Abstracts

Helena C. Araújo: Teachers’ Perspectives in Portugal and Recent Institutional Contributions on Citizenship Education

This paper aims to focus the impact of policies on education for citizenship through two research projects pursued in the last ten years on teachers’ perspectives on citizenship education and their relevance for schools and education at large. Moreover, this impact will also be seen through recent policies and state initiatives on citizenship education, as well as on higher education institutions and NGOs in their contribution to these initiatives. These analyses point to the need for a more systematic intervention in teachers’ education on citizenship education and on schools initiatives in this area.

Kenan Çayir, Ipek Gürkaynak: The State of Citizenship Education in Turkey: Past and Present

Citizenship education in Turkey has been a part of the state-centric modernization project involving the transformation of public and private lives of Turkish citizens. Although there has always been a separate course on civics, citizenship education emerges as a cross-curricular theme in the Turkish educational system which aims at creating a self-sacrificing and patriotic citizen. Besides its particularistic content, however, Turkish citizenship education also involves references to a universal conception of citizenship in line with Turkey’s aspiration to be a member of the European Union. This paper presents a historical frame and breaking points for citizenship education in Turkey from its foundation to the present. It critically examines paradoxical content of the current citizenship and human rights education curriculum.

K. Peter Fritzsche: What Do Human Rights Mean for Citizenship Education?

The article argues that citizenship education and human rights education can be understood as educational responses to specific social and political challenges in different national, regional and global contexts. It outlines four cases:
−Nbsp; the early German response of civic education
−The late British response of citizenship education
−The response of EDC within the European framework of the Council of Europe
−The response of HRE within the global framework of the UN and the UNESCO
The main aim is to contribute to the necessary clarification of what is shared and what is different of EDC and HRE in this ongoing process of cooperation and integration between the two approaches in Europe.

Reinhold Hedtke, Tatjana Zimenkova, Thorsten Hippe: A Trinity of Transformation, Europeanisation, and Democratisation?

Although a lot of stock-taking research on citizenship education in European countries has already be done, some key features of citizenship education especially in transformation countries are not understood as yet. The authors briefly outline the state of the art and criticize its main shortcomings. As a result, they suggest a research agenda to enhance the knowledge about citizenship education with respect to its interconnectedness with processes of transformation and to its embeddedness into different political cultures, institutions and democracies. They propose to realise multi-level and multi-actor case studies which perceive citizenship education as an organisational issue, too.

Gonzalo Jover, Concepción Naval: Transformed Institutions – Transformed Citizenship Education? Remarks on the Current Situation in Spain

Educational systems are placing great emphasis on the need to generate a sense of citizenship. In this article, we treat this question within the concrete framework of the recent history of Spain (from 1990 to current day). We make reference to three points:
1. The institutional framework of citizenship education;
2. The concepts of citizenship present in the school curriculum and the public debate;
3. The state of research into citizenship education.
Based on our analysis of the situation in Spain, we draw several conclusions regarding international research projects on citizenship education.

Anna Radiukiewicz, Izabela Grabowska-Lusinska: Education for Democratic Citizenship in Poland

The civic education is one of the biggest challenges of every nation, but in Poland – as a post-communist country – the upbringing of young generation to life in a democratic and modern world, is essential. Education, and so education for democratic citizenship, is very important, even decisive force of development of societies – it can flourish or decline the development. The purpose of this paper is to identify and explain development and evolution of civic education in Poland at different phases of the systemic transition. Additionally, the authors point out the barriers of civic culture’s development and abilities of institutions, which enable civic education in Poland. Thus, the paper analyses constellations of actors concerning on the one hand factors eroding education for democratic citizenship from schools and on the other hand those which unevenly and constantly building, grass-rooting and enhancing civic education at all levels of educational process.

Sibylle Reinhardt: Civic Education – The Case of (East-) Germany

There has been a long tradition of thinking on Civic Education in Western Germany, mainly after World War II. Aims and means have been discussed thoroughly, experiences in teaching politics (the most common name for the school subject) have been reported on. After the (re-)union of the two Germanies in 1990, Western concepts were brought to and adopted by Eastern Germany. Transformation of civic education (politische Bildung) faces the problem that the democratic system is open to conflicts and competition and does not lead and direct the citizen in an authoritative manner. Democracy asks for different abilities on the side of its citizens than an authoritarian system does. Research data show the difficulties of learning for democracy.

Tulin Sener: Civic Engagement of Turkish Youth in Germany

The recent growth of interest in children’s participation in civic life, partly reflected in and stimulated by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), has led to concerns about how to facilitate the involvement and participation of young people in public life and in the public policy process. Young people are fully capable of involvement in community assessment, planning and decision making. Research around the world shows that they gravitate naturally to a purposeful engagement with their surroundings and have strong feelings about the local environments they use everyday. Particularly, living in a foreign cultural context requires more involvement in order to accommodate to the culture. Turkish children and young people living in Germany are dealing with many problems, including their civic engagements. In this research, 40 pre-adolescents were interviewed in order to investigate their cultural participation in Germany. In-depth-interviews are done and analysed. Results show that the young people have a strong wish to be listened, particularly on issues directly affecting their daily lives and activities, their education, school and the environment they live. In this article the results will be discussed and examples will be given.