A Practical Guide to Teaching Citizenship in the Secondary School

Liam Gearon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134210107
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Ideal for students and NQTs, this practical and accessible workbook is designed to develop basic teaching skills, and increase teachers' knowledge and understanding of teaching citizenship. Filled with practical activities and materials to encourage users to analyze their own learning and performance and underpinned with research findings, this personal workbook can be written in directly to provide a useful record of progress. It also includes case studies, examples of current good practice and a range of tried-and-tested strategies for inspiration and guidance.

Complementing Learning to Teach Citizenship in the Secondary School, this workbook can be used as part of an integrated course or independently as a standalone self-study book.

Chapter 1
What is citizenship education?

IAN DAVIES

INTRODUCTION

What is citizenship education? This could be one of the most difficult questions that teachers in their role as subject specialists will ever have to face (and certainly a lot more difficult than ‘What is maths education?’ or ‘What is history education?’, where–despite many controversies and uncertainties–there is much greater consensus about what needs to be taught and learned and long-established processes for encouraging learning). This chapter draws attention to some of the debates and issues that are raging (and have raged for a very long time) about citizenship and whether (and, if so, how) it can be taught and learned. A range of examples will be given of practical activities that could be used in schools and elsewhere and you will be invited to consider what you think is the essence of ‘real’ citizenship education. My view about the nature of citizenship and citizenship education will be declared in this chapter but, of course, this is not the only perspective that is possible. This one brief chapter is certainly not enough to do any more than begin to scratch the surface of this complex field.

OBJECTIVES

By the end of this chapter you should be able to:

• Understand the key ideas about citizenship.
• Understand the current meaning of citizenship education as part of the National Curriculum for England.
• Understand the issues in the relationship between citizenship and citizenship education
• Be able critically to review educational activities for their suitability for use in a citizenship education programme.

Despite all the controversy, the answer to the question ‘What is citizenship education?’ is, in one sense, easy. The National Curriculum for Citizenship in England was developed following the Crick Report (DfEE/QCA 1998). That report characterised citizenship education as consisting of social and moral responsibility, community involvement and political literacy. The report declared its principal aim in very ambitious terms:

We aim at no less than a change in the political culture of this country both nationally and locally: for people to think of themselves as active citizens, willing, able and equipped to have an influence in public life and with the critical capacities to weigh evidence before speaking and acting; to build on and to extend radically to young people the best in existing traditions of community involvement and public service and to make them individually confident in finding new forms of involvement and action among themselves.

(DfEE/QCA 1998, pp. 7–8)

The National Curriculum Order for citizenship became compulsory for secondary schools in England in September 2002. The following indicates the three key aspects of the requirements:

Teaching should ensure that knowledge and understanding about becoming informed citizens are acquired and applied when developing skills of enquiry and communication, and participation and responsible action.

(DfEE/QCA 1999, p. 14; emphasis added)

The assessment of citizenship education is compulsory but the uncertainty surrounding the area has meant that for the one attainment target that has been established levels have not been declared as in other subjects. Instead brief end-of-key-stage descriptions are given for key stages 3 and 4.

www.citized.info) designed to strengthen action in teacher education for citizenship education. Almost all educational publishers active in the schools sector have rushed to produce materials for the new commercial market in citizenship education.

So, if we focus on the practical details of what is required by law to be taught, then a simple answer can be given to the question ‘What is citizenship education?’ But even in this fairly straightforward situation the context in real schools and with real teachers and learners is potentially problematic. It would be wrong to imagine that government policy documents will tell us what is really being implemented. Early evaluation and inspection reports point to a range of challenges being faced by schools (Kerr et al. 2003), including the delivery of citizenship education through Personal and Social Education (PSE) which Crick (2001) had explicitly warned against, and teacher uncertainty about the implementation process.

In light of controversy over the heart of citizenship education and uncertainty over how it can be practically implemented, I show below a number of activities that can be used to consider ways to identify citizenship and citizenship education.

Activity 1.1 What does citizenship mean?

Two quotations about citizenship are shown below. They show very different perspectives about citizenship. Before you read the quotations and do an activity related to them, please consider the very clear summary of citizenship that can be found in Heater (1999). In that book Heater discusses the two main traditions from which our current understandings about citizenship have been drawn: the liberal (rights based and often related to individuals who are wary of state power) and the civic republican (emphasising duties and recognising the need for the power of the state to ensure that there is some measure of equality). Heater argues (convincingly, in my view) that it is unnecessary to see these two traditions as being mutually exclusive:

... by being a virtuous, community-conscious participant in civic affairs (a republican requirement), a citizen benefits by enhancing his or her own individual development (a liberal objective). Citizenship does not involve an either/or choice.

(Heater 1999, p. 177)

However, knowledge of these two traditions does allow us to see where people are coming from when they discuss citizenship. Now, please think about the questions shown below in relation to the two quotations that appear after them.

Questions to consider: Who do you think was the author of each of the quotations given below? Can you make an informed guess as to what sort of people they are? What sort of jobs do they do? What sort of views about citizenship do they hold? Why do you think they hold those particular views? What sort of traditions relate most closely to the perspectives given in the quotations? What sort of work that could be undertaken within or outside school would emerge from the two different approaches represented in the quotations? Which of the two quotations (or what sort of blend between the two quotations) do you prefer and why?

Quotation 1

Active citizenship is the free acceptance by individuals of voluntary obligations to the community of which they are members. It cannot be conjured up by legislation or by political speeches–although both can help. It arises from traditions of civic obligations and voluntary service which are central to the thinking of this government and rooted in our history.

Quotation 2

The practice of citizenship is about ensuring everybody the entitlements necessary to the exercise of their liberty. As a political question welfare is about rights, not caring, and the history of citizenship has been the struggle to make freedom real, not to tie us all in the leading strings of therapeutic good intentions.

Sources

The reference for Quotation 1 is D. Hurd (1988) ‘Freedom Will Flourish where Citizens Accept Responsibility’, Independent, 13 February. Douglas Hurd was a key member of several of Margaret Thatcher’s governments. At the time he made that statement he was at the Home Office and was therefore responsible for law and order and immigration. His junior minister at the time, John Patten, would later become Secretary of State for Education and be closely involved with the attempt to implement a form of citizenship education in the early 1990s that emphasised the need for young people to volunteer.

The reference for Quotation 2 is M. Ignatieff (1989) ‘Citizenship and Moral Narcissism’, Political Quarterly, 60, 1. Michael Ignatieff is a philosopher, writer and politician. One of his recent books is titled Human Rights (edited by Amy Gutman and published by Princeton University Press in 2001). Ignatieff has been Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University and is (2006) a Liberal party member in the Canadian parliament.

One of the key ways of characterising citizenship is to focus on the relationship between the individual and the state. An obvious way of considering that relationship is by investigating voting patterns in general elections. The following activity allows you to consider the meaning of citizenship and its relationship with the sorts of things that should or could be done by teachers and learners.

Activity 1.2 Understanding political participation (or, ‘Do we live in a democracy?’)

You are about to see some data from recent elections. Please consider this data and ask yourself three questions (perhaps you could discuss with some colleagues or friends):

• Do you feel concerned as a result of seeing the information about voting patterns in elections? Why? Why not?
• Do you feel that this information should be of particular interest to teachers? Why? Why not?
• Do you think that knowledge of this information should lead to the provision of a particular sort of citizenship education? Why? Why not?

The 2005 General Election

Party	Seats in Parliament	Share of total electorate
Labour	356	22%
Conservative	197	20%
Liberal Democrat	62	14%
Others	30	6%

Share of total electorate for winning prime minister and party

Prime Minister	Share of total electorate
Churchill 1951 (Conservative)	41%
Wilson 1974 (Labour)	29%
Thatcher 1983 (Conservative)	32%
Major 1992 (Conservative)	33%
Blair 1997 (Labour)	32%
Blair 2001 (Labour)	25%
Blair 2005 (Labour)	22%

What do the data about voting mean?

When reviewing the information about elections people have very different reactions. Some suggest that there is a huge crisis in society and that unless we act now the alienation from constitutional politics will increase to a point where hardly anyone will bother to vote. Teachers, it is argued, must step in and encourage young people to vote. Others adopt a different view. They suggest that there is little to worry about. People may not vote when they are young but as they get older they will start to vote; not voting when the result of an election seems a foregone conclusion is simply a sensible action and nothing to worry about; people can express their dissatisfaction with their preferred political party by not voting (as opposed to voting for a party that they do not like). Young people and others are very interested in political issues (although they do not want to see middle-aged men argue about procedural points in the House of Commons). If teachers encourage young people to vote, are they allowing themselves to act as the agents of party politicians and not being educators? What do you think? Remember the three questions that were given at the beginning of this activity as you develop your answers to these questions. (You might want to look at more data about elections. If so, please go to the website of the electoralcommission.org.uk).)

There are many debates about citizenship and teachers must think carefully about what they want to focus on.

Activity 1.3 Where do we draw the boundaries around citizenship education? How do we know when we are teaching citizenship?

An argument is made below for a particular approach to citizenship education. Read the argument and then discuss with others whether you agree or not.

Some argue that citizenship encompasses everything. Audigier (1998, p. 13):

Since the citizen is an informed and...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• SERIES EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
• CONTRIBUTORS
• CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION?
• CHAPTER 2: VALUES, BELIEFS AND THE CITIZENSHIP TEACHER
• CHAPTER 3: SUBJECT KNOWLEDGE IN CITIZENSHIP
• CHAPTER 4: DEVELOPING SUBJECT KNOWLEDGE
• CHAPTER 5: LESSON PLANNING
• CHAPTER 6: MEDIUM- AND LONGER-TERM PLANNING
• CHAPTER 7: PLANNING, EVALUATING AND AUDITING THE WHOLE-SCHOOL PROVISION
• CHAPTER 8: ASSESSMENT IN CITIZENSHIP
• CHAPTER 9: LEADING CITIZENSHIP
• CHAPTER 10: RESEARCHING CITIZENSHIP
• APPENDIX TO CHAPTER 3