the United States? Having so decisively rejected colonialism, how did the newly independent country seek to create a new ‘revolutionary’ state? In particular, what role, if any, did CCE play? The political revolution that characterized the emergence of the United States was not matched by a social revolution and this was particularly true when it came to education. As Cubberley (1919) has shown, there was little interest in education as part of the discussions at the constitutional convention that followed the Revolutionary War. Education was left as a state responsibility rather than as a responsibility of the new Federal government. This resulted in a fragmented approach to educational provision dependent on the resources and inclinations of individual states, especially religious inclinations. As in Europe and Great Britain, colonial education had been a private rather than a public concern and was largely supported by a variety of Christian denominations and it continued in much the same way after the war of 1776. As Cubberley (1919, p. 71) has pointed out, support for education after the war was strongest in the New England states but the motivation still came from the Calvinistic view that personal salvation required a knowledge of the Bible and therefore the need for literacy among the population. In other words, there was no national consciousness regarding the importance of education because of the war and, according

12

1 Framing Civic and Citizenship Education …

to Cubberley (1919), such consciousness did not start to emerge until after the War of 1812–1814. Yet this apparent neglect of what might be called a ‘revolutionary’ approach to education can be easily understood in the context of the times. This certainly reflected the spirit of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries not just in the United States but in Great Britain, much of Europe and Australia. Education of any kind was considered either the preserve of elites, as charity to the poor or as the prerequisite for salvation that provided the pathway to the next life. This is not to say that there were not advocates for education in the evolving nation. Cubberley (1919) has shown how successive early Presidents made supportive public comments about the importance of schools and education. Yet education was not in their preserve at the Federal level so little action resulted. Even among the advocates of public education, however, there was not agreement about its purposes or forms. Bartrum (2008), for example, has highlighted the different views of Thomas Jefferson and Noah Webster. Jefferson proposed a system of education in his home state of Virginia that would have provided a broad education for all but an elite education for future leaders unconnected to either religion of politics. As one commentator noted, ‘Jefferson did not believe that schooling should impose political values or mold the virtuous republican citizen’ (Bartrum, 2008, p. 274). Education was important for those who would be leaders because it would be these leaders and not the masses who would secure democracy’s future. Webster, on the other hand, viewed public schools ‘as founts of political and religious guidance’ and famously proclaimed as part of his educational creed ‘begin with the infant in the cradle; let the first word he lisps be Washington’ (Bartrum, 2008, p. 276). Jefferson was more a rationalist, an Enlightenment supporter an advocate, whereas Webster represented the continuation of the New England Calvinistic tradition by which religion and values needed to be shaped as part of a new national story. As Bartrum (2008) pointed out, it was Webster’s rather than Jefferson’s view of schools and education that most influenced the early development of education in the United States. Nevertheless, the clash between Jefferson’s rationalism and Webster’s Christian world view can still be seen in much of the public discourse around US education today. The Jeffersonian perspective, however, was not forgotten. It is best seen in a statement by Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter in a ruling (McCollum v. the Board of Education 1948) on the role of state support for religion in education (Murray, 2008): [t]he public school is at once the symbol of our democracy and the most pervasive means for promoting our common destiny. In no activity of the State is it more vital to keep out divisive forces than in its schools. (p. 94)

This view has come to be referred to as the ‘legal secularist’ view because it sought to abolish religion from public schools in line with a view of the constitution that expressly prohibited links between government and religion. At the same time, however, it constructs schools as the standard bearers of a secular democracy where all children can be educated according to a common curriculum and where they might be free outside of school to pursue whatever religious paths they chose.

1.5 Case 2: The United States of America: Secularism …

13

As Murray (2008, p. 99) has shown it took some time for American schools to emerge from their religious roots where Christian moralism was dominant. Yet by the mid twentieth century talk of religion in public schools was increasingly prohibited in what were essentially secular public schools. It is as part of this process of secularization that CCE came to the fore—almost as a civil religion giving some substance to Frankfurter’s view of schools as ‘symbols of democracy.’ This is very much a twentieth-century phenomenon, but it takes place in a context where schools come to be the crucibles of democracy rather than religion. Schools without religious divisions come to be reflective of the democratic ideal characterized by equality, freedom of expression and the rule of law. Of course, this ideal worked only for some and over time there were many exclusions on account of race, gender, ethnicity and class. Yet few other countries have valorized schools in such a way and it is an important context in which to consider the development of CCE. Writing in 1918 Cubberley (1919, p. 487) argued that ‘we have, during nearly three centuries of educational evolution gradually transformed the school from an instrument of the church to a civil institution … reasonably well suited to a great democratic society such as our own.’ Yet at this particular time in US history the challenges for this civil institution were seen to be significant so that ‘the youth of the land, girls now as well as boys, must be trained for responsible citizenship in our democracy, so filled with the spirit and ideals of our national life that they will be willing to dedicate their lives to the preservation and advancement of our national welfare’ (Cubberley, 1919, p. 500). This is an annunciation of the civic mission of schools and the rationale for CCE in the United States. It came in response to the changing nature of the US population, the growth of cities, the development of mass secondary education and an acceptance following the First World War that the United States had a larger role to play on the international stage. This conception of the civic mission of schools came to be supported by CCE. Most commentators agree that CCE did not become part of the school curriculum in the United States until the early twentieth century (Feith, 2011, p. 5; Malone, 1968, p. 110). Yet over time, it grew to become a requirement for all students in most US states. Sometimes it takes the form of a separate subject, often called Civic Education, and at other times there have been graduation requirements for the study of US History. However CCE is offered, its purpose has always been to build support for democracy and to prepare citizens for their future roles. Yet, as in Australia, greater polarization in US politics and society means that today there is much less agreement on values and priorities. Some argue for prayers to be said in schools, others oppose it. Some want a liberal immigration policy but many people do not. Some are in favor of abortion but others are not. As society splinters, the civic mission of schools takes on different values and the task of CCE becomes harder since even what count as ‘democratic’ values become increasingly contested.

14

1 Framing Civic and Citizenship Education …

1.6 Conclusion In both Australia and the United States, the traditional role of CCE has been to support prevailing democratic values. As the twenty-first century progresses, however, the task has become more complex. The task is no longer just to consolidate democracy among a new generation but to defend it and to resist the forces of deconsolidation. The ‘crisis of democracy’ referred to earlier requires such a response if liberal democracy and its values are to be sustained. As discussed in forthcoming sections, this may be CCE’s special role in the twenty-first century. Being part of a curriculum, however, is just the first step in a subject’s providing effective learning for students—any curriculum is a necessary but not sufficient condition for learning. More needs to be known about the contexts in which CCE will operate and some assessment needs to be made of its potential to be successful as a counter narrative to democratic deconsolidation. This suggests two broad questions that need to be addressed: • What will be the challenges for CCE in the future? and • As currently conceived, can CCE cope with these challenges? These questions will be addressed in successive chapters.

1.7 Synopsis This chapter has outlined the broad theoretical approaches underpinning CCE and used case studies of Australia and the United States to show how CCE developed as a response to the unique context of both countries. While historical circumstances dictated different local responses to the development of CCE, Australia and the United States shared a commitment to the consolidation of democracy and its values. By mid-twentieth century, such consolidation remained largely unquestioned in both countries. Yet the twenty-first century has seen much greater internal polarization in both countries, the common threat of international terrorism, and increasing resistance to liberal democratic values. Thus, CCE’s role in the future may need to be directed against democratic deconsolidation to protect democracy and its values not only in Australia and the United States but worldwide.

References Appardurai, A. (2017). Democracy fatigue. In H. Geiselberger (Ed.), The great regression (pp. 1–12). Cambridge: Polity Press. Azmanova, A., & Mihai, M. (Eds.). (2015). Reclaiming democracy—Judgment, responsibility and the right to politics. New York & London: Routledge. Bartrum, I. (2008). The political origins of secular public education: The New York City school controversy, 1840–1842. NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, 3, 267–348.

References

15

Bates, S. (2013). The Anzac Day Legend: Its origins, meaning. power and impact on shaping Australia’s Identity. (Unpublished Master’s of Peace and Conflict Studies Dissertation, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies University of Sydney). Retrieved on February 11 from http://www. gcpc2015.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Sonja_Bates_Dissertation_Anzac_Legend.pdf. Blühdorn, I. (2014, November 8). Erosion or exhaustion of democracy? The challenge for social Europe. Social Europe. Retrieved on July 30, 2018 from https://www.socialeurope.eu/exhaustionof-democracy. Blühdorn, I., & Butzlaff, F. (2018). Rethinking populism: Peak democracy, liquid identity and the performance of sovereignty. European Journal of Social Theory, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1368431017754057. Burns, T., & Connelly, J. (Eds.). (2010). The legacy of Leo Strauss. Exeter: Imprint Academic. Chong, E. K. M., Kennedy, K., & Cheung, C. H. W. (2018). China—Liberal economic power abroad, politically authoritarian at home. Citizenship Teaching and Learning, 13(2). Civic Education Group. (1994). Whereas the people … civics and citizenship education. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Cubberley, E. (1919). Public education in the United States—A study and interpretation of American educational history. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Davidson, A. (1997). From subject to citizen: Australian citizenship in the twentieth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Feith, D. (2011). Teaching America: The case for civic education. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Education. Foa, R., & Mounk, Y. (2016). The danger of deconsolidation. Journal of Democracy, 27(3), 5–17. Geiselberger, H. (Ed.). (2017). The great regression. Cambridge: Polity Press. Keating, P. (1995, June 6). Speech by the Prime Minister, The Hon P J Keating, MP—Response to Civics Expert Group Report. Press Release. Canberra, ACT, Australia. Retrieved on February 11, 2018 from https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release/transcript-9615. Kennedy, K. (2001). Civics education in post-World War II Australia: The school curriculum as conservative policy text. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 21(1), 19–29. Kennedy, K. (2007). Civics. In B. G. Roberts (Ed.), The Oxford companion to Australian politics (pp. 104–105). Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Kennedy, K. (2008). More civics, less democracy: Competing discourses for citizenship education in Australia. In D. Grossman, W. O. Lee, & K. Kennedy (Eds.), Citizenship curriculum in Asia and the Pacific (pp. 181–196). Hong Kong: Springer and the Comparative Education Research Centre. Kennedy, K., Fairbrother, G., & Zhao, Z. Z. (2014). Citizenship education in China: Preparing citizens for the “Chinese Century”. New York & London: Routledge. Krauthammer, C. (2004, Fall). In defence of democratic realism. The National Interest, 77, 15–25. Li, H. (2015). The relationship between regime “type” and civic education: The cases of three Chinese societies (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis). Hong Kong Institute of Education. Retrieved on February 11, 2018 from libdr1.ied.edu.hk/dspace/bitstream/2260/4362/1/image_file.html. Luke, T. (1990). Social theory and modernity—Critique, dissent and revolution. London: Sage Publications. Malone, W. (1968). Civic education. Peabody Journal of Education, 46(2), 110–114. Merriam, C. (1931). The making of citizens. New York: Teachers’ College Press. Merry, M. (2018). Can schools teach citizenship? Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. [Online] https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2018.1488242. Mouffe, C. (2016). The populist moment. Retrieved on July 25, 2018 from https://www. opendemocracy.net/democraciaabierta/chantal-mouffe/populist-moment. Murphy, J. (2007). Against civic education in public schools. International Journal of Public Administration, 30(6–7), 651–670. Murray, B. (2008). Religious liberty in America—The first amendment in historical and contemporary perspective. Amherst: Massachusetts University Press.

16

1 Framing Civic and Citizenship Education …

Perkins, Y. (2014, April 14). The Anzac Day silence, religion and garland. Stumbling Through the Past. Retrieved on February 11, 2014 from: https://stumblingpast.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/ the-anzac-day-silence-religion-and-garland/. Pettit, P. (1997). Republicanism—A theory of freedom and government. New York: Oxford University Press. Pryles, P. (1981). Australian citizenship law. Sydney: The Law Book Company. Schulz, W., Ainley, J., Fraillon, J., & Losito, B. (2010). ICCS 2009 International report: Civic knowledge, attitudes, and engagement among lower-secondary school students in 38 countries. Amsterdam: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Schulz, W., Ainley, J., Fraillon, J., Losito, B., Agrusti, G., & Friedman, T. (2017). Becoming citizens in a changing world—IEA international civic and citizenship education study 2016 international report. Amsterdam: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Serle, G. (1973). From deserts the prophets come: The creative spirit in Australia 1788–1992. Melbourne: Heinemann. The Guardian. (2015, December 8). The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s Islamophobia: No sense of decency. Retrieved on February 11, 2018 from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ 2015/dec/08/the-guardian-view-on-donald-trump-islamophobia-no-sense-of-decency. Thomas, J. (1994). The history of civics education in Australia. In Civic Education Group. Whereas the people: Civics and citizenship education (pp. 161–171). Canberra: Australian Publishing Government Service. Torney, J., Oppenheim, A., & Farnen, R. (1975). Civic education in ten countries—An empirical study. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Torney-Purta, J., Lehmann, R., Oswald, H., & Schulz, W. (2001). Citizenship and education in twenty-eight countries: Civic knowledge and engagement at age fourteen. Amsterdam: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Van der Ploeg, P., & Guérin, L. (2016). Questioning participation and solidarity as goals of citizenship education. Critical Review, 28(2), 248–264. Wang, Y. (2019). A comparative study of Mainland and Hong Kong students’ political trust, efficacy and participation (Unpublished M.Phil. thesis). The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China. Westbrook, R. (2005). Democratic hope: Pragmatism and the politics of truth. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press.

Chapter 2

What Kind of Future in What Kind of World?

Abstract This chapter reviews current trends influencing societies and individuals and assesses the implications for CCE. Following from the previous chapter, it is acknowledged that CCE can support both the authoritarian state and the democratic state but in relation to the latter its main function has been to consolidate democratic processes, institutions and values. This consolidation, however, is now seen to be under threat from major social and economic influences including globalization, populism, fundamentalisms and the negative use of social media. These influences pose a major threat to, and provide significant challenges for, CCE. The implications of these multiple influences for the future are that democratic values may not be a given and support for democracy cannot be assumed. Future citizens will need to evaluate information critically, to weigh up competing interpretations and most importantly of all to make decisions that are grounded in moral and ethical values. These citizens will not only be active and engaged but also knowledgeable, equipped with moral purpose and integrity and willing to defend democracy. Keywords Globalization · Populism · Fundamentalism · Social media · Critical thinking · Moral and ethical decision making

2.1 CCE—A Tool of the State All countries engage in some form of CCE in an attempt to shape and mould the younger generation. In this sense, CCE is a tool of the state. Liberal democracies such the United Kingdom, Australia and those in Europe and North America proclaim their intent loudly often with the rationale that they are preparing “active citizens” who can engage in political processes, preserve democratic values and protect human rights. As discussed earlier, however, these values are often not shared by all citizens in a particular country. Even though they are often promoted as liberal, and even liberating for individuals, they can also be “disciplining technologies” (Luke, 1990) designed to ensure commitment to liberal democracy. Yet within liberal democracies there is always space for dissent and this is one of the key issues separating democracy from authoritarianism. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 K. J Kennedy, Civic and Citizenship Education in Volatile Times, Springerbriefs in citizenship education for the 21st century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6386-3_2

17

18

2 What Kind of Future in What Kind of World?

It is clear that citizens in different contexts and at different times do make choices between competing political narratives even though CCE may promote a single narrative designed to consolidate democracy. Yet citizens think for themselves both in schools and out of them so that the democratic narrative constantly needs to be reinforced. Thus when civic engagement in many countries appeared to be in decline, towards the end of the twentieth century the concept of ‘active’ citizenship was promoted. This was not just for citizens but for future citizens as well because when citizens withdraw from democratic institutions, those institutions are under threat. Yet ‘active’ citizenship can take many forms including, but not confined to, those forms that can support liberal democracy. There needs to be a better understanding of how the idea of ‘active’ citizenship developed and whether as an objective it continues to serve societies well as they confront new challenges to issues of civic engagement and to the entire democratic project itself. With its roots in republican political theory, ‘active citizenship’ is a distinctive creation of Western philosophical thought, at least as far back as the Greeks. The revival of ‘active citizenship’ was to some extent a recognition that classical liberalism had not delivered on the promise of the democratic ideal. Citizens might be free, as both democracy and liberalism demand, but freedom can come under threat from either the state or individuals, so that citizens need to be more than free: they also need to be active in democracy’s behalf. Yet it must be recognized that as a liberal democratic discourse active citizenship has little traction in authoritarian regimes where duty, obedience and patriotism, often referred to as passive forms of citizenship, are highlighted rather than active citizenship stressing participation, engagement and involvement. The differences between liberal democratic and authoritarian conception of citizenship highlight the political nature of CCE. CCE, therefore, may promote either active or passive approaches to citizenship and the choice is entirely political. In this sense, CCE is best seen as a political construction designed to serve the purposes of the nation state reflecting its values, its purposes and its priorities. These purposes maybe liberal democratic in nature, or they may be authoritarian. As shown in Chapter 1 with examples from Australia and the United States it is context that determines political purposes and priorities. Yet contexts are neither static nor unchanging. As shown with the earlier examples contexts change over time. Thus to understand the role of CCE in the future there needs to be some understanding of the contexts that will influence it. The next section, therefore will involve some ‘future gazing’, necessarily speculative, to identify likely contexts that will influence broad issues of citizenship and consequently CCE.

2.2 Changing Contexts for Changing Times—What Might the Future Hold? When seeking to identify recent key events in history it is difficult to overestimate the significance of the Berlin Wall that stood as a symbol of a divided world and a political settlement for most of the second half of the twentieth century. When in

2.2 Changing Contexts for Changing Times—What Might …

19

November 1989 the Wall began to crumble under the onslaught of citizens from both East and West Germany, it seemed that a new world was in the offing. The context led Fukuyama (1989) to comment: the century that began full of self-confidence in the ultimate triumph of Western liberal democracy seems at its close to be returning full circle to where it started: not to an “end of ideology” or a convergence between capitalism and socialism, as earlier predicted, but to an unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism.

Fukuyama clearly got it wrong with his 1989 prediction, although the collapse of the Berlin Wall was undoubtedly a cataclysmic event. Old binaries disappeared, new borders were drawn up, new alliances were developed, many economies changed course, new power blocs emerged, and the world community settled down with a redrawn map, with new political actors (although some of the old ones had transformed with the new political structures) and with some hope for the future. Yet from the very beginning, and subsequently, new trends have developed replacing the old binaries threatening any hope that the post-1989 world would be an improvement on its predecessor. These trends have included: • • • •

Globalization; Populism; Fundamentalisms; and Social media.

These will be discussed in what follows with a particular emphasis on the implications for CCE and active citizenship.

2.3 Globalization and Global Citizenship Some have argued that globalization has been with us forever dating back to the voyages of exploration undertaken by different countries and societies. Yet this misses the point that at least since the 1990s the press for economic integration across nation states facilitated by technological innovation, greater mobility and a world trading order has no parallel. This has occurred under pressure from a neo-liberal economic world view that promotes the benefits of free trade across borders, highlights the ‘trickle down’ effects of progress from the rich to the poor and champions societies in which there are as few restraints as possible on individuals. In this context ‘globalized’ economies have the world as their market and such competition, it is argued, creates more jobs, lowers prices while innovations work in the background creating smarter and smarter products for the ever expanding market. This is the ‘dream-world’ of neo-liberalism that trusts the ‘invisible hand’ of the market implicitly to deliver not just unparalleled economic development but also socially just societies. Debates about globalization abound and they can be found in many places, especially from economists (Dumas, 2010; Stiglitz, 2002). Yet the main interest here is the implications of this neo-liberal view of the world for CCE. There are two possible

20

2 What Kind of Future in What Kind of World?

lines of development worth exploring. The first line is the attempt by neo-liberals to dismantle all vestiges of the state’s responsibility for its citizens by developing what might be called the idea of ‘the self- regulating citizen’ (Kennedy, 2007). The second line is almost the opposite, focused on developing the idea of ‘the global citizen’ who has links and concerns across borders for his/her fellow citizens in area such as human rights, political participation, equality and social justice. Each of these views will be developed below.

2.3.1 Neoliberalism’s ‘Self-regulating Citizen’ The motif of globalization is liberalism’s “freedom from constraints” taken to its ultimate conclusion: free trade across borders, untrammeled citizen mobility from country to country, as few restrictions on labor as possible and the dismantling of any barrier that might constrain citizens’ economic actions. These actions are seen to ‘free’ citizens to pursue economic goals thus increasing personal as well as national economic productivity. In this scenario governments ‘take a back seat’ and let markets decide what will work and what will not. ‘Big’ government has no place in the neo-liberal state with the private sector taking more and more responsibility. Kennedy (2007) portrayed it this way: In the face of retreating government responsibilities for broad areas of social provision, citizens in the neo-liberal state need to be more active in ensuring both the standards and types of services to which they are entitled. This is consistent with neo-liberalism’s focus on the self-regulating citizen free of government restraints and able to work on his/her own behalf. (p. 307)

It is assumed that in the neo-liberal state citizens themselves, rather than governments, take responsibility for their own welfare. Thus being an ‘active citizen’ in this context means relying on private services rather than receiving government services. Such services range from health, to education and rent control and could also include prisons, transport and refugees. In the neo-liberal world, citizens fend for themselves while the private sector takes on and gets paid for delivering the services that traditionally have been provided by governments. At the same time, entrepreneurialism and self-development are lauded and self-employment is promoted as a viable option when it comes to employment opportunities. The individualism so closely related to classic liberalism is taken to its extreme under neo-liberalism. As Margaret Thatcher famously proclaimed, “there is no such thing as society”. This has been the neoliberal credo that has fueled globalization: individuals perceived largely as economic units left alone to enhance their own economic potential wherever they can do so, with whomever they can do it and without any constraints from government. This is globalization’s self-regulating citizen. Of course, successive financial crises in this century have shown that there is little morality in the market and, left unrestrained, unscrupulous people will engage in unscrupulous practices to maximize their economic advantage at the expense of

2.3 Globalization and Global Citizenship

21

others. These crises have necessitated the intervention of governments to correct the anomalies and Kennedy (2010) has referred to this as ‘neo-statism’, the return of the state to inject funds, order and regulation into globalization’s chaotic and market-led state. Such intervention can be seen as attempting to ‘regulate the self-regulating citizen’. Herein lies the problem for the future. There is continuing faith in globalization’s promise of economic growth through competition and freedom despite what has been demonstrated about its shortfalls. Even when leading economists such as Stiglitz (2002, 2013) show that globalization’s benefits are limited, the faith continues. Globalization continues to have its advocates, especially those promoters of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, although there is an increasing recognition that those whom globalization “has left behind” cannot be ignored since they constitute a significant political force and increasingly a threat to social stability. The rise of populism, to be discussed later in this chapter, may to a large extent be linked to the influence of the ‘flaws’ in neo-liberal constructions of reality. At the same time there is an alternative to the self-regulating neo-liberal citizen. It is best seen in the construction of ‘global citizenship’ as a counter to neo-liberalism’s hyper-freedom and apparent lack of social concern.

2.3.2 Global Citizenship—Skill or Value? Support for concepts such global citizenship has a long history and as Kennedy (2016, p.) showed this has often flowed over into global citizenship education: Global citizenship education has been around for a long time, going back at least to the global education initiatives of the 1970s, not to mention the cosmopolitanism of the Ancient Greek world. Peace educators, global educators, international educators etc. have all highlighted the need to look across boundaries and borders to identify those values that unite humanity rather than divide it, promote tolerance rather than hatred and seek fairness and justice for all. (p. 63)

This discourse has most often been used to argue against national citizenship discourses that seek to confine citizenship within the borders of the nation state. Yet it is an equally powerful discourse opposing neo-liberalism and globalization. It has its roots in Deweyan progressivism and the capacity of democracy to bring people together around shared values. Recently the discourse has been co-opted by international organizations such as UNESCO and OECD—but for very different purposes. Both organizations have identified the need for global understanding rather than the promotion of narrow nationalist discourses. Yet they come at the idea with different mindsets. UNESCO looks at a world at war and in disarray and sees the future in terms of unity, respect and interdependence. OECD looks at the same world and sees national economies under threat, skills in decline and the instability of political regimes. UNESCO’s response is the promotion of global citizenship while OECD focuses on global competency. Kennedy (2016) explained it this way:

22

2 What Kind of Future in What Kind of World? Yet there is a shared concern that global understanding is important for a world that needs to be both compassionate and productive. Looking at the world from the perspective of ‘the other’ is an OECD skill and a UNESCO value. (p. 63)

There is little doubt that the future will indeed continue to be global, and in multiple ways, if only because technology alone means that individuals and nations cannot be shielded from global issues and concerns. The UNESCO/OECD dichotomy may only be theoretical—future citizens will need global values and global skills to counter globalization’s threats and to create positive and constructive spaces for human development and creativity. This is an important attempt to counter neo-liberalism’s focus on individualism and self-development. Yet globalization’s threats remain and there are other oppositional voices that are not nearly so positive as those of UNESCO’s and OECD’s and these will be discussed in the following section.

2.4 Populism—A New Voice with an Old Message Whether it is Donald trump in the United States, Pauline Hanson in Australia, Nigel Farage in the United Kingdom, Marie Le Pen in France, Alice Weidel in Germany, Christoph Blocher in Switzerland or Sebastian Kurtz in Austria, Viktor Orbán, in Hungary or Mateusz Morawiecki in Poland the message is the same: protect the nation, strengthen border control, expel foreigners, bring back jobs and reclaim a former glory. Ferguson (2016) has argued that populism is the natural successor and response to globalization that in his words has “gone haywire before our very eyes”. He viewed the possibility of a Trump presidency as signaling “the death knell of globalization”. Yet Gos (2016) has pointed out that while it is tempting to blame “globalization’s losers” for the rise of populism answers should be sought elsewhere. Such answers are probably in the deeper recesses of national psyches challenged in particular by immigration, refugees and what is constructed in popular discourse as ‘domination by the other’. Populist politicians play on community fears and seek power on the basis that they can resolve the problems—very often problems that they themselves create with their scaremongering. Australia’s Pauline Hanson is a good case in point. The first incarnation of her One Nation Party was based on fear of Asians, but in her 2016 return to politics it was fear of Muslims. There is an underlying racism in these positions and a prejudice against difference that runs counter to liberal democratic values. Yet the point is that such prejudice is not confined to the party platform. It was supported by enough voters in an open democratic election to ensure not just Pauline Hanson’s election to the Senate, but three other party members as well. That is, there is a constituency for populist discourse: it is not confined to a few extremists. This is as true in Australia as it is in Europe and North America. Populism wins votes as witnessed by the success of the Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump’s success in the US presidential election. It cannot be wished away but needs to be dealt with as a permanent feature of the political landscape.

2.4 Populism—A New Voice with an Old Message

23

It may be more permanent than many commentators have realized. In a recent study Kuang (2016) has shown that among adolescents across cultures there are a group of students she labelled “the Outsiders”. These are alienated and disaffected students, more likely boys than girls with low levels of civic knowledge, low expectations about further education, negative attitudes to democratic values and equality and for whom future civic engagement is likely to take the form of illegal protest rather than more conventional forms of engagement. While Kuang’s samples came from Asia, Latin America and Europe her results supported Chow’s (2012) earlier work with English students. What this suggests is that well before these students enter the formal political system they are already predisposed to view the world around them negatively and therefore are likely to be open to populist discourses that play on negativity and fear. For the future, therefore, CCE needs not only to be aware of populism but also of the students who may be most affected by it. As Kuang (2016) argued, both schools and parents need to be aware that alienated and disaffected students require special support and attention for them to be able to contribute in a productive way to civil society and the political system. Preliminary research has suggested that such students lack a sense of belonging—particularly at school. Their experiences of civic participation at school and in the community need to be carefully scaffolded and there needs to be a dialogue between school and home about other strategies for including such students in a full range of civic learning and activities. One size does not fit all students when it comes to citizenship education and this needs to be recognized so that those students most at risk of alienation can be supported on their citizenship journey. Starting in schools may be the most effective way to counter future democratic deconsolidation efforts and populist discourses that seek to undermine democratic values. As important as populism is it is not the only negative social and political force exerting an influence on young people.

2.5 Fundamentalisms Nagata (2001, p. 481) defined fundamentalism as “an attachment to a set of irreducible beliefs or a theology that forestalls further questions”. In her subsequent review she referred mainly to religious examples: Islamic jihadism, Jewish eschatology, ‘born-again’ Christianity, Hindu revivalism, Theravada Buddhism. She also extended examples to more secular philosophies such as feminism, Maoism, Marxism and nationalism. These disparate examples cannot be equated with one another simply because each is labelled as a ‘fundamentalism’. Clearly, they differ in the nature of the prescriptions they apply to the human condition but in particular they differ because of the role of reason in their formulation. Thus the religious fundamentalisms referred to above usually rely on an external source, such as a sacred text linked to an all knowing deity. The others, that can be classified as ‘secular fundamentalisms’ (Feldman, 2000, p. 322) are derived from processes of personal reasoning, perhaps based on experience, evidence, observation or even ideology.

24

2 What Kind of Future in What Kind of World?

Irrespective of their formulation, however, there are no debates about fundamentalist prescriptions—at least from the point of view of proponents and adherents. They are seen to provide answers from which there is no allowable dissent. While fundamentalisms themselves brook no opposition, Baumann (n.d.) has argued that context makes all the difference: In an open and plural society with a free competition between ideas and world-views, formal and informal institutions for the systematic distribution of these ideas and views and a scientific production of knowledge, fundamentalist beliefs will not remain unchallenged but will be confronted with alternative positions and views. The individual in such a society will get a lot of information without investing many personal resources. (p. 65)

The problem, as Baumann (n.d., p. 64) has described it, is in situations of ‘epistemic seclusion’ where individuals are cut off from information, where they hear nothing but fundamentalist rhetoric, where counterviews are neither offered nor entertained, where there may be punishments for any divergence from the fundamentalist line and where conformity and obedience are the values of the day. This kind of environment is best associated with authoritarian regimes where options for debate and discussion are limited but it can also be found in liberal democratic regimes where cult groups and social isolation can create ‘epistemic seclusion’. Yet it is also in liberal democracies that fundamentalisms can best be evaluated and there is no better platform for this than in CCE classes. Young people will be confronted with different fundamentalisms throughout their lives. What is essential is that they are equipped with the tools to deal with these in an open, critical and comprehensive way. It is at this point that populism and fundamentalisms intersect—they both need to be challenged by young citizens, reviewed and evaluated. Therefore the development of critical thinking is perhaps the most significant skill that CCE can help students to develop. Fundamentalisms, whether religious or secular, will find it difficult to survive in open and tolerant classrooms, schools and societies where rational discussion, exchange and debate can facilitate thoughtful deliberation. The irrationalism of fundamentalisms can be defeated by the rationalism of open and democratic societies and this can start with schools and students.

2.6 Social Media There is little doubt that social media have changed the face twenty first century politics—whether it is the 3 a.m. ‘tweets’ of Donald trump, the early blooming of the so called ‘Arab Spring’ in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt or the links between social media used by young people and political engagement. In one way or another social media is now an integral part of modern politics. As important as this is, it is not the most important aspect of social media use in modern societies. Social media is important not so much because of the instrumental purposes to which it can be put but rather because “sixty-one percent of millennials think social media is the “new power of youth,” and 70% consider it a force for change. In fact, they consider “the

2.6 Social Media

25

people, empowered by social media” a greater agent of change than politics—by a margin of more than two to one” (Havas, 2011, p. 20). This suggests a moral purpose for social media, at least for many young people seeking a different world from the one into which they were born. The idea that young people ‘seek a different world’ is not one that has always influenced CCE. Currently efforts at CCE seek to normalize political engagement by inducting young people into a political system for which they have little respect. This is as true in Western countries as it is in some Asian societies such as Hong Kong and Taiwan. In the West this has privileged voting as the key indicator of political engagement so in the past two decades the most significant problem identified by political scientists has been declining participation in elections. This has even been the case in Australia where voting is compulsory! On the other hand, in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan many young people have adopted protest and civil disobedience as preferred forms of political engagement. They have done so because of disillusion with their respective “systems” and the ability of the system to deliver fair and equitable outcomes for all. It is in this context of ‘seeking a better world’ that social media and its use in social and political contexts takes on moral purposes. Those purposes are directed not at conventional political engagement but at radical change of the system itself. Shirky (2011), while talking about the ‘power of social media’, also warns that both the uses and consequences of social media need to be better understood. Social media can assist in coordinating protest activities or in making protest agendas public, but these may not be their most important uses, although instrumentally they are important uses. But more is needed (Shirky, 2011): Political freedom has to be accompanied by a civil society literate enough and densely connected enough to discuss the issues presented to the public … the Internet spreads not just media consumption but media production as well -- it allows people to privately and publicly articulate and debate a welter of conflicting views …… Access to information is far less important, politically, than access to conversation. (p. 5)

This suggests a twin concern for the future: young people must be educated to appreciate the importance of voting but also see themselves as part of a civil society that in some instances can support governments but in others must call them to account. It is social media that can contribute to this objective (Shirky, 2011): For political movements, one of the main forms of coordination is what the military calls “shared awareness,” the ability of each member of a group to not only understand the situation at hand but also understand that everyone else does, too. Social media increase shared awareness by propagating messages through social networks. (p. 6)

This is true in both democratic and authoritarian regimes but, of course, more dangerous in the latter where the concept of internet freedom is not likely to exist. Nevertheless, making information available is a threat to authoritarianism because it can strike at regime legitimacy just as it can strike at special interest groups and attempts to manipulate the system in democratic societies. Yet there are some caveats to the pervasive use of social media both now and in the future and they have direct implications for civic education.

26

2 What Kind of Future in What Kind of World?

Much of the discourse about social media relates to its potential for supporting democratic development and as Shirky (2011) showed there are many examples, both successful and unsuccessful, where this has been the case. Yet democrats are not the only ones who have access to social media, including the populists and fundamentalists referred to earlier in this chapter. Social media can be used for their purposes as well as was seen in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in the United States and as Engesser, Ernst, Esser, and Büchel (2017) have shown in relation to European populists. Fundamentalist jihadist groups such as ISIS have also infamously made use of social media both to recruit from across the world as well as to publicize its horrendous executions. McCants (2015, p. 95) has also shown how social media exposed diverging views in jihadist ideology between the Islamic State and the Al Nusra Front as each group vied for supremacy. Social media, therefore has a double edge—it can be a reformist tool, but it is not always so because its potential is open to all. This raises a very special issue for CCE, the education of civil society and for society at large. Harnessing the benefits of social media for a democratic future seems an obvious objective but how to prepare young people for a future that may be less than democratic—either populist of fundamentalist—is a bigger challenge. The same social media will be involved but the issue will be to educate young people not so much in their actual use (this comes naturally to ‘digital natives’) but to educate them in its moral use. This is not just about skills—it is about values. As Kennedy (2016) argued recently, twenty first century skills are not enough—what is needed in addition are twenty first century values. In particular young people will need to be equipped with the capacity to evaluate information critically, to make moral decisions about it and to adopt courses of action that seek to better the human condition. CCE in the future must not only be action oriented but it must morally oriented so that different views can be evaluated, different solutions considered and actions that benefit the most people given priority. Action without rational deliberation, consideration of consequences and a moral orientation should not be undertaken. Active citizenship in the future cannot just be about engagement and commitment—it must be about engagement in and commitment to moral actions that have the potential to benefit other people and the planet we inhabit together. Sheng (2016) has highlighted starkly the current problems and future needs: What the world lacks most is not more economics and politics, but a philosophy about individual and community identity in a world in the grip of radical change. We are all insecure because our present values are challenged by these rapid changes, from terrorism to fanaticism and massive migration to disruptive technology, dysfunctional politics and corruption in morality. From America to Zimbabwe, we need a new narrative to find our sense of balance. We simply do not have a philosophy for the 21st century.

2.7 Synopsis

27

2.7 Synopsis CCE can be used for different purposes. It can be directed to support the authoritarian state, or it can serve to consolidate democracy. Context determines these purposes. Currently there are indications that democracy is under threat—from those whom globalization appears to have sidelined, populists, fundamentalists and the destructive use of social media. These contexts can serve to deconstruct democracy. CCE in the future must address these issues by helping to produce citizens who will not only be active and engaged but also knowledgeable and equipped with moral purpose and integrity.

References Dumas, C. (2010). Globalisation fractures—How major nations’ interests are now in conflict. London: Profile Books. Engesser, S., Ernst, N., Esser, F., & Büchel, F. (2017). Populism and social media: How politicians spread a fragmented ideology. Information, Communication & Society, 20(8), 1109–1126. Feldman, S. (2000). Law and religion: A critical anthology. New York: New York University Press. Ferguson, N. (2016, September 29). Brangelina is dead. So, is the end nigh for globalisation? South China Morning Post, p. A11. Fukuyama, F. (1989, Summer). The end of history? The National Interest, 16, 3–18. Retrieved August 5, 2017 from https://www.jstor.org/stable/24027184?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents. Gos, D. (2016, May 6). Is Globalization Really Fueling Populism? Retrieved September 26, 2016, from Project Syndicate: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/understandfactors-behind-rising-populism-by-daniel-gros-2016-05?barrier=true. Havas. (2011). Milenials: The challenger generation. Prosumer Report (Vol. 10). Retrieved August 5, 2017 from http://mag.havas.com/prosumer-report/millennials-the-challenger-generation/. Kennedy, K. (2007). Student constructions of ‘active citizenship’: What does participation mean to students? British Journal of Educational Studies, 55(3), 304–324. Kennedy, K. (2010). Neo-statism and post-globalization contexts for new times. In A. Reed & J. Gill (Eds.), Globalization, the nation-state and the citizen—Dilemmas as a direction for civic and citizenship education (pp. 223–229). New York & London: Routledge. Kennedy, K. (2016). Global citizenship education for a fractured world. Curriculum Perspectives, 36(2), 63–64. Kuang, X. (2016). Alienated and disaffected students: The civic capacity of ‘outsiders’ in cross cultural context Unpublished (Ph.D. thesis). The Education University of Hong Kong. Luke, T. (1990). Social theory and modernity—Critique, dissent and revolution. London: Sage Publications. McCants, W. (2015). The ISIS apocalypse: The history, strategy, and doomsday vision of the Islamic State. New York: St Martins Press. Nagata, J. (2001). Beyond theology: Toward an anthropology of “Fundamentalism”. American Anthropologist, 103(2), 481–498. Sheng, A. (2016, October 15). Changing world needs a philosophy of identity. South China Morning Post, p. A14. Shirky, C. (2011). The political power of social media—Technology, the public sphere, and political change. Foreign Affairs (January/February), 1–9. Retrieved on August 5, 2017 from http://www. foreignaffairs.com/articles/67038/clay-shirky/the-political-power-of-social-media. Stiglitz, J. (2002). Globalization and its discontents. New York: W.W Norton. Stiglitz, J. (2013). The price of inequality. London: Penguin.

Chapter 3

Building on Civic and Citizenship Education’s Achievements

Abstract Preparing young people for future political participation has been an important emphasis in CCE over the past two decades, and a great deal of research reflects this interest. Yet the nature of participation itself has been expanded during this time ranging from engagement in the formal political system to engagement with society at large through social media. All forms of participation are important, but this chapter argues that given the current political environment perhaps more attention could be paid to engagement in the formal political system. The research studies reviewed here demonstrate the centrality of civic knowledge in building positive, participatory intentions among young people, especially where engagement in the formal political system is an objective. Developing students’ interest in social and political issues and building trust in democratic institutions can help in developing civic knowledge. Yet civic knowledge may not be enough if other forms of engagement are to be encouraged. Research has shown that classrooms can assist this process by developing environments that value openness, discussion, interaction and exchange of ideas. Schools can help by ensuring that there are opportunities for participation in school governance, voluntary activities, student clubs and other civic related activities. At the same time, the ideas students formulate through interactions with peers, parents and media mean they come to CCE with their own thoughts about participation, and these aspirations should not be ignored. The chapter concludes by identifying the civic enablers that will be needed to be reflected in CCE teaching and learning in the future. Keywords Civic engagement · Participation · Students’ interests · Open classrooms · Social media · Student efficacy If CCE will face challenges in the future, how confident can we be that it is capable of doing so? This involves, in the first place, an understanding of the current impact of CCE after which an assessment can be made of its future potential. Fortunately, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) has conducted international studies of civic education, national jurisdictions such as Australia and the United States of America have conducted national assessments and researchers have either tapped into this data to provide secondary analyses of the international and national data or they have initiated local studies of their own.Thus © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 K. J Kennedy, Civic and Citizenship Education in Volatile Times, Springerbriefs in citizenship education for the 21st century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6386-3_3

29

30

3 Building on Civic and Citizenship Education’s Achievements

there is a considerable amount of data on which to draw to assess CCE’S potential for the future. The focus of this chapter, therefore, will be: • • • •

CCE as a component of the school curriculum; Varieties of civic engagement—social, political and digital; Institutional engagement; and Civic enablers—supporting future civic engagement.

3.1 CCE as a Component of the School Curriculum Educating young people to assume citizenship responsibilities is a common feature of most education systems, but there is not a common approach. Even the name varies so much that at times it is hard to recognize it as covering the same curriculum area. In the United Kingdom, it is called Citizenship Education, in the United States, Civic Education, and in Australia, Civics and Citizenship Education. Many Asian countries are more likely to refer Moral Education or, as in Hong Kong, Moral and Civic Education. In Mainland China, a recent initiative has consolidated civic and citizenship courses at primary and secondary level within a broad curriculum framework referred to as Morality and Rule of Law. These school ‘subjects’ have different theoretical orientations, different political orientations and different purposes, yet they share a commitment to shape the lives of young people to support whatever regime happens to be in power. In societies such as Taiwan, when political parties change so too do orientations to what is being called in this book CCE, yet this does not only happen in Taiwan. Earlier, it was shown that when the Australian government passed from Labor to Liberal in the mid-1990s, so too did orientations to CCE. These two examples simply underline the political nature of CCE in preparing future citizens according to preconceived notions of what a ‘good citizen’ should be. This issue will be returned to later in this chapter. Not only does the terminology differ when it comes to CCE, so too does the way in which CCE is represented in the school curriculum. Reference was made above to the different names given ‘school subjects,’ but in reality, civic education is not always a school subject. Table 3.1 shows the diversity of forms in which CCE appears in the school curriculum. Using data from the IEA Civic Education Study (CivEd) (Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald, & Schulz, 2001), Fairbrother and Kennedy (2011) showed that the form the curriculum takes—single subject, integrated, or delivered through different subjects—only had a relatively minor impact on student learning. Students from different countries experiencing different curriculum forms appeared to do equally well when their levels of civic knowledge were assessed. It is more likely that the content to which students are exposed, the pedagogies they experienced and their out of school experiences with families and peers (including on social media) were the significant influences on their learning than the form of the curriculum.

3.2 Varieties of Civic Engagement—Social, Political and Digital

31

Table 3.1 Approaches to organizing the citizenship curriculum Citizenship Curriculum Modes and Levels of Offering Optional Compulsory Primary/Secondary Single subject Taught through other subjects (e.g. History/Geography/Social Studies) Integrated across all subjects Extracurricular activities Based on Kennedy (2008, p. 489)

3.2 Varieties of Civic Engagement—Social, Political and Digital In an important paper, Westheimer and Kahne (2004) argued that: Democracy is not self-winding. Students need to be taught to participate in our democracy and different programs aim at different goals. We need to choose carefully. The choices we make have consequences for the kind of society we ultimately help to create. (p. 246)

The focus on ‘participation’ has been the theme of a great deal of research on CCE over the past two decades. As acknowledged by Westheimer and Kahne (2004), part of this focus arose out of a concern for declining voter participation in the United States but also elsewhere (Esser & de Vreese, 2007). The decline was particularly noticeable among young people. Yet it was not only political engagement that was singled out for attention. Putnam (1995) argued that social bonds were disappearing in the United States with his famous ‘bowling alone’ metaphor. Even in Australia, where voting is compulsory, the Australian Electoral Commission registered its concern about voter registration for young people that appeared to be less frequent than for other segments of the population (85% compared with 95%, respectively) (Print, Saha, & Edwards, 2004). Against this background, increasing ‘participation’ almost became a sacred quest. The purpose of much research related to CCE has been to understand the construct of participation in a deep sense, identify ways it can be enhanced as well as ways it can be measured. Successive large-scale assessments of citizenship education (CivEd in 1999, ICCS in, 2009 & 2016) have provided some insight into the participation issue, particularly from the perspective of young people themselves. When asked to respond to questions about political participation, there is almost universal agreement that joining political parties or becoming a candidate for election come close to the last things 14 and 15 year olds will consider as future forms of civic engagement, although voting is often given an average level of endorsement. These attitudes are complemented by their attitudes to political institutions where politicians compared to the courts and the police are ranked very poorly. Students tend not to see themselves overly engaged in any political activities in the future although there is support for engaging in activities

32

3 Building on Civic and Citizenship Education’s Achievements

that support the environment. Peaceful protest as a form of civic engagement is often given a moderate level of support, but illegal protest is always, on average, endorsed negatively although more recent research using person-centered approaches identifies groups of students who will opt for more non-conventional forms of civic engagement (Chow & Kennedy, 2015; Kennedy, Li, & Ng, 2018). Overall, however, it can be said that from the perspective of early adolescence, political engagement does not figure prominently as a future civic priority. A somewhat different picture emerges when it comes to social engagement. Volunteering, working with the elderly, collecting money for a social cause are all activities which young adolescents see themselves supporting in the future. Their level of endorsement of these kinds of activities stands in marked contrast to their endorsement of political activities. Thus, it is not participation per se that young people see themselves avoiding but particular kinds of activities that are more politically oriented. Because of the nature of this research, which is driven by surveys, there is little explanation as to why this is the case. Some have suggested it is the age of the students who have little experience of politics, while others see it as reflecting general disillusionment within society about political systems. Taking these different categories of participation, Kennedy (2006, 2018) developed a schema that showed participation and its different dimensions. These are shown in Table 3.2. What has been added here is a fourth dimension, ‘engage in self-regulating activities’ that Kennedy (2007) argued elsewhere represented neoliberalism’s attempt to turn ‘active citizenship’ to its own individualistic purposes. Otherwise, Table 3.2 represents ‘participation’ as it was defined in CivEd and ICCS 2009/2016 and as it has been largely understood in the literature. Yet two further comments need to be made to fill out a somewhat broader picture of participation, especially to reflect trends not well capture by traditional notions. Westheimer and Kahne (2004) identified three broad notions of citizenship engagement—personal responsibility, participation and social justice. These are somewhat broader categories than those identified by Kennedy (2006, 2018) although there are similarities. The category of ‘personally responsible citizen’ (p. 242) emphasizes moral uprightness and being ‘a good person.’ In many senses, it reflects the character education movement that has taken hold in the United States and more recently in England where the focus is on cultivating moral virtues. While such an approach is meant to reflect Western, and Judeo-Christian values and world view, it has remarkable similarities with Asian conceptions of ‘good citizenship’ where it is often argued that ‘good people make good citizens.’ The ‘participative citizen,’ on the other hand, will know about government and its systems and will actively participate in these for the benefit of the community. Westheimer and Kahne (2004, p. 243) characterize the difference between the two citizen types with a simple example: the personally responsible citizen might contribute to a food drive, while the participatory citizen would help to organize it! They also posit a third citizen type, the justice-oriented citizen. To continue the food drive metaphor, Westheimer and Kahne (2004, p. 243) indicated that such citizens would be more interested in finding out why some people remain hungry in a society and then develop strategies to address the issue.

3.2 Varieties of Civic Engagement—Social, Political and Digital

33

Table 3.2 Dimensions of participation 1. Engage in conventional political activities a. Voting b. Joining a political party c. Being a candidate for political office

This is the traditional view usually held by political scientists

2. Engage in voluntary community activities a. Work with community care agencies b. Collect money for a good cause

This is often called the ‘civic virtues’ approach to citizenship

3. Engage in activities that seek to change political and social directions a. Legal i. Write letters to a newspaper ii. Collect signatures on a petition b. Illegal i. Block traffic ii. Write graffiti on walls iii Occupy a building

This is often called ‘the conflict’ model of citizenship

4. Engage in self-regulating activities a. Become financially self-supporting b. Become a self-directed learner c. Become a creative problem solver d. Adopt entrepreneurial values

This is often referred to as the economic model of citizenship

Based on Kennedy (2006, 2018)

What is clear from the frameworks of both Kennedy (2006, 2018) and Westheimer (2004) is that citizen participation is defined well beyond formal participation in the political system (Kennedy’s first category). Indeed, the focus of much CCE research in the past two decades has been very much on broader conceptions of participation rather than narrow conceptions. Part of this has to do with the age of students so that in CivEd and ICCS 2009/2016, students were 14–15 years old with no experience of or access to the formal political system so that other forms of participation were used to gain some idea of their future participation or their ideas of how a good citizen would participate. Yet this distinction between participation in the formal system and broader forms of social and political participation was not new. Researchers have discussed terms such as ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ conceptions of citizenship (Walzer, 1994) or ‘maximal’ and minimal’ conceptions (McLaughlin, 1992). This is a trend that privileges certain forms of citizenship participation over others (e.g. justice-oriented citizenship over personally responsible citizenship), and this trend has continued although perhaps in unexpected ways. Kahne, Hodgin, and Eidman-Aadahl (2016) have recently distinguished between ‘participatory politics’ and ‘institutional politics.’ Drawing on various research projects, they documented youth’s preference for online engagement to achieve different social and political purposes. This allows young people to avoid institutional politics that are more associated with governments, political parties, NGOs and political elites (p. 8). Participatory politics, using the full range of social media, allows for direct communication and the prioritizing of issues relevant to youth themselves.

34

3 Building on Civic and Citizenship Education’s Achievements

This kind of participation—self-directed, personally relevant, politically oriented and often involving peers and other community members—is seen to represent a new direction for the ‘digital natives’ who make up the large majority of the youth population. While there are exhortations about the need to link the outcomes of such participation to institutional politics (e.g. where new laws are needed or where action is required by government departments and community groups), the privileging of participatory over institutional politics is clear. The question is whether this kind of privileging will be strong enough to confront democratic deconsolidation. There is not a simple question, and the issue will be addressed directly later in this chapter.

3.3 The Future of Democratic Political Systems ‘Post-truth politics’ (Keyes, 2004), while not entirely new, seems to have become a signature aspect of the current political environment. Misinformation and ‘fake news’ seem now to be part of the vocabulary of many politicians and a reflection of the state of politics in general. This disrespect for truth has to be seen as part of the agenda for the deconsolidation of democracy. As mentioned previously, it was seen in the United Kingdom referendum on Brexit, the election of Donald Trump in the United States and the return to power of the One Nation Party in Australia. An important characteristic of these events is that they occurred as part of democratic processes. Post-truth politics, as a general process to distort truth and reality, seems now to be a central feature of democracy. This highlights the importance of political systems and their institutions in supporting and sustaining that democracy. Yet advocates of participatory politics often seem to have abandoned the formal political system by privileging more informal means of participation (Kahne et al., 2016). This trend, however, may be counterproductive in the current context since the systems and the institutions they support are in all likelihood the best guarantee of democracy’s survival. The issue is not only the ideological realignments that ‘post-truth politics’ represent, an alignment that has seen the rise of right wing radicalism in many parts of the world. The past two decades of research related to CCE have taken for granted broad liberal democratic political principles. Thus, constructs such as ‘active citizenship,’ ‘civic engagement’ and ‘participation’ have dominated the research literature. Conceptually, CCE has been linked to Ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of citizens’ duties and obligations so that modern citizens have been expected to be as engaged in civic activities as their ancient peers (or at least those privileged enough to have been considered citizens). Yet the assumption has always been that such engagement will be directed toward liberal ends—supporting the political system, helping others, bringing attention to issues that need to be addressed. ‘Post-truth’ politics seeks to undermine the political system and its institutions, questions citizen rights, retreats to an individualism that appears to care little for others and resorts to masking the truth when it suits its purposes. This is the environment in which participatory and institutional politics needs to be evaluated.

3.3 The Future of Democratic Political Systems

35

While democracy has delivered political gains for antidemocratic groups in the context of ‘post-truth politics,’ it is important to understand the contexts in which this has happened. In the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union, the difference between the Leave and Remain votes was 1.3 million in favor of Leave and this margin is often highlighted as the reason the referendum results are binding on government. Yet 13 million people did not vote in the referendum, so their views are not factored into these figures! In the 2016, US presidential election just over 55% of those eligible voted with 26.3% supporting President-elect Trump (and 26.5% supporting Hilary Clinton). Democratic structures and processes delivered these results. In Australia, 4.2% of the electorate delivered four senators to the One Nation Party that has since played an important role influencing the direction of the Australian government. Democratic processes delivered these results. As important as the results were, the issue is about the failure of democratic participation. In the cases of the United Kingdom and the United States, the striking lack of participation in the formal political system stands out. In Australia, the dysfunctional nature of a political system that delivers such results cannot escape criticism. A US president can be elected with a little more than 25% support from the eligible number of voters. In the United Kingdom, a 72% turnout in the Brexit referendum is hailed as a triumph ignoring the fact that this means 28% of the eligible population did not register a vote. In Australia, the vagaries of a system of proportional representation, originally designed to protect the rights of the Australian states and territories, now favor fringe political groups representing extremist political views, or frivolous views, as in the case of the Motoring Enthusiasts Party! The failure in all this is the failure of participation—participation in the formal political system. It reflects a lack of appreciation of how the system works and how it can be made to work in more democratic ways. Kahne et al. (2016) may call this concern one of ‘institutional politics,’ McLaughlin (1992) may see it related to ‘minimal conceptions of citizenship,’ and Walzer (1994) may characterize it as a ‘thin conception of citizenship.’ And they could be correct. The issue, however, is that the formal political system provides the ground rules for how any society operates. Laws, courts, the police, and schools provide the institutional support for a functioning democratic society, and these are all linked to the political system. If the political system and its institutions are not legitimate, there is no guarantee that these institutions will also act in legitimate ways. Participation in the system may be seen as disempowering for some groups and individuals, but without their participation, the system is weakened. Participatory politics, as referred to earlier (Kahne et al., 2016), does not solve this problem. It provides an alternative form of participation that may be more consistent with youth values, but it is not a substitute for engagement with the formal system. Teaching young people to be digital citizens does not necessarily have flow-on effects into the formal political system—at least none that has been demonstrated. Thus, future work on civic engagement needs to return to the importance of engagement with the political system to support democratic legitimacy through maximum participation. Such participation might be facilitated by online engagement, but in all likelihood,

36

3 Building on Civic and Citizenship Education’s Achievements

such engagement will not flow on to support institutional politics. This is a complex issue that will be more fully explored in Chapter 5. Institutional engagement is by no means a new agenda as shown by Torney-Purta et al. (2001, p. 150) who developed a model, shown in Figure 3.1, to show the main influences on adolescents’ intentions regarding future voting behavior. This model, is often referred to as the ‘CivEd model’, since it emerged directly from the IEA Civic Education Study and was one of the key contributions that study made to understanding student civic engagement. Additional research has expanded the CivEd model to identify a broader range of influences that support young people to focus their attention on their future civic engagement in its different forms. Given the current political environment in which it has been shown that large percentages of eligible voters choose not to engage or where small numbers of voters can exert a disproportional effect on political outcomes, this line of research is particularly important since a great deal of thought needs to be given to the role CCE can play to prepare young people not just for engagement and participation in general but particularly for engagement in the formal political system. This means highlighting research on what might be called ‘civic enablers’ that help young people to appreciate the full range of civic engagement options open to them in the future. Starting with the CivEd model shown in Figure 3.1, a range of research will be reviewed to indicate the foundations on which future CCE can be built.

3.4 Civic Enablers—Supporting Future Civic Engagement The model developed for CivEd by Torney-Purta et al. (2001) and shown in Figure 3.1 was an important attempt to identify civic enablers. It is important to understand the range of variables used in the model. First, the variables included operate at several levels: there are demographic variables (gender, home literacy resources), individual student characteristics (expected years of further education, participation in a school council, evenings spent outside the home, frequency of watching TV, having learnt about voting) and a single classroom-level variable (open classroom climate). CivEd Path Model for Civic Knowledge and Likelihood to Vote The model shows how these independent variables are related to the two dependent variables, Civic Knowledge and Intention to Vote and how the dependent variables are related to each other. The results deserve much more attention than they have received. Second, the demographic variables show minimal impact on intention to vote. For gender and home literacy resources (β s = 0.03 and 0.04, respectively), individual-level variables do show relatively much greater impact with the highest being having learned about voting (β = 0.19) and frequency of watching TV (β = 0.13). When it comes to civic knowledge, the results are somewhat more positive with expected years of further education exerting the strongest effect (β = 0.26) with home literacy resources also exerting a relatively strong effect (β =

3.4 Civic Enablers—Supporting Future Civic Engagement

37

Figure 3.1 Included with permission of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)

0.19). The next strongest was the classroom variable, open classroom climate (β = 0.13). Yet perhaps the most significant relationship is that between civic knowledge and intention to vote (β = 0.21) suggesting that the more students know about and appreciate civic life and the more positive their civic values, the greater the likelihood that they will see the importance of voting in the future. Third, this interpretation of the model is a generous one and for several reasons. The variance accounted for by the models (i.e. extent to which the model can explain the variability in the data) ranged from 18 to 20% indicating that some 80% of the variance remains to be explained. Thus, the search for civic enablers must go on. While it is possible to identify variables at different levels (classroom, individual), it is not possible to differentiate the contribution of each to the overall results. More sophisticated models are needed to estimate the variance that can be attributed to

38

3 Building on Civic and Citizenship Education’s Achievements

classroom-level variables and that which can be attributed to individuals. Nevertheless, important potential civic enablers have been identified in the CivEd model, and subsequent work has been able to build on it. ICCS 2009 did not test the CivEd model with the new data set, at least as part of the International Report. Schulz and Fraillon (2012) and Schulz, Ainley, and Fraillon (2013), however, did undertake follow up secondary analyses of the ICCS 2009 data extending the original CivEd model. The model developed by Schulz and Fraillon (2012) added some additional predictor variables to the CivEd model (parental interest and discussion with parents), two mediating variables (citizenship selfefficacy and valuing participation) and two outcome variables (expected electoral participation and expected active political participation). The parental variables had small and significant effects on civic knowledge, and therefore, their indirect effect through civic knowledge was also small. Yet the direct effect of parents’ interest in social and political issues on future electoral participation was relatively stronger (β = 0.14) with a smaller effect on future active political participation (β = 0.09). Citizenship self-efficacy, “the confidence students express in their abilities to participate in civic life, (Schulz & Fraillon, 2012, p. 4) exerted the strongest effect on both future electoral participation (β = 0.25) and future active political participation (β = 0.35) but interestingly was negatively correlated to civic knowledge (β = −0.01) that itself had a direct effect on both forms of future civic participation although the effects were in the opposite direction (β = 0.24 for future electoral participation and β = −0.13 for future active political participation). These results reinforce the central role of civic knowledge in preparing students for future civic engagement and, like the CivEd model, highlighted the importance of school experiences such as civic participation at school and pedagogies such as an open classroom climate in developing civic knowledge. The results expanded the CivEd model by identifying a role for parents in the civic education of their children and the importance of developing self-efficacy so that young people can feel confident about participating in various political processes. Yet the revised model also raised some intriguing questions. First, there was the relationship between civic knowledge and citizenship selfefficacy. While both these variables influenced future political participation positively, they influenced future active political participation in different ways. Citizenship self-efficacy had a relatively strong and positive relationship with active political participation while civic knowledge had a negative relationship. This suggests that building stronger commitments to future electoral participation requires higher levels of civic knowledge, whereas building commitments to future active political participation would benefit more from developing students’ citizenship self-efficacy. Since it is also the case that citizenship self-efficacy can contribute to the development of future electoral participation, then a great deal of thought needs to be given to where the emphasis should be in CCE in terms of the expected outcomes—knowledge or participation or both—and the pathways that will lead to the required outcomes. Second, the above issue is somewhat more complicated when other parts of the model are examined. For example, school civic participation influenced both the development of civic knowledge (β = 0.11) and the development of citizenship self-efficacy (β = 0.20). It was the same for students’ perceptions of an open class-

3.4 Civic Enablers—Supporting Future Civic Engagement

39

room climate (β = 0.13 and 0.10, respectively). Thus, these civic enablers worked together. Yet the imperative for CCE is deciding what outcomes have priority and then identifying the enablers that are most likely to achieve these outcomes. Third, some light is shed on this issue because of the small and negative relationship between civic knowledge and citizenship self-efficacy. In traditional terms, this relationship suggests at the very least that ‘knowledge’ and ‘self-efficacy’ are two very different constructs even though in terms of outcomes they share some commonalties. It could be argued that civic knowledge is more likely to lead to a conventional form of future civic engagement, while citizenship self-efficacy has a more radical edge to it in terms of future active political engagement. This is an important issue to consider especially in terms of the theoretical issues discussed earlier concerning ‘thin’ and ‘think’ descriptions of such engagement. It seems that civic knowledge is more linked to ‘thin’ conceptions, while citizenship self-efficacy has a more positive role to play in supporting ‘thick’ conceptions of civic engagement. These are important issues for future considerations in the development of CCE. Schulz et al. (2013) used basically the same model as has been discussed above. A significant difference was the addition of two additional outcome measures—‘expected legal protest activities’ and ‘expected illegal protest activities”. These were important additions because they expanded the forms of civic engagement that are available to young people and they provided interesting results. As far as civic knowledge was concerned, the results were the same as in the previous study for expected electoral engagement and active political engagement (β = 0.24 and −0.13, respectively). For expected legal protest, there was a small but positive relationship (β = 0.09), while for expected illegal protest, there was a relatively stronger and negative relationship (β = −0.19). When it came to citizenship self-efficacy, however, there were relatively strong and positive relationships for all outcome measures ranging from 0.14 for illegal protests to 0.40 for legal protest. These results reinforce the view suggested earlier that CCE certainly can support future political engagement, but it is relatively conventional engagement related to the formal political system. In the current environment, that requires a greater commitment from citizens to exercise their voting rights, this is an important finding for those developing CCE programs. Yet civic knowledge does not seem to lead to greater participation over all—that requires the development of self-efficacy and the confidence that individuals can make a difference. While the extension of the original CivEd model has been important in identifying additional civic enablers, there has been one key issue that remains to be addressed. Both the CivEd and ICCS 2009 data have a special characteristic. With large samples of individual students and schools, it is quite possible that schools as units could exert an effect on any outcome measure in addition to the effect of individual student attributes. Statistically, it is possible to separate these school-level and individuallevel effects with a technique referred to as multilevel modeling. One such model was developed by Kennedy, Li, and Chan (2014) and is shown in Figure 3.2. This multilevel model was tested using ICCS 2009 data for Hong Kong students. Individual student measures were available for each of the variables that were mostly the same as those used in previous studies. Student responses were computed for each

40

3 Building on Civic and Citizenship Education’s Achievements

Figure 3.2 A two-level conceptual model of the mediated effects of students’ citizenship selfefficacy and interest in political and social issues on their school civic participation and civic knowledge scores (from Kennedy et al., 2014, p. 200)

variable and regressed on civic knowledge as the outcome measure. This analysis provided student-level (or individual-level) estimates of the effect of the independent variables on the dependent variable. School-level estimates measures were developed using school averages for each variable. That is, the average of all student scores within each school is regressed on the dependent variable. There are several points of interest in the results. First, the multilevel analysis revealed that 20% of the variance in students’ civic knowledge scores could be attributed to differences between schools (based on an intraclass correlation (ICC), a measure of association in the school-level data, of around 0.2. In statistical terms, this is a large school effect suggesting that when it comes to civic learning in Hong Kong, the schools that students attend can make a difference. Second, further analysis at the school level highlighted the potential role of schools in supporting civic learning. School averaged civic participation, for example, showed a relatively strong effect on civic knowledge (β = 0.534) suggesting that in schools where there were above average levels of school civic participation, there were also higher levels of civic knowledge. This result was similar at the individual level although the relationship was nowhere as strong (β = 0.146). A strong influence on school civic participation itself was students’ interest in social and political issues. Schools that showed a high average level of student interest in political and social issues exerted a strong effect on civic knowledge (β = 0.757) an effect also seen at the individual level (β = 0.283). Kennedy et al., (2014) theorized these results in the following way. They interpreted the school-level effects as meaning that school leaders have a role in organizing their schools to enhance civic learning. They referred to this idea as ‘leading for civic learning’ since so much of the responsibility for what happens in schools rests with principals and their leadership teams. What seems clear is that leadership teams in schools need to include civic learning as one of their responsibilities to support the civic development of young people. Schools can encourage school civic participation

3.4 Civic Enablers—Supporting Future Civic Engagement

41

outside of classrooms. As shown in this study in particular, but in the earlier reviewed studies as well, school leaders can do a great deal to facilitate these processes.1 At the same time as identifying school-level effects, a significant outcome of the study was the identification of important student-level effects. As in the studies reviewed previously, citizenship self-efficacy played an important role in influencing school civic participation both directly (β = 0.158) and indirectly through internal political efficacy for a total effect of β = 0.227. Students’ interests in social and political issues also had a direct and positive effect on school civic participation (β = 0.283) and a total effect mediated by internal political efficacy (β = 0.327). These results highlighted the mediating role of internal political efficacy, ‘beliefs that individuals have about their capacity to become politically involved’ (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Kerr & Losito 2010, p. 120). As in the previous studies reviewed above, school civic participation influenced civic knowledge directly (β = 0.146). The results referred to above have endorsed the important issue of student engagement in the civic life of the school, an area that has always been important to civic educators. Importantly, however, the result reinforces the link between school civic engagement and the development of civic knowledge—they are not mutually exclusive. In the two previous studies that were based on ICCS 2009 data (Schulz & Fraillon, 2012; Schulz et al., 2013), Hong Kong data was not included. These results, therefore, supported the previous models but with the addition of a multilevel analytical perspective. Issues concerning the role of citizenship self-efficacy as a school-level variable also emerged in this study and remain to be explored. The final study to be reviewed in this section has also focused on students’ future expected participation, but it used a different analytic approach. The results have important implications for both pedagogy and curriculum in CCE. Using personcentered analysis, that identified groups based on similar item responses, and the ICCS 2009 Asian student samples, Chow and Kennedy (2015) identified groups of students with distinctive civic profiles in each society including Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Thailand. ‘The benefit of a “person-centered” approach is that it can take on a comparative perspective within a sample to explore both commonality and difference in persons’ various characteristics simultaneously’ (Chow & Kennedy, 2015, p. 473). That is, rather than generating a single score to represent student achievement on a particular dimension, person-centered analysis identifies groups of students within a sample who have similar characteristics. This process tends to highlight heterogeneity within a sample rather than homogeneity. In the study being discussed here, four distinct groups were identified in the Asian samples based on their ‘intentions to participate in the future’:

1 The school-level effects of citizenship self-efficacy on school civic participation are not discussed

here. The direction of its influence at the individual level differed from its direction at the school level suggesting there may be considerable variation across schools leading to a biased estimate. Alternatively, citizenship self-efficacy as the school-level variable may be measuring a different construct from what is being measured at the school level. This is not an unusual phenomena in multilevel modeling, and it deserves further study.

42

3 Building on Civic and Citizenship Education’s Achievements

• Cluster 1: ‘Active participators’ will take a very active approach to participate in society. • Cluster 2: ‘Conventional participators’ will emphasize voting behavior and are likely to reject illegal protest. • Cluster 3: ‘Radical participators’ favor illegal protests and are less inclined to vote. • Cluster 4: ‘Minimal participators’ have the lowest intention to engage in any civic activities (Based on Chow & Kennedy, 2015, p. 485). These four groups were identified in each of the societies being studied although the pattern of group membership was not consistent across groups. In Korea, for example, the majority of students were grouped as radical participators (39.2%), but there was also a sizable number in the minimal participators group (35.3%). In Hong Kong, on the other hand, conventional participators predominated (34.5%) followed by minimal participators (33.8%). Another feature that merged was the dominance of active participators in Indonesia (43.5% and Thailand (30.2%) compared to East Asian societies (Taiwan (11.8%), Hong Kong (8.6%) and Korea (10.6%). The general picture, therefore, was one of heterogeneity both with and across societies. There are a number of key points to make about these results: 1. Diversity rather than uniformity characterizes these students’ intentions to participate’ in the future. 2. Electoral participation is only one form of civic participation available, and while it is embraced by all groups except the ‘minimal participators,’ it is not necessarily the preferred form of participation. 3. Even among young adolescents, radical forms of civic participation are envisaged. 4. Around a third of students from East Asian societies appear to have no intentions to participate contrasting sharply with students from South East Asian societies. Chow and Kennedy (2015) discussed the theoretical implications of these results, but attention also needs to be given to the practical implications, especially as far as CCE is concerned. If classrooms are characterized by students with diverse civic attitudes, then both the curriculum and pedagogy need to take account of that. This means one curriculum will not suit all students. If there some students in the class already feeling they do not want to participate, while others are already thinking about radical forms of engagement, then curriculum and pedagogy need to take account of this. Both groups of students need to be supported and educated about forms of engagement that might be necessary at different times in any society’s development. It was shown in the studies reviewed earlier that establishing an open classroom climate will encourage engagement and discussion within the classroom. Kuang, Kennedy, and Mok (2018) have recently identified classroom strategies that can facilitate an open classroom climate, and these can form an important part of CCE pedagogy. It has also been shown that opportunities for school civic participation will nurture the idea of participation as well as enhancing civic knowledge. Teachers and school leaders need to be aware that their responsibility in CCE is not simply to find time to schedule it in the curriculum but to develop it in such a way that it can meet the

3.4 Civic Enablers—Supporting Future Civic Engagement

43

diverse needs of students. The issue of how to do this will be a major concern of the following chapters that will examine the characteristics and requirements for CCE in the future as well as a possible research agenda that will support CCE as the century progresses.

3.5 Synopsis Participation has been an important emphasis in CCE over the past two decades and preparing young people for future participation an important objective. The nature of participation itself has been expanded during this time and has ranged from engagement in the formal political system to engagement with society at large through social media. All forms of participation are important, but this chapter has argued that given the current political environment perhaps more attention could be paid to engagement in the formal political system. The research studies reviewed here have demonstrated the centrality of civic knowledge in building positive, participatory intentions among young people, especially where engagement in the formal political system is an objective. Yet civic knowledge may not be enough if other forms of engagement are also to be encouraged. Classrooms can assist this process by developing environments that value openness, discussion, interaction and exchange of ideas. Developing students’ interest in social and political issues can also help in developing civic knowledge. Schools can help by ensuring that there are opportunities for participation in school governance, voluntary activities, student clubs and other civic related activities. Yet the diversity of the student population should not be underestimated. The ideas students formulate through interactions with peers, parents and media mean they come to CCE with their own thoughts about participation. Any curriculum must cater for this diversity so that students can think through the issues that are most relevant to them. What has been discussed in the chapter, and particularly the research evidence that exists to support different civic enablers, provides the foundation for the kind of CCE programs that will be needed in the future.

References Chow, J. K. F., & Kennedy, K. (2015). Asian students’ conceptions of future civic engagement: Comparing clusters using person-centered analysis. Research in Comparative and International Education, 10(1), 7–22. Esser, F., & de Vreese, C. (2007). Comparing young voters’ political engagement in the United States and Europe. American Behavioral Scientist, 50(9), 1195–1213. Fairbrother, G., & Kennedy, K. (2011). Civic education curriculum reform in Hong Kong: What should be the direction under Chinese sovereignty? Cambridge Journal of Education, 41(4), 425–443.

44

3 Building on Civic and Citizenship Education’s Achievements

Kahne, J., Hodgin, E., & Eidman-Aadahl, E. (2016). Redesigning civic education for the digital age: Participatory politics and the pursuit of democratic engagement. Theory & Research in Social Education, 44, 1–5. Kennedy, K. (2006). Towards a conceptual framework for ‘active’ citizenship. Retrieved January 6, 2017, from academic.edu: https://www.academia.edu/1243639/TOWARDS_A_ CONCEPTUAL_FRAMEWORK_FOR_ACTIVE_CITIZENSHIP. Kennedy, K. (2007). Student constructions of ‘active citizenship’: What does participation mean to students? British Journal of Educational Studies, 55(3), 304–324. Kennedy, K. (2008). The citizenship curriculum: Ideology, content and organization. In J. Arthur, I. Davies, & C. Hahn (Eds.). The SAGE handbook of education for citizenship and democracy (pp. 483–491). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE. Kennedy, K. (2018). Understanding post-Soviet transitions as contexts for the development of active citizens. In B. Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz, A. Zalewska, & K. Kennedy (Eds.), Young people and active citizenship in post-Soviet times—A challenge for citizenship education (pp. 3–15). London & New York: Routledge. Kennedy, K., Li, L. J., & Chan, K. K. (2014). Civic knowledge and school participation: A role for schools in promoting civic learning. Politics, Culture and Socialization, 5(2), 195–214. Kennedy, K., Li, L. J., & Ng, H. Y. (2018). The development of Hong Kong students’ civic attitudes under Chinese sovereignty. Asian Education Development Studies, 7(4), 382–394. Keyes, R. (2004). The post-truth era—Dishonesty, deception and contemporary life. New York: St Martin’s Press. Kuang, X., Kennedy, K., & Mok, M. M. C. (2018). Creating democratic class rooms in Asian contexts: The influences of individual and school level factors on open classroom climate. Journal of Social Science Education, 17(1). http://www.jsse.org/index.php/jsse/article/view/1678/1734. McLaughlin, T. (1992). Citizenship, diversity and education: A philosophical perspective. Journal of Moral Education, 21(3), 235–250. Print, M., Saha, L., & Edwards, K. (2004). Youth Electoral Study—Report 1: Enrolment and Voting. University of Sydney, Faculty of Education. Retrieved March 22, from https://www.aec.gov.au/. ../youth_study/youth_study_1/youth_electoral_study_01.pdf. Putnam, R. (1995). Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital. Journal of Democracy, 6(1), 65–78. Schulz, W., & Fraillon, J. (2012). Students’ participation in and valuing of civic engagement at school. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (pp. 1–19). Vancouver, 13–17 April 2012. Schulz, W., Ainley, J., & Fraillon, J. (2013). Students’ participation at school and future civic engagement: Results from ICCS 2009. IEA Research Conference (pp. 1–20). Singapore. Retrived March 22, 2019, from https://www.iea.nl/sites/default/files/irc/IRC-2013_Schulz_etal.pdf26-28 June. Schulz, W., Ainley, J., Fraillon, J., Kerr, D., & Losito, B. (2010). ICCS 2009 International Report: Civic knowledge, attitudes and engagement among lower secondary students in 38 countries. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). Torney-Purta, J., Lehmann, R., Oswald, H., & Schulz, W. (2001). Citizenship and education in twenty-eight countries: Civic knowledge and engagement at age fourteen. Amsterdam: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Walzer, M. (1994). Thick and thin: Moral argument at home and abroad. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). Educating the “good” citizen: Political choices and pedagogical goals. PS Political Science and Politics, 37(2), 241–247.

Chapter 4

Civic and Citizenship Education for the Future

Abstract Traditionally, citizenship education programs have sought to consolidate democracy by equipping students with the knowledge and skills that help them to understand democratic institutions, develop democratic values and engage in the political life of society. Some programs have gone further and encouraged students to engage with key social problems, understand their causes and seek solutions to them. This chapter argues that future citizens will need to know more than the simple workings and requirements of democracy. As democratic deconsolidation proceeds, future citizens will need not only understand democracy but also learn how to protect it, how to interrogate issues that seem to undermine it and how to continue building societies that are fair, tolerant and just, while recognizing that all values do not support democracy. A framework for these new demands on democratic citizens is suggested: a framework designed to prepare knowledgeable, engaged and tolerant citizens for a very different future. Classroom processes that support this kind of citizenship preparation are discussed along with ways to harness more informal channels that will also influence young people in the future. The frameworks that are outlined are the beginning of a necessary conversation about the way future citizens can support democracy and its values in challenging times. Keywords ‘Good citizens’ · Citizenship curriculum · Pedagogies · Assessment time allocations · Critical thinking Given the contexts that have been portrayed in the earlier chapters (globalization, fundamentalisms, populism and post-truth politics) and their impact on the deconsolidation of democracy, how should CCE be constructed in the future? In seeking to address this question, the assumption will be that these trends will continue in one form or other and that future citizens will have to negotiate them. It is also a reflection that political systems are not perfect, and democracy itself is not perfect. Recognizing democracy’s imperfections is a key issue for understanding the future. Democracy experiences highs and lows and at times is not equal to the job. This helps to explain the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s where Adolf Hitler could be democratically elected, the emergence of Richard Nixon in the United States in the 1970s where lust for power initially outplayed democratic institutions and democracy ‘Singapore style’ that has witnessed the same political © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 K. J Kennedy, Civic and Citizenship Education in Volatile Times, Springerbriefs in citizenship education for the 21st century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6386-3_4

45

46

4 Civic and Citizenship Education for the Future

party democratically elected since the inception of the nation in 1965. Currently, the election of radical right-wing parties in different European countries either in power-sharing arrangements (as in Germany and Austria) or as governments (as in Hungary, Poland and Italy) shows how electorates can be swayed by issues such as immigration, appeals to nationalism and the protection of the state from any kind of external influences. These examples demonstrate the fragility of democracy and the need for constant democracy building and ongoing consolidation of democratic values. The alternative is to take no action and watch democracy’s decline. This, of course, has not been the view taken throughout this book. One way to act is to reinforce the significant role of CCE as one means to support the consolidation of democracy and its institutions. Yet as Foa and Mounk (2016) have pointed out, democracy can no longer be taken for granted; therefore, there is also an important role for CCE to defend democracy. Those who support democracy need to be able to recognize when it is under threat and how it can best be protected. What follows, therefore, seeks to locate education for democracy as a defensive strategy designed to support one particular regime type. Why should we do this? Winston Churchill (1947) speaking in the House of Commons put it this way: Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time …

This quotation is not included here for trivial reasons. Scholars such as Luke (1990) and Merry (2018) (referred to in Chapter 1) have referred to democratic citizenship education in terms that highlight the extent to which it supports a single regime and consequently the lack of choice students have in adopting its values. For Luke (1990), democratic citizenship education is simply a ‘disciplinary technology’ designed to produce passive and conformist citizens; while for Merry (2018), schools themselves are such repressive institutions that they are most likely incapable of achieving liberal objectives. While it is important to be aware of these critiques, the challenge for educators is how to nurture future citizens and their commitment to democratic values such as transparency in elections, freedom in its multiple forms, the rule of law and tolerance. These are not just textbook slogans: they represent values for building a democratic society. It is a challenge that will be addressed in this chapter. That will cover the following issues: • What lessons can be learnt from current CCE programs? • What kind of citizens will the future need? • Framework of CCE for the future.

4.1 Lessons from Current CCE Programs—International Perspectives

47

4.1 Lessons from Current CCE Programs—International Perspectives There is no shortage of reviews of CCE in different country contexts. KrzywoszRynkiewicz, Zawelska, and Kennedy (2018) have recently provided snapshots of CCE across what they called “post-Soviet” countries illustrating how new democracies have coped with the need to reorient their programs. Eurydice (2012) provided summaries of CCE programs operating across countries belonging to the European Union. Henderson and Tudball (2017) have reviewed the new civics and citizenship component of the Australian Curriculum, and Godsay, Henderson, Levine, and Littenberg-Tobias (2012) reviewed state requirements for civic education in the United States. The International Civics and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) conducted in 2009 (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Kerr, & Losito, 2010) reported on the main features of CCE in thirty-eight countries that participated in the study. These reviews provide a wealth of data that can help inform a future perspective on CCE. As noted earlier, a key point is that there is no single approach to CCE. From the form that it should take (single subject or as a cross-curriculum theme) to the focus on content (should it emphasize history or civic structures or civic engagement) to the amount of time allocated and its location in either primary or secondary education, there are different approaches. Added to this diversity in program delivery are the results of national, cross-national and international assessments that indicate how successfully students have understood issues raised in their local curriculum. In planning for the future, both program delivery and assessment issues need to be taken into consideration. What form should CCE take? Eurydice (2012) provided a bewildering array of options to describe the situation of European Union member countries. On balance, CCE as a separate subject in the lower secondary school probably represents the most favored option. Yet, the adoption of a single subject approach does not rule out integrating aspects of citizenship education into other school subjects such as history or social sciences. In some countries a single subject approach is used as well as integrating citizenship issues into other subjects. While the focus is on the lower secondary in most countries, there are also examples where CCE is compulsory at the primary level and in some countries also at the upper secondary level. This complexity is also reflected in the United States where decisions about the provision of CCE are made by 50 states. According to Godsay et al. (2012, p. 4), 39 US states require students to take at least one course in American government and civics, 49 require at least one social studies course for graduation and 43 states require one US history course for graduation. A smaller number of states have graduation requirements relating to Geography and Economics. Thus similar to requirements in many EU countries, there is a single subject alongside an integrated subject approach. The Australian context for the delivery of CCE has been changing over the past two decades. To overcome the problems of a federal political structure (similar to that in the United States), eight state/territory governments have responsibility for educa-

48

4 Civic and Citizenship Education for the Future

tional provision, although recently agreement has been reached on what is known as ‘the Australian Curriculum’ that provides a common curriculum framework, including content, across all states/territories. Thus, CCE is now officially referred to as an ‘identified subject’ with the formal title, Australian Curriculum: Civics and Citizenship (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority) (ACARA) (2012, p. 4). Yet, it is not really a stand-alone subject but rather is part of a broad learning area that also includes History, Geography, Economics and Business. In addition, while this curriculum has been developed nationally and includes content, skills, values and achievement standards for students from years 3–10, its implementation rests with state/territory education authorities. Henderson and Tudball (2017) have reported that implementation varies from state to state and the civics and citizenship component is not always considered mandatory. Thus, there is no guarantee that all Australian students will have access to this curriculum since so much will depend on local priorities at the system and school levels. Time pressure may be a key factor in school decision-making, so the subject may well become optional after primary school. It will then compete not only with other subjects within the learning area but also with other learning areas such as science, technology and mathematics where schools may feel greater pressure to allocate available time. Schulz et al. (2010, pp. 46–47) drawing on the 38 countries that participated in ICCS 2009 provided a somewhat more nuanced picture that has been painted above. To the specific subject mode of delivery (nominated by 18/38 countries) and integrated subject approaches (32/38), they add CCE as a ‘cross-curriculum theme’ (27/38), assemblies and special events (28/38), extracurricular activities (28/38) and classroom experiences/ethos (29/38). Not a single country nominated just one of these approaches, and some countries nominated all of them. This expanded categorization suggests that schools take different opportunities to support CCE in the classroom, outside it and across the curriculum in ways that are designed to support but also expand single subject and integrated subject approaches. What about the effectiveness of these different approaches? Kerr et al. (2007, p. 69), referring to the English longitudinal study, asserted that mode of study was unlikely to be a good predictor of student learning. Fairbrother and Kennedy (2011), using data from the CivEd study (Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald, & Schulz, 2001), showed that students who studied in countries where CCE was a separate subject gained higher scores on measures of civic knowledge than students studying integrated approaches. The differences between the two groups of students were relatively small, although significant, and the variance accounted for by modes of delivery was small at around 2%. Thus, there appear to be some benefits from single subject delivery, although these should not be exaggerated. Support for single subject delivery has also come recently from KrzywoszRynkiewicz, Zalweska, and Karakatsani (2017) focusing on citizenship delivery in post-Soviet societies as well as a smaller number of independent countries. Yet, it is supported with a twist. Single subject delivery across all levels of education (primary, secondary and upper secondary) appears to influence passive aspects of citizenship such as national identity formation, loyalty and patriotism rather than any active engagement in political activities. Yet where citizenship education is delivered at

4.1 Lessons from Current CCE Programs—International Perspectives

49

two levels of an education system, their students seem more inclined to engage in the political system through voting and in other aspects of electoral democracy. At the same time, passive forms of citizenship engagement are as strong in countries where citizenship education is not compulsory. Yet, moderate levels of citizenship education where there is no compulsory subject seem to influence more personally oriented conceptions such as the importance of financial independence and personal development. As the authors point out that these are somewhat ambiguous results, but they highlight the complexities of identifying both the compulsory nature of citizenship education and its intensity across an education system. As with the Fairbrother and Kennedy (2011) study, it is probably the compulsory/non-compulsory nature of citizenship education that is the most important distinction leading to different outcomes whether it is civic knowledge or citizenship behaviors. Yet, Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz et al. (2017) have added to this the concept of intensity—how many levels of the education system require citizenship education? The results indicated that it was by no means clear that ‘more is better’ (delivery at two levels appears to be more effective than at three levels) and non-compulsory integrated citizenship education seems to be more effective in promoting political engagement that compulsory single subject forms of delivery that seem more likely to lead to passive forms of civic engagement. An outcome to consider from the Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz et al. (2017) study is that school-level citizenship education does not appear to encourage active forms of civic engagement such as protests and change-oriented civic strategies. This result is supported by a great deal of other research that also points to the somewhat conservative nature of citizenship education. At times, young people will express concern for the environment or even indicate the possibility of involvement in legal protests, but rarely much more than this. As indicated earlier, there is always a minority willing to go further, but they do not represent the mainstream. Seeking a balance between understanding and supporting the status quo and challenging injustice and unfairness remain key issues for considering the future of citizenship education. What, then, of the future? The research evidence seems to suggest, albeit tentatively, that CCE delivered as a single subject may be a more effective way to enhance student learning but, in this case, a great deal of attention needs to be made to desired learning outcomes. It is also clear that integrated forms of citizenship education through mainstream curriculum subjects also yield important outcomes as shown both by Fairbrother and Kennedy (2011) and by Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz et al. (2017). Yet, the evidence is equivocal and as Fairbrother and Kennedy (2011) pointed out policymakers and politicians ought not to expect large gains in learning because of adopting a single subject approach. Yet, they also pointed out that a single subject provides greater visibility for CCE in the school curriculum so that both teachers and students can be more aware of it, especially where it is mandatory rather than optional. The issue for the future appears to center on what policymakers and politicians expect from their citizenship education programs: What kind of citizen do they seek to produce to cope with the challenges of the twenty-first century? Resolve this issue and the form, and function of citizenship education is likely to follow.

50

4 Civic and Citizenship Education for the Future

At the same time, Eurydice (2012) results are also instructive since they suggest that in general schools do not seem to rely on a single approach. This means there are multiple ways of providing a ‘civic environment’ in schools and seeking to achieve the kind of outcomes desired for future citizens. CCE is not just a matter of learning specific content (although such learning is important) but is also about being inducted into ways of engaging as citizens, becoming involved at different levels of society and contributing to the maintenance of social values that support a fair and just society. A single CCE subject may contribute to this kind of environment, but it needs to be supported with a school-wide approach that supports different kinds of civic learning. Explicit objectives for civic learning that can also be reflected in other school subjects may also assist in creating a more expansive civic environment as will opportunities for participation such as school councils and other decisionmaking processes. Finally, classrooms can also carry a message about civic values, civic engagement and civic development reflected in pedagogies, decision-making processes and classroom organization. In the future, ensuring civic messages are clear and unequivocal will be an important priority.

4.1.1 The Content of CCE The ‘message’ of CCE is most clearly conveyed in the content of the curriculum—whether it is in a single subject or integrated across the curriculum. ICCS 2009 (Schulz et al., 2010, p. 182) asked teachers about the aims of CCE they would endorse. The results across thirty-eight participating countries shown in Table 4.1 are instructive. The focus is clearly on knowledge, skills and values rather than participation and social justice. The same set of items endorsed by school principals (Schulz et al., 2010, p. 184) showed a similar pattern with the focus on knowledge rather than participation. In many ways, this runs counter to the discourse in the academic literature where participation and social justice orientations tend to predominate. If the data represented in Table 4.1 are in anyway representative, it gives some pause for reflection given the issues that were outlined earlier in this book. It seems that while students may be well prepared in terms of civic knowledge, they may not be so well prepared to ensure that democracy’s values will be well protected. Yet, this does not seem to prevent education systems from taking a very lofty view of the substantive content of their citizenship education programs. Australia provides a good example (ACARA, 2016): The Civics and Citizenship curriculum aims to reinforce students’ appreciation and understanding of what it means to be a citizen. It explores ways in which students can actively shape their lives, value their belonging in a diverse and dynamic society, and positively contribute locally, nationally, regionally and globally. As reflective, active and informed decision-makers, students will be well placed to contribute to an evolving and healthy democracy that fosters the wellbeing of Australia as a democratic nation, in a dynamic, multicultural and multi-faith society.

4.1 Lessons from Current CCE Programs—International Perspectives

51

Table 4.1 Teachers’ views of the aims of CCE–ICCS averages Three most strongly endorsed aims

%

Three least strongly endorsed aims

Promoting knowledge of citizens’ rights and responsibilities

60

Preparing students for future political participation

%

Promoting students’ critical and independent thinking

52

Supporting the development of effective strategies for the fight against racism and xenophobia

10

Developing students’ skills and competencies in conflict resolution

41

Promoting students’ participation in the local community

16

Promoting respect for and safeguards of the environment

41

7

In a similar vein, the National Conference of State Legislatures (2017) in the United States recently reiterated the national goals of civic education: Civic education should help young people acquire and learn to use the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that will prepare them to be competent and responsible citizens throughout their lives. Competent and responsible citizens: 1. are informed and thoughtful; have a grasp and an appreciation of history and the fundamental processes of American democracy; have an understanding and awareness of public and community issues; and have the ability to obtain information, think critically, and enter into dialogue among others with different perspectives. 2. participate in their communities through membership in or contributions to organizations working to address an array of cultural, social, political, and religious interests and beliefs. 3. act politically by having the skills, knowledge, and commitment needed to accomplish public purposes, such as group problem solving, public speaking, petitioning and protesting, and voting. 4. have moral and civic virtues such as concern for the rights and welfare of others, social responsibility, tolerance.

There is clearly not a problem casting the net widely when it comes to content for citizenship education. The problem appears to be, as indicated in Table 4.1, that school versions of these aspirational statements often fall short. Henderson and Tudball (2017) refer to the problem of teacher preparation and whether adequate attention is made to specific preparation for CCE as distinct from discipline subjects. At the same time, they point to some deficits in the Australian Curriculum: Civics and Citizenship where there does not appear to be a full embrace of the participatory elements of CCE and the focus seems to be more on knowledge acquisition. All of this suggests that the gap between policy intentions and school-level implementation is as significant in CCE as in other areas of the curriculum. An important issue for the future is how to overcome this gap in a curriculum area that is not merely academic but also of genuine social and political significance.

52

4 Civic and Citizenship Education for the Future

4.1.2 Time Allocation There are severe constraints in estimating the amount of time spent on CCE-related activities in schools. Eurydice (2012, pp. 24–27) attempted to do so with respect to European countries but had to discount ten countries for which no data was available. For the remaining 18 countries, there was extraordinary variation across levels of schooling (primary, secondary and upper secondary) as well as within levels. One constraint was that only time allocated to CCE as a single school subject could be included as there is rarely any time stipulated where CCE is integrated with other school subjects. Within these constraints, what emerges is that the primary level is the least chosen for CCE, the lower secondary level is the time when most countries focus on CCE and the upper secondary is also chosen but not as frequently as the lower secondary. Countries such as France and Spain use a single subject across the three levels of schooling, and this contrasts with others that choose delivery at just one level that is usually at lower secondary. This leads to gross distortions in the total amount of time allocated to CCE in Europe ranging from a total of 72 h in France across the three levels of schooling to 11.6 h in Bulgaria at the upper secondary level only. The Australian context shares some similarities with European countries. At the primary level, CCE is integrated with History and Geography for years 3–4 and with History, Geography and Economics and Business for years 5–6. There are no specific time allocations for this integrated mode of delivery. At the secondary level, 20 h a year is suggested for each year (7–10) when CCE is treated as a separate subject within the broad learning area, Humanities and Social Sciences. Yet, this time allocation is not mandatory since the implementation of the Australian Curriculum is left entirely to the eight state/territory governments that may determine different arrangements. For example, the Northern Territory Board of Studies (n.d.) recommends 30 min a week for CCE across years 3–10: 160 h across two levels of schooling. In Queensland, there is a roughly similar allocation of 18–20 h per year across years 3–9 (reduced to 17–19 h for year 10) (Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2011).1 While Henderson and Tudball ( 2017) feel such time allocations may not be sufficient to achieve all the objectives of CCE, the progress that has been made since the early 1990s in Australia when CCE was rarely considered as a permanent part of the school curriculum, considerable progress has been made. Whether it is enough is a matter of judgement and, the extent to which ‘advice’ and ‘indicative allocations’ are actually followed in schools remains an issue for further research. The Education Commission of the States (2017) outlined a bewildering array of graduation requirements across the United States. The main lesson to be learnt from these is the total lack of uniformity in relation to CCE. The requirements are too diverse to review here, but they range from some states having no specific requirements in any subjects (Pennsylvania, North Dakota and Vermont) to specific requirements regarding Civics and Government or Civics and Economics or Constitutional History of one kind or another. Yet, even these requirements do not refer to specific 1 This recommendation may well have changed since CCE is now part of HASS rather than a single

subject, but there is no indication of any revised time allocations considering this change.

4.1 Lessons from Current CCE Programs—International Perspectives

53

time allocations but rather to ‘units’, details of which are most likely specified at state and district levels, and these are likely to differ across states. Thus, while it is possible to point to compulsory courses in Civics and Government in the majority of states, it is not possible to identify specific time allocations. It is perhaps for this reason that the Centre for Civic Education (Branson, 1998) almost two decades ago recommended time allocations ranging from 30 to 40 h per year in the primary years and 40 to 120 h per year in the lower and upper secondary. There does not appear to have been any action on these recommendations, so they remain aspirational only and real-time allocations remain masked at district and school levels. Focusing on time allocation for CCE may seem like a technical issue. Yet time in an overcrowded curriculum is a precious commodity and its allocation is a clear indicator of the value placed on particular parts of the curriculum. If there is no specific time allocation, or a minimal allocation, then not only will this limit students’ learning opportunities but it sends a message about the value of that learning. Thus any curriculum should be clear about not only what is to be learnt and how it is to be learnt but how much time there is available for learning. It seems such a simple principle, but clearly it is one that has escaped the attention of many policymakers leaving CCE to struggle for curriculum space against competing priorities such as Mathematics, Language and Science. In the future, a consensus needs to be reached on this important issue.

4.1.3 Results of CCE Assessments The assessment of CCE has gathered some momentum over the past two decades. The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) has launched three major international studies (Schulz et al., 2010; Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Losito, & Agrusti, 2016; Torney-Purta et al., 2001). As part of a National Assessment Program in Australia, students in year 6 and year 10 are tested on CCE once every three with the focus on ‘measure[ing] not only students’ skills, knowledge and understandings of Australia’s system of government and civic life but also student attitudes, values and participation in civic-related activities at school and in the community’ (ACARA, 2014). The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in the United States includes regular assessment (once every four years or so) of students’ knowledge and skills in civics, US History and Geography. In the United Kingdom The Citizenship Education Longitudinal Study (CELS) ran from 2001 to 2010 collecting both quantitative and qualitative data on the implementation of citizenship education as part of the national curriculum. Thus, we are in a much better situation today to try and understand citizenship learning outcomes than we have been for some time. Knowles and Stefano (2016), for example, have brought together findings from IEA’s 1999 CivEd Study and the 2009 ICCS to produce an annotated bibliography that highlights the extensive secondary analysis that has been conducted on these data sets. Reichert (2016a, 2016b, 2016c) and Reichert and Print (2017a, b) have conducted similar secondary analyses using the data from the

54

4 Civic and Citizenship Education for the Future

Australian National Assessment Program in Civics and Citizenship. The results of this body of knowledge are extensive, but several key points emerge: 1. Civic knowledge is important. It moderates civic engagement with high levels of knowledge being related to conventional forms of engagement in the future (e.g., voting). 2. Young people are not interested in political engagement or at least engagement in political systems as they are currently constructed. They prefer social engagement such as volunteering and community work and internationally show strong support for environmental protection. 3. On average and across countries, there is little support for radical or illegal forms of civic engagement, although some studies have shown that this inclination might be reinforced by social economic status and low levels of civic knowledge. 4. While schools have a role to play in the preparation of citizens, other influences such as peers, parents and teachers have also been identified. Social media also seem to be a strong influence, but national and international assessments seem somewhat slow in tapping its importance. 5. Teaching strategies and classrooms seem to be important in supporting citizenship development but particularly the creation of an open classroom climate that can influence both civic knowledge and other forms of civic engagement. 6. The use of person-centered analytic techniques with secondary data has revealed new insights, especially related to the diversity of civic attitudes among young people. These can be glossed over with averaging processes of traditional analyses. For example, in terms of civic engagement, person-centered analysis has shown that within most countries there are small groups of individuals who will opt for more radical forms of engagement. There is some consistency between the results of these assessments and the curriculum emphases shown in Table 4.1. European schools, and possibly most others, do not focus on teaching about political participation, and students themselves indicate it is not something to which they aspire. This may be a natural inclination on the part of students, or it may simply be that it is not an issue that has ever been canvassed with them. Service learning and volunteering are common aspects of current schooling practice, and this may explain students’ inclination to be supportive of such social engagement. These kinds of links need further exploration that cannot be given here. They are important to pursue in seeking to understand the role of schools in preparing future citizens since it is not only what schools do in terms of citizen preparation that is important but what they do not do. Schools can facilitate or constrain civic learning. The most significant challenge for the future is to support schools to be sites for facilitating civic learning that will help young citizens to fulfill their potential as both knowledgeable and engaged future citizens who understand the contexts in which their citizenship is embedded and who can make a difference in securing fair, just and equitable outcomes across societies for all individuals and groups. In addition, when these values are threatened, future citizens need to know how and when to defend them. This is a big ask, and the final part of this chapter will address the ways CCE might be able to support young people to achieve this objective.

4.2 What Kind of Citizens Will Be Needed in the Future?

55

4.2 What Kind of Citizens Will Be Needed in the Future? The CCE curriculum and the results of CCE assessments reviewed so far suggest two broad areas in which citizens are expected to be proficient: They should understand the civic contexts that influence them, and they should be willing to participate in those contexts. Underlying these proficiencies is often an expectation that citizens support democratic processes and will also have some commitment to the country in which their citizenship resides. The latter is often implied in countries like Australia but maybe more overt in other jurisdictions (see Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz et al., 2018). Variations on these general citizenship requirements have often been summed up by considering the qualities of ‘the good citizen.’ Yet, there is a range of views on the requirements for ‘good citizens’ in the current environment, and these are helpful to understand when considering the needs of the future. As mentioned earlier, Westheimer and Kahne (2004) provided an interesting framework for considering notions of the ‘good citizen’: ‘the personally responsible citizen; the participatory citizen; and the justice-oriented citizen’ (p. 3). As important as these types have become in the CCE literature, of greater significance is the authors’ critique of each position in relation the question they were seeking to ask: ‘What kind of citizen do we need to support an effective democratic society?’ Their answer was very clear, although as will be shown later, this may no longer be the relevant question for the twenty-first century. Personally responsible citizens may well vote, volunteer and contribute to community activities, but this may not be enough to secure democratic purposes in society. It is a passive kind of citizenship, and often the activities in which such citizens engage have nothing to do with advancing democracy’s purposes. Participatory citizens, on the other hand, can be skillful in becoming engaged in important community activities that are related to democratic purposes, and they may develop skills that enable them to be effective contributors who may well lead changes for the better. This is seen as active citizenship, but the question is is it really thoughtful citizenship? The final category, justice-oriented citizens, is seen to be one based on social critique so not only there is participation in serious activities that can advance democracy’s causes but also understandings are developed about what causes society’s ills and what action is needed to address these root causes. For Westheimer and Kahne (2004), there is no doubt that their basic question is answered through the development of justice-oriented citizens; but they are confronted with the stark reality that most CCE programs in the United States focus on the development of personally responsible citizens. Thus their basic question, while answered, remains problematic because from their point of view democracy is not being well served by current practice. Another perspective on this issue is to take into consideration the view of students about their citizenship and how they see their responsibilities. This is a ‘bottom-up’ approach but realistic because students do not come to CCE as ‘blank slates’—their views develop as they age and as they interact with their families and their peers so that CCE becomes just another input to their thinking. Commitments to democracy are built on a foundation—but what is that foundation?

56

4 Civic and Citizenship Education for the Future

Kuang and Kennedy (2014) investigated Asian students’ attitudes to ‘good citizenship’ using data from ICCS 2009 (Schulz et al., 2010). In terms of citizenship types, the results revealed that students across the five Asian societies studied were both ‘dutiful’ and inclined to be ‘participatory.’ The results were not reflected in the same way in each society so that more often than not Indonesian and Thai students endorsed all items more strongly and Korean students tended to be more ‘participatory’ and less ‘dutiful’ than their other East Asian peers. Yet across this regional diversity, the best predictors of these citizenship values were the students’ democratic values as well as their commitment to traditional values. This suggests that citizenship commitments are shaped by multiple influences and these may not always be democratic in nature. Values such as obedience, harmony and respect for authority sit alongside democratic values to influence the way these students saw their citizenship. These multiple influences, articulated specifically in this study, are likely to vary in other contexts, but they highlight the importance of values. It is values that are needed to when considering the kind of CCE required in the future to answer a different question from that posed by Westheimer and Kahne (2004): ‘What kind of citizen is needed to support democratic societies under threat?’ The remainder of this chapter will attempt to provide an answer to this question.

4.3 Democracy Under Threat: What Kind of Citizens for the Future? The future is one where democracy as a regime type rather than just a set of practices needs to be the focus of CCE. As discussed throughout, public discourses, right-wing political activities, the dominance of social media as an information source and the constant questioning of the rule of law, traditional democratic values and democratic processes are challenging democracy: This means CCE must be much more explicit about the value of democracy itself. When considering CCE for the future, while the curriculum remains important and so too are teacher preparation, school leadership, school climate, classroom pedagogies that promote open classrooms and time allocation for both formal and informal learning. It is optimal to consider these as a whole—a set of interacting variables all of which have the potential to influence student learning. How might this ‘set’ be developed? It would need to embrace a broad framework that would include agreed civic dispositions, a recognition of the role of multiple civic environments and the need to develop critical, resilient and thoughtful citizens for the future. ‘Active citizenship’ is no longer enough: • Action must be related to moral purposes. • Engagement must be seen as a means of improving outcomes for all rather than as an individual attribute. • Citizenship values must become the frontline defense for democracy. What follows is an initial, but by no means the final, attempt to outline such a framework.

4.4 Framework for CCE in the Future

57

4.4 Framework for CCE in the Future In developing a future framework for CCE consideration will be given to the kind of understandings and dispositions citizens should have, the school environments they should experience and the community influences that will affect them. Understandings and Dispositions 1. Knowledge and skills that will develop knowledgeable citizens; 2. Participatory cultures that will develop engaged citizens; 3. Consideration of others to develop tolerant citizens. Knowledgeable citizens will need to know more than discrete information about civic structures. They will know such structures, but above all will understand their importance to democracy. This means they will be in a position to defend them should they be threatened. They will have the skills to do this—critical thinking, problem solving, inquiry orientations. They will not accept explanations without evidence and proof, and they will continue to ask questions when they are not satisfied with answers. They will interrogate social media and be able to respond to multiple points of view and discern those that are most in line with democracy’s values. They will take nothing for granted until it has been tested against evidence, values and the benefits to society as a whole. Yet they will not just engage in debates about abstract knowledge. They will have experiences of engagement both in their schools and in their communities. But they will also be able to ask questions about such engagement—about its purposes and the issues it is trying to address. They will need to evaluate whether simple participation is enough to address these issues or whether more is needed at a deeper level. They will not regard participation as end in itself but as a means of better understanding the world in which they live and their role in improving it. Knowledgeable citizens who also participate will also be tolerant citizens understanding that the world is not just about themselves but about others who also inhabit it. Whether the issue is environmental protection, climate change, discrimination against minorities, racism, sexism or any other behavior that puts others at risk, knowledgeable citizens will respond in thoughtful ways designed to support others. Democratic societies are inclusive societies, and their democratic structures are designed to support all citizens not just some. Tolerance that leads to a celebration of difference clearly reflects democracy’s inclusive values, and so the development of tolerant citizens is one of the key outcomes of future CCE programs. Yet, there is an important caveat on the extent of tolerance. This issue is highlighted by current antidemocratic discourses that encourage social exclusion rather than inclusion and are characterized by hate speech to vilify groups and individuals. These proponents often seek to benefit from democracy’s valuing of free speech. Yet such values that seek to undermine democracy are not values that democrats can support.

58

4 Civic and Citizenship Education for the Future

Young citizens in the future need to be discerning enough to make judgements about which values benefit democracy and which do not.

4.5 School Learning Environments Will Be Characterized by 1. Teachers specifically prepared as citizenship education teachers in order to professionalize CCE. 2. Whole school approaches to citizenship education to promote leadership for civic learning. 3. Explicit and articulated curriculum with time allocations to create CCE curriculum space. 4. Pedagogies of engagement to promote authentic and dynamic learning. Schools will continue to be important places for the development of knowledgeable, participatory and tolerant citizens. While students are the focus of CCE programs, such programs must be staffed by teachers who are well equipped with the knowledge, skills and values that will help them to be effective citizenship educators. They will have experienced relevant discipline-based education supported by pedagogical preparation that will help them to make their classroom sites for engaged student learning. Their education will not stop at the preservice level but will be ongoing enabling them to extend their knowledge base and pedagogical repertoire. Yet good teachers, as important as they are, need to be supported by school environments that reflect an understanding of the importance of citizenship preparation. This means that principals and other school leaders need to ensure that their schools provide opportunities for student engagement in different aspects of school life. This is an issue of how schools are managed and how principals in particular construct their roles as leaders of civic learning. Such learning is not just a matter for classroom teaching. It is also a matter of creating a school ethos and culture that values citizenship development and reflects this in the opportunities provided for students to act out their roles as young citizens in the life of the school. One of the key criticisms of Merry (2018) is that schools are inimical to democratic citizenship values: School leaders, therefore, must address this issue so that school structures reflect the democratic values they wish to see students adopt. CCE curriculum in the future needs to have a clear and unambiguous role in the general curriculum provided by schools. It must be seen as important as Mathematics, Science and Language, and this needs to be recognized with a specific time allocation. Exactly how CCE curriculum will be delivered will always be a school decision but that it should be delivered within a specified time frame will be a national priority. CCE curriculum must focus on learning outcomes: What should knowledgeable, participatory and tolerant citizens know, value and be able to do? Existing curriculum

4.5 School Learning Environments Will Be Characterized by

59

provides some answers to this question, but more consideration is needed in light of the insistent deconsolidation processes that characterize public discourse. Democracy is valued not just because it has been part of a society’s historical development but because it must be seen as part of its future development. Democracy cannot be taken for granted in the current context. Therefore, students must develop deep understandings about its purposes, operations and procedures and they must learn to engage in spirited debate both inside and outside the classrooms to defend democracy. Teaching about citizenship must reflect pedagogical innovation that values student engagement. CCE classrooms must be lively and engaging places that draw on the knowledge and skills of ‘digital natives’ and integrate these into everyday CCE activities. Such classrooms must also recognize student diversity as an aspect of the political orientation of students, the values they bring to the classroom and their capacity to engage with others both inside and outside the classroom. Students will always have questions about citizenship issues, and CCE classrooms must be safe spaces for the interchange of ideas between students and between students and teachers. Classrooms need to be open learning environments that model as far as possible democratic processes so that students do not only learn about democracy, but they learn how to be democratic and the benefits that result from this.

4.6 Community Learning Environments Will Be Characterized by 1. Social media that can provide direct citizenship experiences and engagement of a non-conventional nature; 2. Peers and parents who can influence personal citizenship values; 3. Community organizations that contribute to networked learning. It has always been recognized that civic learning takes place both inside and outside the schools. Torney-Purta et al. (2001)’s model of political socialization acknowledged the importance of public discourse and its influence on the way young people understand their citizenship. Yet notions of ‘public’ have undergone fundamental changes in the twenty-first century. Virtual private spaces are now public, but notions of the public in these spaces are very constrained. This is the world of social media where peers talk to each other oblivious of other members of the public and convince each there that their views are exactly what the world needs, irrespective of evidence, rationality or contrary arguments. Yet at the same time, access to social media means that ideas and ideologies of all kinds float freely so that private spaces can be easily invaded, and private conversations can become sites for the most diverse topics, the origins of which may be unknown to the conversationalists. Lennart (2015), drawing on a report from the Pew Foundation, highlighted the fact that “aided by the convenience and constant access

60

4 Civic and Citizenship Education for the Future

provided by mobile devices, especially smartphones, 92% of teens report going online daily—including 24% who say they go online “almost constantly,” … More than half (56%) of teens—defined in this report as those ages 13–17—go online several times a day, and 12% report once-a-day use. Just 6% of teens report going online weekly, and 2% go online less often”. Social media have become a significant influence on political socialization as the century progresses. In any event, social media can be both a tool to develop citizenship skills and a social practice requiring careful scrutiny and investigation. This issue will be explored in some depth in Chapter 5. Any focus on social media must be accompanied by an equal focus on the role of peers. Always a focus for issues concerned with political socialization, the potent combination of peers and social media highlights the new dimension of peer influences in these virtual contexts. Peer interaction is a feature of classroom life, so advantage needs to be taken of the new ways in which peers come together. Research has shown that peers may meet online and then become friends or as friends they may exchange ideas and attitudes online. Either way, social media provide the mediating processes for peer-to-peer interaction. This highlights the need for classrooms to be discussion-oriented and for greater emphasis to be placed not just on the interaction but also on the skills needed to engage in such interaction in an open and critical way. Questioning ideas, asking for explanations, interrogating ideologies need to be part of the discourse both in classrooms and online. Peer approval is always important for young people, but it can never be as important as discerning right from wrong and establishing the values needed for successful engagement in society and its development. The focus on peers does not cancel out the importance of parents, although there will always be a tension between the two as adolescence progresses. Yet there is evidence, at least in the case of younger adolescents, that conversations with parents about social and political issues can be an important influence on the development of civic attitudes. These links will be even more important in the future as social media continue to create private spaces for young people devoid of external input. There are also pedagogical implications when it comes to parents. Students can be asked specifically to engage with parents relating to homework and assignments to conduct ‘parent focus groups’ to seek parents’ views on different issues, and parents can be used as a point of reference for many topics and issues that arise during teaching. That is to say, parents need to be seen as an extension of the classroom and as powerful allies in the citizenship development of their families. Parents themselves may not even be aware of the important role they play in this regard, so they too may need to be educated. The key issue for the future is that parents should not be ignored when citizenship education is being planned because alongside schools, peers and social media they will continue to have a role to play in supporting civic learning. Much has been written about the role of social capital in helping to build trust among members of a community. Engaging in community organizations is one way to bring people together where they can share common goals and aspirations. Yet the consensus seems to be that such community engagement is declining whether it is in churches, bowling alleys (this is the metaphor used by Putnam) or NGOs in general. This is worrying at a time when lack of trust is exactly what characterizes

4.6 Community Learning Environments Will Be Characterized by

61

much of social and political life today and will in all likelihood continue to do so in the future. Building trust in democratic institutions, in democratic citizens and in democracy itself has to be a key priority for the future. Schools can contribute to this objective because they are embedded within communities so can assist students to be integrated into community organizations. The purpose of such integration is twofold: on the one hand, it can help students to contribute to whatever public good is the focus of a particular organization’s mission; but it can also bring students and adults together around common causes and purposes and thus help to build cross-generational and intergenerational trust. These are important dispositions of a successful future. In focusing on the development of social capital in this way some distinction needs to be made between such development and the current preoccupation with volunteering and service learning. The latter are largely concerned with individual placements in willing organizations that are more likely to be looking for additional human resources rather than providing opportunities for meaningful social engagement, social development and community building. Volunteering as a social process needs to be enhanced in the future so that it is linked to positive community development with the potential for the individuals involved to work together for common good building trustful relationships that provide the foundation for citizenship development. In drawing these different strands of future citizenship development together, its main contours are: 1. The development of knowledgeable citizens driven to participate in their democracy and tolerant of others with similar aspirations; 2. A recognition that schools remain important civic environments for citizenship development but in new contexts where learning opportunities are more diverse and where students’ autonomy is enhanced by technology; 3. Civic environments extend beyond schools to homes, peer-to-peer interactions, the private spaces of social media and community organizations. Discerning and critically analyzing these various influences are major skills for future citizens.

4.7 Synopsis Current citizenship education programs seek to consolidate democracy by equipping students with the knowledge and skills that help them to understand democratic institutions, develop democratic values and engage in the political life of society. Some programs go further and encourage students to engage with key social problems, understand their causes and seek solutions to them. The underlying assumption of these programs is that democracy is a given feature of the political landscape, and future citizens simply need to understand its workings and requirements and make a contribution to its consolidation. Yet in the future, it is this major assumption that is under question. As democratic deconsolidation proceeds, future citizens need not

62

4 Civic and Citizenship Education for the Future

only understand democracy but also learn how to protect it, how to interrogate issues that seem to undermine it and how to continue building societies that are fair, tolerant and just, while recognizing that all values do not support democracy. A framework for these new demands on democratic citizens has been suggested to prepare citizens for a very different future. The framework that has been discussed here is the beginning of a necessary conversation about the way future citizens can support democracy and its values in challenging times.

References ACARA. (2012). The shape of the australian curriculum—civics and citizenship. Retrieved July 20, 2017, from Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority: https://www.acara.edu.au/ curriculum/learning-areas-subjects/humanities-and-social-sciences/civics. ACARA. (2014). National assessment program: Civics and citizenship years 6 and 10 report 2013. Sydney: ACARA. ACARA. (2016). Civics and citizenship rationale. Retrieved July 23, 2017, from Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority: http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/humanitiesand-social-sciences/civics-and-citizenship/rationale. Branson, M. (1998). The role of civic education—A forthcoming education policy task force position paper from the communitarian network. Retrieved July 24, 2017, from Center for Civic Education: http://civiced.org/papers/articles_role.html. Churchill, W. (1947). Extract of speech to the house of commons. Retrieved July 19, 2017, from http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/30799-many-forms-of-government-have-beentried-and-will-be. Eurydice Network. (2012). The european higher education area in 2012: Bologna process implementation report. Brussels, Belgium: Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency. Fairbrother, G., & Kennedy, K. (2011). Civic education curriculum reform in Hong Kong: What should be the direction under Chinese sovereignty? Cambridge Journal of Education, 41(4), 425–443. Foa, R., & Mounk, Y. (2016). The danger of deconsolidation. Journal of Democracy, 27(3), 5–17. Godsay, S., Henderson, W., Levine, P., & Littenberg-Tobias, J. (2012). State civic education requirements. Centre for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). Henderson, D., & Tudball, L. (2017). More than national education: Possibilities for critical participatory learning in the Australian curriculum through civics and citizenship. Curriculum Perspectives, 37(1), 51–61. Singapore: Springer. Kerr, D., Lopes, J., Nelson, J., White, K., Cleaver, E., & Benton, T. (2007). Vision versus pragmatism: Citizenship in the secondary school curriculum in England. London: DfES. Knowles, R., & Stefano, D. (2015). International citizenship education research: An annotated bibliography of research using the IEA, ICCS and IEA CIVED datasets. Journal of International Social Studies, 5(2). Retrieved March 21, 2019, from http://www.iajiss.org/index.php/ iajiss/article/view/213. Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz, B., Zalewska, A., & Karakatsani, B. (2017). Whether citizenship education matters: Young people’s citizenship activity in countries with different citizenship education experience. Citizenship Teaching and Learning, 17(2). Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz, B., Zalewska, A., & Kennedy, K. (2018). Young people and active citizenship in post-Soviet times—A challenge for citizenship education. London & New York: Routledge. Kuang, X., & Kennedy, K. (2014). Asian students’ perceptions of ‘good’ citizenship: The role of democratic values and attitudes to traditional culture. Asia Pacific Journal of Educational Development, 3(1), 33–42.

References

63

Lennart, A. (2015). Teens, social media & technology overview 2015. Retrieved on July 16, 2018 from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/. Luke, T. (1990). Social theory and modernity: Critique, dissent, and revolution. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Merry, M. (2018). Can schools teach citizenship? Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2018.1488242. Reichert, F. (2016a). Learning for active citizenship: Are Australian youths discovering democracy at school? Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 11(2), 130–144. Reichert, F. (2016b). Students’ perceptions of good citizenship: A person-centred approach. Social Psychology of Education, 19(3), 661–693. Reichert, F. (2016c). Who is the engaged citizen? Correlates of secondary school students’ concepts of good citizen? Educational Research and Evaluation, 22(5–6), 305–322. Reichert, F., & Print, M. (2017a). Mediated and moderated effects of political communication on civic participation. Information, Communication & Society, 20(8), 1162–1184. Schulz, W., Ainley, J., Fraillon, J., Kerr, D., & Losito, B. (2010). ICCS 2009 Report. Amsterdam: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). Schulz, W., Ainley, J., Fraillon, J., Losito, B., & Agrusti, G. (2016). IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2016 Assessment Framework. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Open. Torney-Purta, J., Lehmann, R., Oswald, H., & Schulz, W. (2001). Citizenship and education in twenty-eight countries: Civic knowledge and engagement at age fourteen. Amsterdam: IEA. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). Educating the “good” citizen: Political choices and pedagogical goals. Retrieved from. PS Political Science and Politics, 37(2), 241–247.

Chapter 5

Developing a Research Agenda to Support CCE in the Future

Abstract There is a solid CCE research based on which future research can be built. This chapter will argue, however, that a future research agenda needs to be expanded and it needs to be a priority. First, theoretical/philosophical/conceptual research will need to move beyond democratic theory so that the forces of democratic deconsolidation can be better understood. While democratic theory will always be important for understanding CCE, understanding the forces aligned against democracy will also be important. Second, the multiple sites for civic learning must also be better understood as well as the ways they interact. Clearly, social media is one of these sites and it will deserve special attention in the future. Civic learning itself also needs to be the subject of future research. Third, every effort will need to be made to draw on the broadest range of research in cognate disciples to ensure that there is a much better understanding of the multiple ways young people are inducted into civic learning. Finally, it is acknowledged that more needs to be known about how young people learn in order to assist with the development of CCE programs that will have an impact in supporting young people to become knowledgeable, participative and tolerant citizens in what can only be volatile times in the future. Keywords Civic deficits · Theoretical frameworks · Civic learning · Social media · Political socialization · Research priorities As noted earlier, CCE has been fortunate in being supported over the past two decades with a growing research base. Secondary analyses related to large-scale assessments have been an important source of source of new understandings (Knowles and Distefano, (2015) has collated international studies derived from CivEd and ICCS and Reichert (2016a, 2016b, 2016c) has shown the usefulness of the data collected as part of Australia’s National Assessment Program). Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz, Zawelska, and Kennedy (2018) have added new analyses specifically of students from post-Soviet societies and a small number of additional European countries. There have also been a growing number of national case studies providing insights into local constructions of citizenship education (for example, Grossman, Lee, & Kennedy, 2008; Kennedy & Brunold, 2014; Torney-Purta, Schwille, & Amadeo, 1999). This research culture is an important one on which to build in the future when research will become even more important. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 K. J Kennedy, Civic and Citizenship Education in Volatile Times, Springerbriefs in citizenship education for the 21st century, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6386-3_5

65

66

5 Developing a Research Agenda to Support CCE in the Future

Future research needs to be undertaken within a broad set of priorities that identify issues related to the contexts that were described in earlier chapters. This final chapter will suggest such priorities by considering the following: • The focus of current CCE research and why it needs to change; • Suggested framework for future research; and • Rationale for an urgent research priority.

5.1 The Focus of Current CCE Research and Why It Needs to Change A good deal of recent CCE research was reviewed in Chapter 3 and throughout the different chapters reference has been made to the important work that has been carried out in the field. The focus of so much of this work has been on civic engagement, especially considering the perceived decline in such engagement whether in the formal electoral system or in the development of social networks. Aligned with this focus has been an underling assumption that there is a ‘civic deficit’ which usually meant a deficit in civic knowledge. This was the argument of Whereas the People … Civic and Citizenship Education in Australia (Civic Expert Group, 1994), the foundation report that stimulated CCE development in Australia in the 1990s but also repeated in the United States (McCabe & Kennedy, 2014) and the United Kingdom where Kerr (2003) used the term ‘democratic deficit’ (p. 3). Perez-Diaz (2004) argued that the deficit was really a lack of understanding of the civic duties required of citizens and in the performance of those duties. His argument was based on the assumption that a certain kind of citizenship knowledge was required to gain such understanding. Thus, much of the research agenda of the past two decades has been focused on ways to reduce a perceived civic deficit whether it is seen as a deficit of civic knowledge or declining inclinations to be civically engaged. McCabe and Kennedy (2014) provided a good example of the kind of research questions that have driven the current research agenda: • What are the essential elements of civic literacy? That is, what is the content of a minimal level of civic knowledge necessary to effective citizenship? • What aspects of civic knowledge are most predictive of civic engagement, defined as regular voting, and political activism (work on a campaign, attendance at public meetings, and other indicators of civic involvement)? • With respect to those who are civically and politically active, are there measurable, meaningful differences between those who are civically-literate and those who are not? • Why have former efforts to improve citizenship education failed to have a lasting effect? What can we do differently in the future to make and sustain improvements? • Are there measurable differences in levels of civic literacy between identifiable groups? For example, are scientists more or less civically literate than lawyers? Are members of certain religions more or less literate than others? Are people who harbor homophobic or anti-immigrant or anti-Muslim opinions less civically literate than those who are more accepting of diversity?

5.1 The Focus of Current CCE Research and Why It Needs to Change

67

• What are the connections between civic literacy and mass media? How has the dramatic “morphing” of media, and the accompanying changes in the ways in which Americans access information affected levels of civic knowledge? (pp. 5–6)

The obvious focus in the above on the acquisition of civic knowledge as a prerequisite for effective citizenship begs the question of ‘which knowledge’ should be the focus of CCE. For McCabe and Kennedy (2014), the answer is simple: ‘… only 36% of American citizens can correctly name the three branches of government … Thirty-six percent of 12th grade students fail to achieve a basic level of civic knowledge … only 35.5% of teenagers can correctly identify “We the People” as the first three words of the Constitution’ (p. 3). Thus, the research they advocated was related to a very basic civic literacy about existing democratic structures and institutions. Yet this is not the only approach to civic knowledge and its importance in CCE. Ostler and Starkey (2006), for example, pointed to the work of the Council of Europe that adopted a more expansive view of civic knowledge that included: a political and legal dimension (rights and duties with respect to the political system and the law); a social dimension (relations between individuals and an understanding of the basis of these relations, for example, solidarity); an economic dimension (production and consumption of goods and services; labour); and a cultural dimension (collective representations and imaginations, shared values). (pp. 15–16)

This view expands the knowledge base of CCE from what might be called basic political literacy to one that considers issues of rights, identity, culture and the economy. Ostler and Starkey (2006) go on to show how research has addressed this expanded version of CCE, that they refer to as Education for Democratic Citizenship (EDC) with the focus largely on different conceptions of EDC and its schoollevel implementation. They also promoted what they call ‘cosmopolitan citizenship’ (p. 22) the purpose of which is to recognize diversity as a fixed feature of all societies and important sites for citizenship from the local to the global. This reconceptualization continues to expand CCE’s knowledge base so that civic knowledge itself becomes contested. One of the purposes of Ostler and Starkey (2006) was to criticize what they saw as the somewhat narrow conception of civic literacy that was reflected in England’s national curriculum. Yet such contestation can take many forms. In response to terrorist attacks, the British government intervened in the kind of academic debate outlined above to mandate the teaching of British values (referred to as fundamental British values—FBV) in schools (Department of Education, 2014) and to downplay the importance of cultural diversity and multiculturalism. It represented a serious challenge to those who had advocated a globally oriented citizenship with allegiances beyond the nation state. With FBV, English CCE was returned to its national base with teachers expected to defend such values and argue against contrary notions. What this has meant is a reorientation of civic knowledge to address what was largely perceived as a ‘values deficit’ (Torres, 2013) seen to be responsible in part for the alienation that led a small number of young British citizens pledging their allegiance to foreign ideologies.

68

5 Developing a Research Agenda to Support CCE in the Future

Whatever approach to civic knowledge is adopted in whatever jurisdiction, the role of CCE is seen as consolidating that approach. The above has shown that while there is a general acceptance that civic knowledge is important, there are widespread disagreements about what the knowledge base should be. Yet there are no disagreements about the centrality of democracy; just about ways of understanding it and reflecting it in CCE programs. What CCE needs to do in the future is to understand democracy’s needs and requirements for its citizens and to equip them with the knowledge they need to be informed, active and tolerant citizens. To return to the beginning of the discussion, CCE’s current function has often been related to the so-called civic deficit whether that deficit is seen in terms of knowledge of various kinds or duties and responsibilities for engagement or values. If democracy is threatened by such deficits, then the role of CCE is to address them. What is important for the future is to develop a broad rather than a narrow conception of civic knowledge. Future citizens should not just be civically literate (i.e., possess a basic understanding of civic structures), but they should understand how to support those structures when they come under attack while remaining engaged with institutional politics and remaining tolerant of the nation’s diversity. Current CCE research has been contributing to this scenario by seeking both to understand the so-called deficits and identifying ways they can be addressed. In stable times, where support for democracy is unquestioned, such an approach can provide useful answers that can lead to improvements. Yet in the current environment, the very existence of civic deficits, whether of different kinds of civic knowledge or civic participation or civic values, has the potential to create the spaces for the emergence of distinctly undemocratic political processes that seek to undermine democracy itself. These processes were highlighted in Chapter 2 and are the very processes than any new research agenda must address. Failure to participate in democracy can be addressed by highlighting and encouraging civic engagement in the future (the key issue current research has tried to address). Yet when democracy itself is losing support an entirely different research agenda is required. In this context where democracy is constantly under threat, CCE’s role is not just to ‘fix’ what is broken. Rather its role is to address fundamental issues related to democratic development and its potential to provide rewarding and satisfying lives for all citizens. It was Obama (2017) who asserted in his farewell Presidential address that ‘our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted’. For the future, CCE’s role must be to ensure that such a threat does not materialize.

5.2 Suggested Framework for Future CCE Research Moving to consider research for the future involves a recognition that research is an activity that can serve social purposes. It can be conducted within the accepted protocols developed for traditional research activities, but it has specific purposes among which are:

5.2 Suggested Framework for Future CCE Research

69

• Elucidating the nature and purposes of democratic citizenship; • Identifying the values that both support and oppose such citizenship; • Clarifying the role of both governments and civil society in relation to democratic citizenship; • Understanding how individuals acquire citizenship values and the impact of those values on civic action and engagement; • Identifying the different contexts in which citizenship values are acquired and understanding the impact of these contexts on citizenship development. These broad areas of research concern can be depicted graphically as shown in Table 5.1. Table 5.1 Research questions and foci for future CCE research Research questions

Foci of research

Why is citizenship education considered an important part of the school curriculum?

This involves consideration of the theoretical underpinnings of CCE

Where does citizenship education take place?

This is an issue of the sites where the education of citizens occurs. Education in this context may be formal, in which case the main site is schools that provide formal instruction, opportunities for school and community civic engagement and interaction with peers and teachers. But education may also be informal, involving parents, peers in the community, community organizations and social media

How does citizenship education take place and with what effects?

This is an issue of the processes that facilitate civic learning. It involves consideration of pedagogies, informal learning processes, informal interactions and their direct and indirect effects on what students learn as part of their citizenship development

This research agenda separates citizenship education theory (why), sites (where) and learning processes (how). These dimensions, of course, are interacting. The nature of these different dimensions and their interaction will be highlighted in the following discussion.

5.2.1 Theory—Why Citizenship Education CCE has not been without its theorists; or perhaps, it is more accurate to say that the theoretical base of CCE has borrowed from traditional democratic theory. Thus, it is not unusual to find discussions of republicanism, liberalism, communitarianism and even neo-liberalism when it comes to better understanding the theoretical bases of current CCE initiatives. Yet often these theoretical discussions are implicit rather

70

5 Developing a Research Agenda to Support CCE in the Future

than explicit. For example, when Ostler and Starkey (2006) criticized the English citizenship curriculum, they were really critiquing republicanism that provides the theoretical underpinnings of that curriculum. At the same time when they put forward their own more culturally oriented approach to citizenship education, they were drawing not so much on democratic theory as cultural theories that underpin the promotion of social justice and equality. Although the ‘clash of theories’ seemed obvious, there was no reference to it throughout the article. The same can be said for the Westheimer and Kahne’s (2004) categorization of different types of citizens referred to earlier. While much was made of the differences, there was no explicit reference to the theoretical underpinnings of the different citizen types. For example, the personally responsible citizen easily fits into the liberal view that citizens should be engaged as little as possible with the state. The participatory citizen clearly fits republicanism’s urging for active engagement in the life of the polis. The socially just citizen reflects critical theory’s commitment to large-scale change directed at unfairness and inequities in society. Thus, these citizen types were not just empirical constructions: They reflected deeply held theoretical positions. In this sense, it is important to understand that the links between theory and practice in CCE are not mutually exclusive. Reluctance to engage with theory, however, is not typical of the CCE field. Arthur, Davies and Hahn (2008) in their Handbook of Education for Citizenship and Democracy included sections on key ideas and perspectives both of which canvassed a broad range of theoretical issues and ideas underpinning CCE. In a field that might be regarded as an important adjunct to CCE, Isin and Turner’s (2002) Handbook of Citizenship Studies provided a very substantial overview of the main theoretical influences on citizenship including philosophical, sociological and political theories all of which have an easy application for a better understand of CCE. In a different context, Lee, Grossman, Kennedy, and Fairbrother (2004) showed how philosophical and cultural understandings deeply influenced conceptions of citizenship in Asian contexts and how they could potentially shape CCE programs. Thus theory is intertwined with both empirical studies of CCE and with its practical expression in different contexts. It is fair to say that practice (i.e., what happens in classrooms and other sites) has often dominated CCE discourse. Yet theoretical issues are always close to the surface and deserve more attention than they are currently given. The theoretical concerns of CCE researchers, however, have been predominantly with aspects of democratic theory or with theories that have significant implications for democracy (for example, critical theory and more recently post-structural theory). Yet in the future CCE researchers need to engage with a much broader range of theory simply because preference for different regime types is now evident in the international political landscape. Thus, CCE researchers need to investigate phenomena such as fundamentalism, populism, globalization, neo-liberalism and economic nationalism and their effects on the way citizens, both young and old, view their citizenship rights and responsibilities. What does citizenship look like under such ideologies and how do they compare with democratic citizenship? What would citizens lose and what would they gain as ‘post-democratic citizens’? Answers to these

5.2 Suggested Framework for Future CCE Research

71

questions can help to unravel the appeal of these new ideologies and in understanding them become better equipped to combat their appeal. It is sometimes argued that class as a social construct is no longer relevant. Yet the effects of globalization on displaced workers have become a constant theme when explaining election results in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Globalization’s narrative of ‘trickle down’ effects that benefit everyone is increasingly questioned. This is not a new understanding and has often been reinforced by economists (for example, Stiglitz, 2013) who have consistently argued that globalization continues to create ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’ Recent election results may well represent the victory of the ‘have nots’ reflected in the anti-diversity feeling that stimulated so much of the Brexit vote, Trump’s electoral college victories in the so-called rust belt states, the return to politics of One Nation in Australia, and the democratic election of populist parties in Hungary, Poland and Italy. More needs to be known about the impact of these macro-environments on the citizenship values of marginalized groups and in particular how families and peers interact in these contexts to produce intergenerational dispositions that will continue to influence political systems. Social class matters and more needs to be known about its role in citizenship formation. A theoretically driven research agenda, such as the examples above represent, would move CCE away from a reliance on assumptions that citizenship values are simply a matter of personal dispositions. The agenda would seek to shine a light on socially and culturally constructed values that also inevitably influence individuals, although often in unpredictable ways. Values may be intergenerationally transmitted—and it is important to find out the extent to which this might be the case—but equally they may not. Thus we need to know how broad macro-contexts influence the development of citizenship values, especially where those values are not consistent with democracy and when they may be used to oppose democracy. Finally, this theoretical turn in no way obviates the need for ongoing international assessments of citizenship knowledge and values. Yet these assessments will need to be more theoretically adventurous and will need to recognize that there are more issues relevant to CCE than student engagement either at school or in the community. It is reasonable to focus on the key attributes of liberal democracy, but many students taking the current assessments (for example those in Hungary, Poland and Austria and Hong Kong) are experiencing political environments that challenge democracy. Thus more needs to be known about the traction these antidemocratic movements have in spaces where traditionally democracy has been strong. The same point applies to understanding the strong anti-diversity movement in Europe and the United Kingdom—to what extent do young people buy into these emerging and at times seemingly dominant discourses? It cannot be business as usual for international assessments if they are to provide relevant and meaningful input to the construction of CCE in the twenty-first century.

72

5 Developing a Research Agenda to Support CCE in the Future

5.2.2 Sites—Where Citizenship Education Take Place Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald, and Schulz (2001) developed what they called the Octagon Model of political socialization showing the multiple influences on young people’s growing political understanding: public discourse, schools, peers, media, parents, etc. Yet an overwhelming amount of CCE research has focused on schools as the key agents in political socialization. This makes sense in terms of the effort that is put into CCE by education systems, schools and teachers: the fond hope is that schools must make a difference. They do make a difference, but rarely in isolation. For example, Kennedy, Kuang, and Chow (2013) showed the influence of home and family, the community peers, media and schools on students’ civic knowledge and expected future participation. Together these sets of variables accounted for around 20% of the variance in each of the dependent variables (civic knowledge and expected future participation). They exerted these influences together but in different ways. Home and family variables exerted the most influence on students’ civic knowledge scores, but peers and school were the greatest influence on aspirations for future civic engagement. Thus, it seems that different civic environments (represented by different sites) have the potential to influence civic outcomes, however, defined. Two key issues remain to be resolved with this line of research: 1. How important are different sites in influencing civic development for different groups and individuals—for the native-born, for immigrants, for ethnic minorities, for girls and women, for young men from different socioeconomic groups, for adherents of different religions. Much of the research (including that described above) has assumed that sites for civic learning operate in the same way for everyone. But do they? This is the key issue for future research to understand better how different sites may influence groups and individuals in different ways. 2. The above research, and others like it, accounted for around 20% of the variance in the dependent variables. Referring to Figure 3.1, reporting the results of CivEd involving 28 countries and 90,000 students Torney-Purta et al., (2001): 18–20% of the variance in students’ civic knowledge scores could be explained. Thus there is a very large amount of unexplained variance meaning there are influences on civic learning that have yet to be identified. This must be a research priority for the future. It will require using multiple research methods to explore ways in which young people’s citizenship development is influenced. In a world where more radical forms of civic engagement are prevalent, where there is a dissatisfaction with conventional political engagement and where citizenship values appear to come from multiple political influences, more needs to be known about how these new contexts provide pathways to civic understanding and engagement. Not mentioned above, and rarely included in studies of civic engagement, is the role social media as a site for citizenship development although Kennedy et al. (2013) indicated that it was an important issue for the future. It will continue to be important and in what follows the contours of social media’s potential significance will be outlined.

5.2 Suggested Framework for Future CCE Research

73

5.2.3 Social Media—An Urgent Priority for Future CCE Research Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia (2014) highlighted the increasing importance of information technology that has changed the manner in which political and social activities are conducted, facilitated by the appearance of new media. This has meant activism is no longer limited to physical forms but includes online, instant and permanent engagement. Internet-based civic engagement includes all forms of online actions, such as posting, making comments, and clicking and sharing posts that draw other’s concern with certain social issues (Chen, 2017). How should the availability of this kind of engagement be regarded? Over the past decade breakthroughs in information technology have facilitated the generalized usage of new media with a spillover effect being the transformation of the political landscape. Such transformation has changed the political participation and experiences of many individuals (Allen & Light, 2015). Hyun and Kim (2015, p. 328) pointed out that ‘social media presented new opportunities for citizens to engage with news and to participate in political processes.’ Graber (1996) explained that the key issue differentiating new media from conventional media was the empowerment of media users by offering them power on information processing (both receiving and producing) and the ability to contact millions of people via the Internet worldwide. Social media platforms, such as Facebook, have emerged as a tool for advocating certain social concerns, such as environmental protection (Martinello & Donelle, 2012; Warren, Sulaiman, & Jaafae, 2014). Social media may also help make people politically active and promote political dialogue (Harp, Bachmann, & Guo, 2012; Warren et al., 2014). Kahne, Middaugh, and Allen (2015) elaborated that new media highlighted new possibilities for civic and political engagements. Kahne et al. (2015) also highlighted that new media, acting as a political tool, turned ordinary citizens from acting as gatekeepers outside the institutions to greatly influencing the political arena. In addition, Barnidge (2015) argued that social media has tended to promote political disagreement and to affect individual attitudes toward government and political affairs, as well as the overall level of participation. Most discourse on the emergence of social media as a political tool views such engagement as positive because it enhances participation. Thus in general, social media engagement has been regarded as positive. Kahne, Hodgin, and Eidman-Aadahl (2016), for example, are social media advocates who have outlined what they see as the distinctive nature of engagement through social media. They explained that youth may investigate issues online via various search engines, join a group online for certain political issues, discuss them with peers as well as adults, circulate ideas by digital tools, and mobilize people to join a social action. This kind of participation in politics differs from that in traditional institutional politics that uses well-organized groups and institutional gatekeepers, such as government bureaucracies, news agencies, civic organizations and political parties. In the new media era, youth can use digital tools to directly influence

74

5 Developing a Research Agenda to Support CCE in the Future

issues with which they are concerned, such as police misconduct and online censorship (Jenkins, Shresthova, Gamber-Thompson, Kligler-Veilenchik, & Zimmerman, 2016; Kahne et al., 2016). These views on the positive relationship between social media use by youths have been supported by various scholars (Edralin, 1997; Mengü, Güçdemir, Ertürk, & Canan, 2015; Schneider, 1999). Social media is seen to make connections between the private and public lives of individuals and has connected people in civil society (Barnidge, 2015; Friedland, Hove, & Rojas, 2006; Loader & Mercea, 2011; Rojas, 2015). Social media provides a platform for exchanging information and sharing opinions, which may also be a force for social change (Dong, Liang, & He, 2017). For example, WeChat may be treated as a virtual community, where members may affect one another and encourage civic engagement (Chen, 2017). Despite the endorsement of this kind of engagement is it any more than social engagement? Does the somewhat passive engagement that characterizes social media engagement have the potential for eventual real-world engagement that will eventually lead to actual engagement with democratic political institutions? Considering the argument so far, this is perhaps the key issue for the future. Passive social engagement may not be enough to defend democracy. A previous generation used conventional media, such as printed materials, press conferences and personal social networks, for advocating certain social and political ideas and mobilizing people to participate in various social actions. Is this now the role of social media? Or is the role more passive—expressing and exchanging ideas but with no intention to participate? In this sense, social media may simply have introduced a new layer of participation that does not require any action? In one attempt to answer these questions, Haunss (2015) refers to ‘cyber-optimists’ who argue for the transformational role of social media in relation, for example, to protests; and ‘cyber-pessimists’ who see social media as an adjunct but not a replacement to traditional place-based protests. These debates remain to be resolved if we are to understand the role of social media in facilitating any kind of political and institutional engagement. Earl, Kimport, Prieto, Rush and Reynoso (2010, p.428) attempted to specify the nature of social media engagement. She identified four different possible uses of social media in mobilization for engagement substituting for the usual posters and flyers, facilitating the work of street protestors, focusing solely on online participation and assuming the entire burden of protest mobilization. These are quite different kinds of engagement some of which are passive, whereas others are more active. We need to understand young people’s use of social media in more nuanced ways to be in a good position to assess its implications for the future. Gladwell (2010) might be classified as a ‘cyber-pessimist’ because he has questioned social media’s role in creating ‘high-risk activism’: ‘the platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances and for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with.’ He concludes that ‘weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.’ He supports his case by referring to early forms of activism in the United States that

5.2 Suggested Framework for Future CCE Research

75

he describes as being based on real commitment, danger and threats. He makes the point that ‘social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires.’ This suggests that social media may well work against participation in the ‘real world’, i.e., in institutional politics. If this is the case, then there are serious questions to ask about the cyber-optimist narrative that may be nothing more than theoretical speculation with little empirical support. This is certainly an important issue for future investigation if we are not to be deluded by the role and function of social media in the twenty-first century. Such a view is supported by Haunss (2015, p. 28–29) who warned against overstating the role of social media in activist mobilization without solid empirical evidence. He denied that traditional means of mobilization are necessarily redundant, suggesting more of an adjunct role for social media. He also suggested that knowing the different social media platforms and the differential roles that each may play—Facebook versus Twitter, WhatsApp versus Instagram, and WeChat versus Snapchat is necessary. He reported that minimal attention has been paid to the differentiation and, therefore, to the purposes of these different platforms. Finally, he confirmed that protestors are not the only ones who use social media; hence, attention should also be paid to social media interaction among governments, civil society in general, and protestors because these interactions might affect protest outcomes and processes. This point deserves a great deal more scrutiny than it has received. Greenemeier (2017), for example, writing in the Scientific American, highlighted the effective use of social media by terrorist organizations and white supremacist groups and the seeming inability of platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google to combat this destructive use of social media. As one of his interviewees said: ‘if they put one-tenth of a percent of the effort they put into targeted advertising towards trying to keep terrorists from using their sites, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.’ This issue has been highlighted recently with the revelation of Facebook’s relationship with firms seeking to use ‘big data’ for political purposes and doing so with Facebook subscribers’ political likes and dislikes. More often than not the purpose has been directed at the deconstruction of democracy. Social media’s direct influence on shaping political preferences by using ‘big data’ will be a key area for investigation in the future. The important issue here, as far as CCE is concerned, is that as destructive and unprincipled social media can be, it appears to have been an effective way of entrapping some young people into not only destructive discourse but also destructive actions. This negative use of social media directed specifically at the deconsolidation of democracy must be seen an urgent research priority especially from the point of view of how and why young people become engaged and how such engagement can be countered. Current Uses of Social Media in Activist Mobilization Apart from the negative example referred to above, the use of social media can be somewhat benign. Hong Kong provides a good example. Most surveys concerned with activist mobilization in Hong Kong have focused on numbers, attitudes and outcomes. Numbers have always been the focus of the University of Hong Kong’s

76

5 Developing a Research Agenda to Support CCE in the Future

Public Opinion Poll (HKU POP) that has operated since 2003 (HKU POP, 2016). The focus has been on the number of participants and organizers, as well as the aims at major protests activities every year. It is clear from these analyses that numbers have dropped over the years while social media use for promotion and recruitment has increased. This seems to suggest that social media for such recruitment purposes may not be as effective as the cyber-optimists would have us believe. Yet, as shown above, such media appears to be effective, at least in some cases, for recruitment to destructive causes. More needs to be known about these discrepant uses of social media that do not fit readily in the ‘cyber-optimist’/‘cyber-pessimist’ narratives. From a different perspective, social media enabled young people to be both consumers and producers of information in the age of new media. The issue for the future is whether the use of social media for these purposes plays a constructive or destructive role. So-called fake news, closed conversations with limited participation and views, rightwing Web sites full of hate speech, etc., create civic environments with the potential to be destructive of community values and social cohesion. How do ‘cyber-optimists’ and ‘cyber-pessimists’ regard such online behavior and what are its longer-term impacts? In the past, lack of youth civic engagement has been a matter of concern. In the age of new media, actual engagement itself may be a concern if its causes, exchanges and outcomes are not better understood. The preceding discussion has outlined what key research issues related to social media. It is time to move beyond infatuation with what represents new forms of civic engagement to understand better what such engagement means in the lives of young people, to assess its impact on society and social values and to learn how to use social media for constructive purposes. It is a challenging agenda that needs to be implemented as soon as possible.

5.2.4 Civic Learning The discussion of theories influencing CCE and sites where CCE takes place automatically leads to a consideration of civic learning and how it takes place. Researchers have focused much more on pedagogies for civic learning than on the actual learning process itself. Yet in recognition of multiple sites for civic learning more needs to be known about learning processes themselves. Delli Carpini’s (2009) work on civic learning is an exception to the general trend since he specifically explored different psychological approaches to civic learning and the way these approaches influence the learning process. The approaches range from knowledge-based learning to heuristics emphasizing emotion, affect and motivation as important influences on learning. Of some interest to the current discussion is his characterization of learning under the full condition of complete accurate information versus learning that is more heuristic in nature requiring only partial information. This binary reflects exactly the differences between older styles of civic learning, where most citizens had access to the same information and made decisions accordingly, to the current social media-driven processes that result in highly

5.2 Suggested Framework for Future CCE Research

77

individualized learning often based on misleading information. This work is largely conceptual in nature with very little empirical support. Yet it does start to suggest that there are distinctive ways in which civic learning takes place rather than any single way, that civic learning is not always underpinned by rational processes and that emotion, affect and motivation are as important to civic learning as the possession of accurate information. Much more needs to be known about these multiple modes of learning and how they operate specifically when it comes to civic learning. For example, distinguishing between rational and emotional influences on civic learning would help to understand better why there are certain responses to civic issues. A current example is community responses to refugees. When surveying the Brexit debates about freedom of movement in the European Union, the Trump administration’s attitude to immigration or the Australian’s government’s policies on asylum seeker detention it is difficult to see any rationality in the common view that seeks to limit the international movement of certain groups. The arguments advanced in favor of this view are often spurious, often based on emotional issues, sometimes linked to economic nationalism, sometimes to pure racism and, of course, to terrorism. Young people are not immune to these emotional appeals. In a recent study by Halse, Black, and Charles (2018) primary school, students were interviewed about their attitudes to refugees. Although these students had never encountered refugees or had any direct experiences of refugee communities, they nevertheless held very strong views based on media constructions, family discussion and interaction with their peers. Their responses were purely emotional since they had no factual basis for their opinions. This kind of vicarious civic learning may be much more widespread than anyone has realized. It can be quite dangerous and therefore needs to become the subject of future research. Opposed to this very structured approach to understanding civic learning is that of Biesta (2013) who argued that democracy must be experienced to be understood. Experiential learning is very popular with educators who will often argue that it is better to involve students in community-based activities than it is to teach them knowledge about the political systems. Support for this kind of knowledge-free learning should not be underestimated but neither should it be reified. ‘Learning that’ and ‘learning how’ remain important distinctions when it comes to civic learning and while there can clearly be an interaction between these different kinds of learning one is not necessarily more important than the other. Seeking both to understand and investigate multiple modes of civic learning, their antecedents and their consequences need to be a research priority for the future. It is clear that in the current contexts civic learning is taking place in multiple ways and largely outside of classrooms through traditional media, social media, social networks and interactions that might be regarded as informal. We need to understand these forms of learning better, how they work, who is most influenced by them and how they can be used to promote constructive and productive dialogue among citizens. In general education, research has not been good at linking into broader learning research agendas such as those of education neuroscientists and biological behaviorists because of a preference for adopting more humanistic and progressive views of learning. The sentiment is understandable. Yet now we have reached a point

78

5 Developing a Research Agenda to Support CCE in the Future

in time where educators must look outwards to a much broader array of research and theoretical positions. Understanding civic learning maybe one of the most important tasks ahead for any society confronted with democratic deconsolidation on multiple fronts. If we do not understand how such learning takes place, we may never be able to confront attacks on democracy it or replace defective with learning that can support democracy and its values.

5.3 Synopsis There is a solid CCE research based on which future research can be built. Yet the research agenda needs to be expanded and this needs to be a priority. Theoretical/philosophical/conceptual research needs to move beyond democratic theory so that the forces of democratic deconsolidation can be better understood. Democratic theory will always be important, but understanding the forces aligned against it will also be important in the future. The multiple sites for civic learning must also be better understood as well as the ways they interact. Clearly social media is one of these sites and it will deserve special attention in the future. Civic learning itself also needs to be the subject of future research. Every effort needs to be made to draw on the broadest range of research in cognate disciples to ensure that we develop a much better understanding of the multiple ways young people are inducted into civic learning. Knowing more about how young people learn will assist with the development of CCE programs that will have an impact in supporting young people to become knowledgeable, participative and tolerant citizens in what can only be a volatile future.

References Allen, D., & Light, J. S. (Eds.). (2015). Introduction. In D. Allen, & J. Light (Eds.), From voice to influence: Understanding citizenship in a digital age (pp. 1–15). University of Chicago Press. Arthur, J., Davies, I. & Hahn, C. (Eds). (2008). The SAGE sandbook of education for citizenship and democracy (pp. 483–491). London: SAGE Publications. Barnidge, M. (2015). The role of news in promoting political disagreement on social media. Computers in Human Behavior, 52, 211–218. Biesta, G. (2013). Learning in public places: Civic learning for the twenty-first century. In M. D. Gert Biesta (Ed.), Civic learning, democratic citizenship and the public sphere (pp. 1–11). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. Chen, J. (2017). Can online social networks foster young adults’ civic engagement. Telematics and Informatics, 34(5), 487–497. Civics Expert Group. (1994). Whereas the people: Civics and citizenship education. Canberra: Australian Government Publication Service. Delli Carpini, M. (2009). The psychology of civic learning. In C. F. E. Borgida (Ed.), The political psychology of democratic citizenship (pp. 23–51). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

References

79

Department of Education. (2014). Promoting fundamental British values as part of SMSC in schools. London: Department of Education. Dong, T., Liang, C., & He, X. (2017). Social media and internet public events. Telematics and Informatics, 34(3), 726–739. Earl, J., Kimport, K., Prieto, G., Rush, C., & Reynoso, K. (2010). Changing the owrld one webpage at a time: Conceptualising and explaining ‘internet activisim’. Mobilization, 15(4), 425–446. Edralin, J. S. (1997). The new local governance and capacity building: A strategic approach. Examples from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Regional Development Studies, 3, 109–149. Friedland, L. A., Hove, T., & Rojas, H. (2006). The networked public sphere. Javnost-the Public, 13(4), 5–26. Gladwell, M. (2010). Small change—Why the revolution will not be tweeted. The New Yorker, October 4. Retrieved April 2, 2017 from http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/%2010/04/ small-change-malcolm-gladwell#ixzz11Xq0dge. Graber, D. A. (1996). The ‘new’ media and politics: What does the future hold? PS: Political Science & Politics, 29(1), 33–36. Greenemeier, L. (2017, May 24). When hatred goes viral: Inside social media’s efforts to combat terrorism. Scientific American. Retrieved March 21, 2019, from https://www.scientificamerican. com/article/when-hatred-goes-viral-inside-social-medias-efforts-to-combat-terrorism/. Grossman, D., Lee, W. O., & Kennedy, K. (Eds.). (2008). Citizenship curriculum in Asia and the Pacific. Dordrecht & Hong Kong: Springer and Comparative Education Research Centre. Halse, C., Black, R., & Charles, C. (2018). Young people on asylum seekers: The ‘dirty work’ of boundary making in the politics of belonging. In C. Halse, R. Black, & C. Charles (Eds.), Interrogating belonging for young people in school (pp. 117–140). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Harp, D., Bachmann, I., & Guo, L. (2012). The whole online world is watching: Profiling social networking sites and activists in China, Latin America and the United States. International Journal of Communication, 6(24), 298–321. Haunss, S. (2015). Promise and practice in studies of social media and movements. In L. Dencik & O. Leistert (Eds.), Critical perspectives on social media and protest. Between control and emancipation (pp. 13–31). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Hyun, K. D., & Kim, J. (2015). Differential and interactive influences on political participation by different types of news activities and political conversation through social media. Computers in Human Behavior, 45, 328–334. Isin, E., & Turner, B. (Eds.). (2002). Handbook of citizenship studies. London: SAGE. Jenkins, H., Shresthova, S., Gamber-Thompson, L., & Zimmerman, A. (2016). By any media necessary: The new youth activism. New York: New York University Press. Kahne, J., Hodgin, E., & Eidman-Aadahl, E. (2016). Redesigning civic education for the digital age: Participatory politics and the pursuit of democratic engagement. Theory & Research in Social Education, 44, 1–5. Kahne, J., Middaugh, E., & Allen, D. (2015). Youth, new media, and the rise of participatory politics. In D. Allen & J. Light (Eds.), From voice to influence: Understanding citizenship in a digital age (pp. 35–58). Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. Kennedy, K. (2008). The citizenship curriculum: Ideology, content and organization. In J. Arthur, I. Davies, & C. Hahn (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of education for citizenship and democracy (pp. 483–491). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE. Kennedy, K., & Brunold, A. (Eds.). (2014). Regional contexts and citizenship education in Asia and Europe. London & New York: Routledge. Kennedy, K., Kuang, X., & Chow, J. K. F. (2013). Exploring Asian students’ citizenship values and their relationship to civic knowledge and school participation. Educational Psychology, 33(3), 240–261. Kerr, D. (2003). Citizenship education in England: The making of a new subject. Journal of Social Science Education, 2, 1–10.

80

5 Developing a Research Agenda to Support CCE in the Future

Knowles, R., & Stefano, D. (2015). International citizenship education research: An annotated bibliography of research using the IEA, ICCS and IEA CIVED datasets. Journal of International Social Studies, 5(2). Retrieved on July 17, 2018 from http://www.iajiss.org/index.php/ iajiss/article/view/213. Krzywosz-Rynkiewicz, B., Zalewska, A., & Kennedy, K. (2018). Young people and active citizenship in post-Soviet times—A challenge for citizenship education. London & New York: Routledge. Lee, W. O., Grossman, D., Kennedy, K., & Fairbrother, G. (2004). Citizenship education in Asia and the Pacific—Concepts and issues. Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre/Kluwer Academic Publishers. Loader, B. D., & Mercea, D. (2011). Networking democracy? Social media innovations and participatory politics. Information, Communication & Society, 6, 757–769. Martinello, N., & Donelle, L. (2012). Online conversations among Ontario university students: Environmental concerns. Informatics for Health and Social Care, 37(3), 177–189. Mengü, S. Ç., Güçdemir, Y., Ertürk, D., & Canan, S. (2015). Political preferences of generation university student with regards to governance and social media: A study on March 2014 local elections. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 174, 791–797. McCabe, H., & Kennedy, S. (2014). Civic identity, civic deficit: The unanswered questions. Journal of Civic Literacy, 1(1), 1–7. Obama, B. (2017, January). Farewell Speech. Retrieved July 30, 2017, from Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-obama-farewell-speech-transcript-20170110-story.html. Ostler, A., & Starkey, H. (2006). Education for democratic citizenship: A review of research, policy and practice 1995–2005. Research Papers in Education, 24, 433–466. Perez-Diaz, V. (2004). The European civic deficit. Retrieved July 30, 2017, from Essay and Science—Contemporary Spanish and Latin American Thought: http://www.essayandscience.com/ article/24/the-european-civic-deficit/. Reichert, F. (2016a). Learning for active citizenship: Are Australian youths discovering democracy at school? Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 11(2), 130–144. Reichert, F. (2016b). Students’ perceptions of good citizenship: A person-centred approach. Social Psychology of Education, 19(3), 661–693. Reichert, F. (2016c). Who is the engaged citizen? Correlates of secondary school students’ concepts of good citizen? Educational Research and Evaluation, 22(5–6), 305–322. Rojas, H. (2015). Egocentric publics and perceptions of the worlds around us. In H. Gil de Zuniga Navajas (Ed.), New technologies and civic engagement: New agendas in communication (pp. 93–102). London & New York: Routledge. Sandoval-Almazan, R., & Gil-Garcia, J. R. (2014). Towards cyberactivism 2.0? Understanding the use of social media and other information technologies for political activism and social movements. Government Information Quarterly, 31(3), 365–378. Schneider, H. (1999). Participatory governance: The missing link for poverty education. OECD Policy Brief No. 17. 1-24. Retrieved on August 5, 2917 from http://www.oecd.org/dev/1918916. pdf. Stiglitz, J. (2013). The price of inequality. London: Penguin. Torney-Purta, J., Lehmann, R., Oswald, H., & Schulz, W. (2001). Citizenship and education in twenty-eight countries: Civic knowledge and engagement at age fourteen. Amsterdam: IEA. Torney-Purta, J., Schwille, J., & Amadeo, J. (Eds.). (1999). Civic education across countries: Twenty-four national case studies from the IEA Civic Education Project. Amsterdam: IEA. Torres, C. (2013, August 2). Is multiculturalism dead? Huffington Post. Warren, A. M., Sulaiman, A., & Jaafar, N. I. (2014). Facebook: The enabler of online civic engagement for activists. Computers in Human Behavior, 32, 284–289. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). Educating the “good” citizen: Political choices and pedagogical goals. Retrieved from. PS Political Science and Politics, 37(2), 241–247.