L’école française invite les enseignants à travailler par compétences avec leurs élèves. Cette approche des apprentissages met l’accent sur l’usage que l’on va faire du savoir. L’apprentissage de la citoyenneté est soumis à la nécessité de construire les compétences indispensables pour évoluer et coopérer dans le monde. Le lien fait entre ces deux objets dans les discours de l’école véhicule une manière particulière de comprendre la citoyenneté et désigne la compétence comme incontournable. L’étude du lien entre l’approche par compétences et la citoyenneté a été faite à partir d’une analyse de contenu de discours portant sur des écrits programmatiques de l’éducation à la citoyenneté. le travail mené sur une centaine de fiches projets d’action d’éducation à la citoyenneté en lycée, vise à montrer que le vocabulaire de l’approche par compétences, qui privilégie l’action, la mobilisation de ressources, qui ouvre la forme scolaire à d’autres horizons (économique, notamment), contribue à orienter le regard du futur citoyen vers des finalités et des figures fragmentées de la citoyenneté. Cependant les mises en situation que prévoit l’approche par compétences autorisent également le développement d’expériences et d’une participation qui actualisent les finalités et les formes mêmes de la vie démocratique et politique. Il semblerait que les initiatives citoyennes des lycéens, ouvrent l’horizon d’une vision renouvelée de la participation à la vie publique. Les explorations que semblent apporter les modalités de l’approche par compétences sur le terrain de la citoyenneté classique sont peut-être le moyen indispensable de continuer à explorer les possibilités de la vie démocratique. / The French school invites teachers to work by skills with their students. This approach to learning emphasizes the use that we will make of knowledge. Learning citizenship involves building skills to evolve and cooperate in the world. The link between these two objects in the school's speech conveys a particular way of understanding citizenship and refers to competence as unavoidable. The study of the link between the competency-based approach and citizenship was made from an analysis of writings presenting actions of citizenship education. I tried to show by analyzing a hundred or so action plans for citizenship education in high school, that the vocabulary of the competency-based approach, which favors action, the mobilization of resources, which opens the form other horizons (economic, in particular), helps to direct the eyes of the future citizen towards ends and fragmented forms of citizenship. However, experience, exercises provided by the competency-based approach also allow the development of competencies in the framework of a participation that updates the aims and the very forms of democratic and political life. It seems that the initiatives of high school students, open the horizon of a renewed vision of participation in public life. The explorations that the modalities of the competency approach seem to bring to the field of classical citizenship may be the indispensable means of continuing to explore the possibilities of democratic life.

While global human rights knowledge has become a central facet of curricula used to shape multicultural societies and develop cosmopolitan citizenry, such knowledge is shaped by sociopolitical context. Japan has a long history of incorporating human rights concepts into its citizenship curriculum; however, this curriculum is produced in a political context where there is resistance to extending rights to minorities and the disadvantaged, and where there are renewed attempts to emphasise traditional Japanese cultural values through education. Potential tensions have been recognised, yet little has been written about educational knowledge as end product, or its role in informing learner and teacher understanding of human rights. Intentions to promote inclusivity and new communal identities notwithstanding, this work establishes that the recontextualising discourse of human rights within Japan's school curriculum, as a discourse that regulates identity and citizenship, portrays the rights of marginalised and non-Japanese identities as privileges extending beyond the norm of society, while at the same time implicitly denying ethnic Japanese individuals full access to rights language. Thus, while learners regard human rights of value, many are less receptive and empathetic to rights claims made by non-like others, and are likely to consider society as incapable of embracing diversity. Human rights concepts possess symbolic value and weight; however, their symbolic importance can be easily embedded within particularistic notions of identity and nationality to ends contrary to multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism, which for this research was witnessed in their transformation into tools for cultural and political legitimacy by the Japanese State. This research arrives at these conclusions through a systemic, holistic analysis of human rights learning in Japan that ties official knowledge to instructional and learning outcomes. This research is first a mixed-method policy sociology utilising computer-based analytical techniques to examine the structure and content of human rights knowledge within upper-secondary social studies textbooks representing Japan's official curriculum. This is followed by a comparative case study of two upper-secondary institutional sites of human rights learning, an academic, public coeducational western Japan senior high school, and a private Tokyo girls' senior high school, the primary differentiation being that the western Japan school is an explicit site of human rights learning, applying its own content and pedagogic practice as part of a specialised human rights curriculum designed to supplement the official curriculum. This research not only has implications for Japan in yielding a greater understanding of how the curriculum engages and reproduces identities and to what end, but also potentially to understand how similar tensions and contradictions between universal and particular play out in other national, State-sponsored education contexts.

Amid a recent wave of revived interest in citizenship and citizenship education, foreign language education is emerging as an important but under-researched site for the education of citizens under conditions of globalization and massive social, economic, and political changes. This qualitative study deconstructed the concept of good citizenship embedded in China's and America's foreign language curricula during the past decade. The study presented a comparative critical discourse analysis of four interwoven data sets: (a) foreign language policies and/or curriculum standards bounded by the two contexts of this study: Shanghai in China and Utah in the U.S.; (b) EFL (English as a foreign language) and CFL (Chinese as a foreign language) instructional materials developed for the 1st through 3rd and 10th through 12th graders in Shanghai and Utah, respectively; (c) media accounts relating foreign language education with citizenship education in the two countries; and (d) relevant academic publications. Together with a body of critical literature on ideology in curriculum, a two-dimensional citizenship matrix consisting of nationalism, cosmopolitanism, neoliberalism, and Confucianism assisted in the identification and comparison of the country-specific sociopolitical and sociocultural meanings associated with being a good citizen in China and the U.S. Three sets of findings were reported in response to the three research questions. First, among a jumble of meanings and expectations, the most widely shared imaginary embedded in China's EFL curriculum is an individual whose allegiance is to the nation and the market, whereas the second popular perception is someone who observes Confucian moral principles and adopts a global perspective. Second, the dominant good citizenship notion embedded in America's CFL curriculum is characterized by a marked neoliberal orientation. Third, the two cases demonstrated two chief differences and two major similarities. Due to the unique social contexts, cultural institutions, and global power differentials of China and the U.S., the good citizenship discursive fields of two cases were qualitatively different both in terms of intent and belonging. The discursive fields were similar in that the neoliberal-nationalism discourse was prevalent and the officially preferred good citizenship notion was oppressive in nature in both cases.

In the last decade, the Commonwealth Government has relied increasingly on policy-induced consortia to implement its education policy initiatives. The study focused on education policy pertaining to citizenship education, and specifically on the recommendations of the Civics Expert Group's 1994 report Whereas the people...Civics and Citizenship Education. The then Commonwealth Government called for policy-induced consortia to submit applications as a means to implement the report's recommendations. As a result, the Western Australian Consortium for Citizenship Education was formed. The Consortiums submission for a grant to assist teachers to prepare curriculum materials for citizenship education was successful. The study examined the decisions made by the Consortium members in relation to the curriculum materials project.The study was informed by an examination of literature pertaining to citizenship and citizenship education, the implementation of public policy, and group and curriculum decision-making. The review of the literature concerning the constructs of 'citizen' highlighted the contested nature of citizenship. In turn, this is reflected in the debates about the nature of citizenship education. As well, the literature review revealed many models of policy implementation and group curriculum decision-making do not adequately reflect the complexities and realities of group decision-making processes. The models often ignore the socio-political dynamics of the group, particularly in a policy-induced consortium, which exists for a specific and limited purpose, where members owe allegiance to their institutions rather than the consortium and where the consortium is accountable to a government department for the management of the project.A case study approach using qualitative methods was used. These methods and approaches are most likely to capture and interpret ++ / the humanness of group decision-making. Moreover, they take into account the importance of the values each member of the Consortium brought to the group and recognise that each member constructed his/her meaning as a result of social interaction with other Consortium members.The case study focused on a detailed examination of the work of the Western Australian Consortium for Citizenship Education and especially on the sub-group of the Project Management Committee over eighteen months. The notion of 'critical decisions' was used to analyse the Consortium's decision-making. Each critical decision had significant consequences for the ongoing work of the Consortium. The nature of the Consortium's decision-making highlighted the overwhelming importance of social dynamics over curriculum decision-making.The intentions of the study were to build towards a more complete understanding of the socio-political nature of group curriculum decision-making; to contribute to theorising about the humanness of group curriculum decision-making; and to provide an informed perspective about the significance of the Commonwealth Government's intervention in education through the mechanism of policy-induced consortia.The thesis makes a contribution to the socio-political dimension of group curriculum decision-making in federations. It illustrates that curriculum policy delivery is a socio-political process focussing on interpersonal relationships rather than a rational or deliberative process based on educational outcomes.

This thesis examines citizenship education in Aotearoa New Zealand. In particular, it reviews what education there is in the New Zealand curriculum about Aotearoa's democratic arrangements, including the provisions for the political voices of Maori. Recent political debate suggested the reform of these provisions through a citizensinitiated referendum. This thesis sought to identify what formal education is provided to citizens to inform their response in such a referendum. Critical discourse analysis and a content analysis method were utilised to analyse data. A review of the social studies curriculum revealed some citizenship education material in education, but a distinct neglect of issues about the Maori-Pakeha relationship as they relate to Aotearoa's bipolitical democracy. For example, there is an absence of material about the Maori Electoral Option. This thesis contributes to the calls for the strengthening of citizenship education in Aotearoa. It does so by affirming the benefits of such education to Aotearoa's democracy, through the empowerment of citizens to engage in democratic society. Such a citizenship education is posed through the concepts of presence, freedom, and critical consciousness from a Maori world-view (Te Ao Marama).

This study explores the impact of neoliberal education policies on the discourses of citizenship and citizenship education in an Australian citizenship education project entitled 'Discovering Democracy School Materials.' This project is the largest national curriculum development project in Australia and represents the official discourses of citizenship in Australia. The materials were developed in response to concern about the poor understanding of civics and citizenship in Australia and the lack of quality citizenship education materials and background information for teachers. The scope of the study was managed by focusing on a corpus of twelve text groups, selected from the materials because they related to the environment - an area of citizenship of interest to young people and which allows consideration of recent trends in the practice of citizenship. An approach to critical discourse analysis recommended by Fairclough (1992) was used. This involved a three-step process of identifying and analysing: (i) the discourse evident in the words in the text, (ii) the processes of production, dissemination and consumption of the texts, and (iii) the contextual social and cultural practices that influenced the development of the text. There were six steps in the discourse analysis. The first involved identifying the corpus related to the environment. The second was to identify and describe the discourses of citizenship and citizenship education evident in the text. The third involved interviewing key participants in the processes of text production, dissemination and consumption to ascertain their perceptions of the discourses evident in the texts. The fourth was an analysis of these interviews to interpret the discourses participants acknowledged as being within the text and the discursive practices that operated to establish those discourses. The sixth was an explanation of the impact of neoliberalism on the development of the materials. The results indicate that two discourses of citizenship and citizenship education were dominant within the materials - Legal Status and Public Practice. The same two discourses were evident in the interviews with key participants in the processes of text production, dissemination and consumption. In all cases, the materials lacked any evidence of the citizenship or citizenship education discourses of Democratic Identity, World Citizenship and Democratic Participation, although Democratic Identity was a minor aspect of one of the twelve text groups. A range of discursive practices related to neoliberalism was identified as influential on this pattern of discourses. Perceptions of teacher deficiency were influential in the process of text production as was the power of key individuals and groups such as the national education minister and his department, a government-appointed Civics Education Group, the Curriculum Corporation and, to a much lesser extent, teacher professional associations. Two discursive practices were influenced in text dissemination: the materials were provided free of charge to all schools and extensive professional development was provided. These provided significant inducements to teachers to use the materials. Discursive practices operating in the process of text consumption provided added inducement by showing teachers how to select key components of the materials for local use. However, this concern for local context was undermined by the extreme strength of the presentation of what counts as legitimate citizenship and the lack of opportunity for alternative or resistant readings of the texts. Three aspects of neoliberalism were seen as especially influential in these discursive practices - the strong focus on the development of legitimate knowledge, marketisation, and an emphasis on the need for evaluation. The study concludes with an examination of the implications of the findings to identify recommendations for teachers, teacher educators, materials developers and opportunities for further research.

This thesis is intended as a contribution to a discussion about education, especially when related to democracy and gender equality, in other words citizenship education. A strategy for the inquiries is developed, termed a feminist pragmatist attitude. The focus is on thqualitative content of education i.e. three theoretically demarcated relationships: feminine/masculine, home/society and home/school. When studying educational policy documents in order to identify different views on these relationships, I draw on a tradition of curriculum theory/curriculum history/didactics and the inquiries are influencedy a post-structuralist view of meaning. In agreement with Arendt, history is used to understand the present times and to propose alternatives for the future. Three discourses on home economics, ie. different ways of understanding home economics, are constructed. Home economics as: (1) Vocational education for women, (2) An education for women's mission in life and (3) Women's education for efficiency. Further, an alternativdiscourse for the future is proposed: (4) Home economics as citizenship education. This alternative discourse is constructed from "the forgotten potentials of the past", i.e. ideas from three phases or debates during the 20th century. The three phases are: thdiscussion of the relevance of home economics for the education of boys; the national curriculum from 1969, Lgr 69; and the parliamentary debate during the 1990s. The discourse is further underpinned by a discussion of feminist critique of traditional views of rationality, reason and ethics and by feminist alternatives such as ethics of care. Within the alternative discourse the norm of masculinity in education is criticised and the possibilities of breaking the dominance of thinorm is examined. The potentids of education about and for the home, e.g. education in home economics, as contributing to citizenship education of boys as well as girls are discussed.

The aim of this study is to highlight civics teachers’ professional attitudes to grade related work in Samhällskunskap A (Civics), a compulsory course at upper secondary school. The methods employed are qualitative interviews and a compilation of tasks forming the basis of assessment in the current course. To gain a greater understanding of teachers’ grading difficulties, grading related dilemmas and strategies to deal with them have been identified. These are divided into three groups; dilemmas connected to the steering documents, dilemmas involving teachers’ own convictions, and dilemmas related to the school subject in question. Both dilemmas and strategies are mainly generic and the overall purpose expressed in the strategies is to help manage a demanding job situation. The professional attitudes reflect three areas of teacher work. The first is PCK aspects of assessment where teachers emphasize fact deepening tasks (faktafördjupare), news discussions and written tests (nyhetsdiskutant), a varied basis of assessment (samhällsguide), or pupils’ involvement through PBL and seminars (katalysator). Concerning the exercise of grading authority, teachers act as informal observers of pupils in the classroom, bureaucrats who clearly inform pupils of the grading criteria, professionals who are dependent on the cooperation with colleagues, and individualists who work alone. The development of democratic competence displays the teacher as a moderator who focuses on having pupils problemising and questioning social issues, as a co-operator who regards pupils as customers, or as a deliberator who emphasizes a permitting and open climate for discussions.

While the challenge of improving young North Americans’ civic engagement seems to lie in the hands of schools, studying alternative ways of teaching citizenship education could benefit the current educational system. In this context, free schools (i.e., schools run democratically by students and teachers), guided by a philosophy that aims at engaging students civically through the democratic activities that they support, offer a relatively unexplored ground for research. The present inquiry is a case study using tools of ethnography and drawing upon some principles of complexity thinking. It aims at understanding students’ citizenship education experiences during democratic activities in a Canadian free school. It describes many experiences that can arise from these activities. They occurred within a school that operated democratically based on a consensus-model. More precisely, they took place during two kinds of democratic activities: class meetings, which regulated the social life of the school, and judicial committees, whose function was to solve conflicts at the school. During these activities, students mostly experienced a combination of feelings of appreciation, concernment and empowerment. While experiencing these feelings, they predominantly engaged in decision-making and conflict resolution processes. During these processes, students modified their conflict resolutions skills, various conceptions, and their participation in democratic activities and in the school. Based on these findings, the study concludes that students can develop certain skills and attitude associated to citizenship education during these activities and become active from a citizenship perspective. Hence, these democratic activities represent alternative strategies that can assist educators in teaching about citizenship.

This study sought to describe the congruence between Aboriginal student citizenship development, as manifested in behaviour, and the prescribed outcomes of Canadian citizenship for selected secondary schools in Manitoba, as perceived by secondary principals and teachers. Citizenship, the condition of living in a shared society and the standard of conduct that allows those in a particular society to live harmoniously and prosper, has become an important goal for public education in the Province of Manitoba. Citizenship is also prevalent concept within many documents and policy developments.<p>The values of Canadian citizenship used in this study were derived from the framework of six values used in the development of Manitobas most recent Social Studies curriculum (2004b; 2004c). These six civic values are equality, respect for cultural differences, freedom, peace, law and order, and environmental stewardship. These same values were employed in the development of the survey to acquire quantitative data using Likert-scale items. Qualitative data were acquired through a set of open-ended questions on the survey and through interviews. Quantitative data were analyzed with the use of chi square analysis and descriptive statistical measures including ANOVAs. Qualitative data were analyzed through a method of constant comparison in order to establish themes.<p>For the most part, Aboriginal students from Manitoba high schools do behave in a manner congruent with the values of Canadian citizenship. There were some differences in the way principals and teachers perceived Aboriginal student behaviour, that Aboriginal students family backgrounds presented challenges to educational attainment, and that educational administration was a subject that can be dealt with in numerous curricular and extra-curricular forums. There were some exceptions to these findings manifest in both the quantitative data and qualitative data. Amongst other things, the qualitative data suggested that citizenship development should be a localized process with genuine community involvement. The implications of these findings suggest a need for the development of curricula that is congruent with traditional Indigenous ways of learning, provision of opportunities for practical experiences in the area of citizenship development, and increased research into schools on First Nations communities in the area of citizenship development. Such developments may facilitate citizenship development for Aboriginal students through the provision of education that is sensitive to Aboriginal perspectives and circumstances.