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Introduction
The purpose of this context paper is to review the recent research and policy that may have implications for the World Power League (formerly known as 'Public Private Matters') project. First, it summarises the current status of curricular citizenship in England as a compulsory subject. Second, it analyses the research on young people's 'active citizenship' and their participation in citizenship both inside school and outside of it. Third, it goes on to examine the small body of research on young people's perceptions of politics. Fourth, it examines some recent work designed to evaluate and promote the use of the internet in citizenship education. And finally, it summarises the implications for the project arising from these key debates.
Curricular citizenship
Citizenship as a specific curricular subject in England is still in its infancy, having become statutory for secondary schools and recommended for primary schools in September 2002, based on the framework proposed by the 1998 Crick Report (Crick 1998). The report recommended that citizenship education should provide "moral and social development", encourage "community involvement", and develop students' "political literacy". Broadly, this curricular commitment aimed to address concerns that children were not receiving sufficient education in values, were uninformed about current issues, and did not see themselves as active citizens in a democracy. More positively, it is also intended to educate young people to become informed active members of society able to participate on many levels (Holden 2004). In secondary schools, this has been translated more explicitly as studying spiritual, moral, social and cultural issues; understanding local community and the world as a global community; and understanding democracy and the institutions that support it (DfEE/QCA 1999).
These policy implementations are not uncontroversial: some researchers have contested the very definitions of citizenship upon which the curriculum has been devised. Davies (1999), for example, identified nearly 300 definitions of citizenship education. Hall, Coffey and Williamson (1999) have also stressed how conceptions of citizenship were already changing rapidly by the end of the 1990s, adding that the very concept of citizenship itself has no timeless definition. At the level of curricular implementation, too, there are tensions. In research on teachers' perspectives on teaching moral and social education, Holden (2000) identified that some teachers are uncomfortable covering contentious issues that might upset parents. Further, she discovered that teachers felt that the sets of ideals they were attempting to teach were undermined by the different moral codes of parents, and in some cases by the stereotypical views that parents held of particular ethnic minority groups. A recent EPPI Review (Deakin Crick et al 2004) also notes that the restrictions imposed on students' participation in shaping institutional practices at some schools can be counterproductive to the key message of citizenship education. Furthermore, and specifically in relation to the 'community involvement' aspect of the curriculum, a lack of clarity has contributed to some teachers' confusion between 'active citizenship' and volunteering:
Active learning in the community demands that young people are fully involved in the preparation and planning and, most importantly, have opportunities to reflect on their learning (CSV 2003: 7).
These concerns aside, citizenship is broadly supported by many schools, according to a CSV review (2004), with 76% of English schools surveyed reporting that citizenship teaching has helped to improve school-community links, 89% of schools reporting that students find the subject relevant, and 90% of pupils claiming it is "really" or "fairly useful". From September 2004, schools are required to consult with students in planning and developing the citizenship curriculum (DfES 2004), so that educators can focus on the needs and concerns of their students in order to achieve the general curricular objectives, rather than teaching for some notional, and national, adult citizenry. While citizenship as a discrete subject does exist, many secondary schools also prefer to combine it with other disciplines and extra events in order to broaden its impact and avoid isolating it as an add-on or an updated PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) programme (Breslin 2004) - although students in many schools may choose to take the specific Citizenship Studies GCSE Short Course in Year 11.
Active citizenship
In a review of the literature on citizenship, Selwyn (2002) endorses a 'maximal' approach to citizenship education which emphasises "educating through citizenship" and "educating for citizenship", rather than just "educating about citizenship". In this conceptualisation, students learn through active, participative experiences in their schools and local communities, and they are equipped with a set of tools (knowledge and understanding, skills and aptitudes, values and dispositions) necessary for sensible active participation in the roles and responsibilities they will encounter in their adult lives (8-9). Arthur and Davison (2000), similarly, discriminate between 'passive' citizenship education which seeks to develop knowledge, understandings and behaviours for future participation in UK democracy, and 'active' citizenship education which promotes learning the skills to "critique, debate, and even take a leadership role in proposing alternative models of the structures and processes of democracy" (11). Passive citizenship education seeks to train young people to obey the law and to resist change, which Sir Bernard Crick (2004) defines as the kind of 'good citizenship' that, in an extreme example, exists in autocratic states such as North Korea. Good citizens may even vote in a democratic society, and they may sign a standing order to support voluntary bodies or pressure groups, but these are not instances of active citizenship.
Teaching only 'good citizenship' treats young people as "human-becomings, and less than fully human-beings", and paradoxically teaches them about the very rights and privileges of adulthood that are denied to them in schools (Alderson 2004: 33). Indeed, Alderson (2003; 2004) presents a compelling imaginative example of the adult workplace run like a school, with employees forced to queue outside in the morning in enforced silence, drinks allowed only at authorised times, toilets locked, petty rules about dress codes and jewellery regularly enforced, and freedom of speech suppressed. This is a model that resonates with Michel Foucault's conception of the institutional form of the prison, factory and psychiatric hospital (Foucault 1976), and which Breslin (2004) argues remains the dominant model of the modern secondary school both in terms of its structure and in its imposition of hierarchical order. Citizenship as a curricular subject, and particularly if taught as an active and participative process rather than just knowledge and rules to be learned, has the capacity, then, to change the very institutions of schooling in the future, and to educate young people to critique and debate the very structures of a modern democracy.
Participation
If active citizenship education aims to promote child participation in decision-making, it is necessary to understand more fully what might be meant by participation. Indeed, it is necessary to sound a few notes of caution. Firstly, it is clear that there are tensions between the view that sees children as autonomous individuals, and the parental and societal view that is inclined to problematise and marginalise children (Roche 1999), seeing them as innocent and incompetent dependents in need of protection (Stasiulis 2002; Jans 2004). Secondly, and more importantly, it is necessary to accept that offering children equal participation in decision-making can itself lead to irreconcilable conflicts between existing value-systems, ethical standards and beliefs (Berman 1997). The challenge of educating for participation in citizenship is to provide relevant apparatuses for reflection on one's own and others' actions as participants in a pluralist society where diverse cultures, subcultures, and their associated values and interests all exist alongside each other.
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