Innovations in Citizenship Education: Young People and Civic Participation

Abstract

This panel covers issues that deal with the inclusion/ exclusion of children and young people as citizens, with a special focus on the role played by education in this process. A trend in the current state of knowledge on citizenship education is to find solutions to a democratic crisis by getting young people to understand and be convinced to support the democratic system with the help of different methods. Politicians, media and educators keep turning their attention to the best ways to “train,” “engage,” and “socialize” youth to become active citizens in the democracy, to prepare students for the world as it is. This panel seeks papers that deal with innovations at three levels: 1. The idea behind citizenship education: the underlying theoretical foundations of the objectives of citizenship education. Questions such as: what kind of citizens should citizenship education aim to create? Innovations of the objective of citizenship education. 2. New and various methods the citizenship educators apply to reach their objectives covering a wide array of activities, such as perspectives of active or experiential learning 3. The institutional perspective of who conducts citizenship education. Although the school has traditionally played an important role in this regard, institutions such as the UN and the EU initiate many civic projects, after school activities have various programs, NGOs, the church or religious organizations, or in some cases the parents. Citizenship education today tends to defend or maintain, rather than transform, aim to reproduce people who embody the dominant social norms of today, rather than civic empowerment. This panel invites and promotes critical discussion and reflection with regards to current citizenship education. We particularly encourage proposals with a comparative perspective and studies that deal with classroom practice.