Learning Democracy And Citizenship

This book explores the relationships between education, lifelong learning and democratic citizenship. It emphasises the importance of the democratic quality of the processes and practices that make up the everyday lives of children, young people and adults for their ongoing formation as democratic citizens. The book combines theoretical and historical work with critical analysis of policies and wider developments in the field of citizenship education and civic learning. The book urges educators, educationalists, policy makers and politicians to move beyond an exclusive focus on the teaching of citizenship towards an outlook that acknowledges the ongoing processes and practices of civic learning in school and society. This is not only important in order to understand the complexities of such learning. It can also help to formulate more realistic expectations about what schools and other educational institutions can contribute to the promotion of democratic citizenship. The book is particularly suited for students, researchers and policy makers who have an interest in citizenship education, civic learning and the relationships between education, lifelong learning and democratic citizenship. Gert Biesta (www.gertbiesta.com) is Professor of Education at the School of Education, University of Stirling, UK.

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.

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.

Education affects these two dimensions in distinct ways, influencing democratic enlightenment through cognitive proficiency and sophistication, and political engagement through position in social networks. For characteristics of enlightenment, formal education simply adds to the degree to which citizens support and are knowledgeable about democratic principles.

This book eloquently argues that the citizenship mission of schools ought to teach students what is possible rather than simply objectifying them as human capital being prepared for the inevitable impact of the policies determined by others.

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 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.