Learning Citizenship By Practicing Democracy

For many years, the fields of citizenship education and participatory democracy have often operated independently from each other. During the last decade, the Transformative Learning Centre of the University of Toronto has nurtured multiple spaces for an interdisciplinary dialogue among scholars, practitioners and students from these two fields. One of those spaces was the Second International Conference on Citizenship Learning and Participatory Democracy, where close to 300 participants from all over the world shared ideas in more than 150 sessions, including discussions, round-tables, workshops and keynote addresses. This volume brings together a selected collection from the many papers submitted to the conference. Learning Citizenship by Practicing Democracy: International Initiatives and Perspectives includes an introductory essay, 18 chapters and a postscript, and is organized in three sections: I. Learning democracy in educational institutions II. Learning democracy in communities III. Learning democracy in participatory budgeting The articles in this book represent a variety of perspectives (as the authors come from different geographical and disciplinary locations), but they all share a commitment to improvements in theory, research and practice in the worldwide movement for deepening democracy and for an emancipatory citizenship education.

The objective of this manual is to support teachers and practitioners in Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education (EDC/HRE). It addresses key questions about EDC and HRE, including competences for democratic citizenship, the objectives and basic principles of EDC/HRE, and a whole school approach to education for democracy and human rights. The manual consists of three parts. Part I outlines the basic principles of EDC/HRE as far as they are helpful and meaningful for the practitioner. Part II gives guidelines and tools to design, support and assess the students' processes of constructivist and interactive learning. Part III provides toolboxes for teachers and students in EDC/HRE. The other volumes in this series offer concrete teaching models and materials in EDC/HRE for pupils from elementary to upper secondary level.

This important volume provides a comprehensive study of the concept of democratic citizenship (including its conditions and pre-requisites), which has an established place in higher education courses in politics, social policy, sociology and social philosophy. The contributing political philosophers and educational theorists collectively provide a critical commentary on the assumptions, principles and presuppositions associated with the idea of education for active democratic citizenship. This book presents an invaluable combination of original essays from established authors and previously published seminal articles specially revised for the volume.

In recent years, there has been a shift in discourse internationally towards a greater recognition of the importance of democratic governments and institutions, and an explicit support for the development of democracy and citizenship through education. This book celebrates this shift with a diverse range of contributions. How democracy and citizenship are conceived, practised and researched in different national and educational contexts is explored in this collection, which brings together commentary from schoolchildren and international experts, researchers and practitioners, writers from the south and the north, and from established and new democracies. This volume will be appreciated by anyone with an interest in learning more about education, citizenship and democracy.

This books explores the relationships between learning, democratic citizenship and the public sphere from thee interconnected angles: theory, methodology and research. The main message of the book is that civic learning necessarily has a public character, as it is learning that emerges from engagement in democratic processes and practices that occur both at the centre and the margins of society. Through a combination of theoretical development, methodological reflection and empirical case study, the chapters in the book provide new insights in the complexities of learning in the context of the ongoing struggle for democracy.

For students, citizenship education means more than merely learning about citizenship and democracy. Citizenship education means learning through practicing citizenship inside and outside the school. One model for that is service learning, first conceived in North America but now also taking root in other parts of the world. Service learning combines service and learning by linking community service and reflection about it in class.

This collection of timely articles is the first to explore the dynamics between globalization and education from a specifically Canadian perspective. The articles engage with emergent debates and new discourses around global orientations to citizenship education currently defining scholarly work and teaching practices in Canada.

Drawing on contemporary global events, this book highlights how global citizenship education can be used to critically educate about the complexity and repressive nature of global events and our collective role in creating a just world.