With specific reference to junior secondary schools in Shanghai, China, this qualitative empirical study examines the dynamics and complexities of leadership in school and, in particular, citizenship education exercised by principals and school party secretaries (SPSs), who are de facto equally-ranked school leaders. Specifically, it examines, from a macro- and micro-political theoretical perspective, the interactions between these two types of school leaders, and how they respond to the demands of various school stakeholders, including macro-political actors (e.g., the state) and micro-political actors (e.g., other school leaders, teachers, students and parents), at the school level. Data were gathered from document analysis, non-participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 44 school leaders from 24 schools and two educational officials in Shanghai, conducted in 2011. This study has four major findings. First, in addition to the leadership responsibilities inherent to their particular portfolios, the interviewed principals and SPSs were also politically and administratively responsible for leading the school and citizenship education, and struggled to balance these (at times conflicting) responsibilities. Second, there were four major school leadership/citizenship education scenarios in which principals and SPSs were torn between faithfully executing state policy demands, adapting those demands to suit the specific needs and conditions of their school, pursuing their professional autonomy, and addressing the interests of different micro-political actors. Third, principals and SPSs enjoyed a complicated working relationship at the micro-political (school) level in which they collaborated to fulfill their responsibilities and respond to school macro- and micro-political actors, while simultaneously competing for power over school leadership and citizenship education. Fourth, principals’ and SPSs’ leadership in school and citizenship education was shaped by inter-related factors, including diverse influences in a multi-leveled world, the integration of politics and education, the demands of macro- and micro-political actors, and personal factors. To interpret these findings, this study proposes a theoretical framework for understanding leadership in school and citizenship education in China as a political exercise in which school leaders actively use their influence and resources to lead and administer school and citizenship education, resist other school leaders’ (at times contradictory) administrative and political responsibilities, and interact with and mediate between the interests of various actors at the macro- and micro-political levels in response to political, economic and social needs. This theoretical framework is useful for understanding the complexity of school and citizenship education leadership, the micro-political relationship between Chinese principals and SPSs, and their dynamic and complex interactions with macro- and micro-political actors as they fulfill their intertwined political and administrative responsibilities in school leadership and citizenship education. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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In the past, non formal education in South Africa was committed to supporting the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) in opposition to apartheid. Such non-formal political education was concerned with education for democracy, that is, preparing people for democracy. Post 1994, adult education policy has focused on vocational training, which has shifted the focus away from education for social purpose. My concern was that democracy is a process and a system that constantly needs to be nurtured. This requires citizens that know their constitutional rights and responsibilities, and how to put them into action. In view of this, I decided to enquire what kind of education exists that aims to build civil society by promoting social justice and social reconstruction in the new democracy. My research critically investigated and analysed the political education programmes in three organisations in Cape Town, Western Cape: an NGO, a trade union congress and a social movement registered as an NGO. They focused on supporting the efforts of people who are unemployed (Alternative Information and Development Centre), shop stewards (Congress of South African Trade Unions) and HIV positive people (Treatment Action Campaign). These programmes aimed to develop an „active. and „critical thinking. new layer of „leadership.. This thesis explores how participants in three organisations understand their roles and identities as participants, activists and as citizens; the spaces and dynamics through which they engage and participate to express their interests, the learning that happens in these spaces through education and collective action, and the participants. relationship to issues of democracy, participation, rights and accountability. This qualitative study employed a case study methodology. It used observation, document review and semi-structured interviews to gather data. The study used concepts drawn from citizenship education and popular education to analyse data. The education offered by these three organisations was popular education in theory, but not always popular education in practice. The participants started: acquiring knowledge and skills for campaigning: learning about the constitution; seeing that the personal is political; becoming more active; showing signs of critical thinking; evidencing active emancipation; and evidencing signs of critical emancipation. Due to a compromised facilitation process, my recommendations are that the facilitators start: putting process in focus; avoiding banking education; making follow-ups of report backs a priority; putting a sexist free education environment in focus; eradicating intimidating facilitator behaviour; and developing practical material. My study has shown that critical citizenship education, which raises participants. awareness about injustice and oppression, can help them voice their most immediate felt needs through solidarity and action. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

The aim of this study was to explore how the newly acquired democratic dispensation in South Africa has affected the lives of secondary school learners. A literature review was undertaken on democracy, democratic citizenship and democratic government. An empirical investigation using a qualitative phenomenological approach examined the situation of secondary school learners using the various agencies of citizenship, namely the family, peer groups, the school and the community. Data was gathered by focus group interviews. It emerged from the examination of the collected data that democratic citizenship has improved the situation of secondary school learners regarding their interpersonal relationships with their families, peer groups, school-mates and other members of the community at large. However, the findings indicated that the democratic dispensation has not yet had a significant impact on the situation of secondary school learners at school and in their communities. / Educational Studies / M.Ed. (Philosophy of Education)

This thesis explores the difference between the vision of citizenship within education policy and the actual experiences and understandings of citizenship by Matric learners. Citizenship as envisioned in policy is shown to differ significantly to citizenship as understood and experienced by the interview participants. The citizenship envisioned in policy presents the goal of an equal and united citizenry whereas interview participants described citizenship as unequal and hierarchical. In particular, the racial hierarchy enforced under Apartheid was found to dominate the learners’ experiences of citizenship. Despite progressive legislation, distribution of opportunities remains heavily weighted in favour of those in high-income environments. Education policies that determine the overall structure of the South African education system were selected for analysis. These are the Constitution, the South African Schools Act and the National Education Policy Act. These policies are analysed and a vision of South African citizenship is described as possessing the following characteristics. A common, equal citizenship in a united and transformed South Africa. A citizenship encouraging and mandating critical engagement, dialogue, openness and transparency. A citizenship founded on quality of life for all and developing the potential of each individual. A citizenship in which both state and citizen are responsible and accountable and operate within the rule of law. A citizenship underpinned by human dignity and freedom and security of the person. A citizenship in which there is respect for difference and self-determination and in which ‘unity in diversity’ plays a key role. Matric learners were drawn from three different schools in an area of Kwazulu-Natal. Each of these schools represents a ‘type’ of school in South Africa: a former Model C school, an independent school and a school based in a rural or township area. The interviews aimed not only to understand citizenship from the perspective of these learners, but also to understand how experiences of citizenship varied depending on race, gender and class.

The purpose of this study is to develop and evaluate a functional home room citizenship program; to determine the changes to be made in one school year in the civic attitudes of a given group through an especially arranged curriculum.

The problem in this study is two-fold: (1) to determine the effects of a democratic curriculum upon the educational growth of first-grade children; and (2) to show that, through living the democratic life, the first-grade children developed behavior patterns that fitted them to live more wholesome lives.

During the last decade, Chilean high school students have exploded into the international spotlight for social organizing. They also have managed to achieve significant changes in some of the major educational policies governing their schools. In this work I examine how student political mobilization affects the ways in which these young people learn to be citizens inside and outside of public high schools. I also explore the implications of these processes for democratic citizenship education. Drawing on a year of ethnographic fieldwork in a public high school located in Chile’s capital city of Santiago, I analyze the main citizenship education practices in which these high school students engaged. I examine these practices as they occur within schools – namely, those related with the national curriculum for citizenship education and the varied ways in which it is implemented, appropriated and resisted – as well as in the streets – specifically, practices in which these young people engage in the course of their participation in student movements. I also focus on the different ways in which Chilean students make use of history in order to learn new ways of enacting their citizenship, exploring how these high schoolers’ relationships with the past and the future are significant for educational and political processes. This work reaches three main conclusions, all of them significant for researchers and educators interested in citizenship education. First, civic engagement takes varied forms and discourses of youth apathy obscure several of these forms as well as the material obstacles that hinder youth civic engagement. Second, high school students actively participate in the constant production of the state, not only as participants in social movements, but also in their everyday lives within their high schools. Third, that one of the main ways in which students participate of this production is by making use of the past and imagining the future while enacting their citizenship.

Informed by positionalities theories and narrative inquiry, this dissertation study explored how positionalities of immigrant social studies teachers in New York City influenced their interpretations of citizenship and their instructions of citizenship education. To do so, I used interviews, participants’ photographs and activity-works, and a self-reflexive researcher journal as aspects of my data-generating and data-gathering methods. My interpretations suggested that immigrant teachers experienced subjugation and discrimination as well as a sense of vulnerability due to their lack of legal citizenship, along with their minoritized racial/ethnic/linguistic/religious status in current racist, U.S.-centric, and nationalist regimes. However, instead of being passive recipients of such sociopolitical forces, these teachers took agency and created their own ways to actively influence, change, and subvert their minoritized subject positions through their transnational form of activities and attachment to their home country as well as the affinity, commitments, and sense of belonging they forged in local school communities in the United States. The complicated positionalities of these immigrant teachers further allowed them to imagine and practice multiple and alternative concepts of citizenship education that are more relevant to their students from minoritized backgrounds. By complicating essential, static, and fixed notions of immigrant teachers’ experiences and challenging dominant and normative modes of juridical notions of and national belonging in citizenship discourses through these immigrant teachers’ narrativized experiences, this study offers implications for social studies educators, citizenship scholarship, and teacher education policies and practices.

"This experimental study is an effort to determine whether or not purposive effort on the part of the school and parents to develop desirable democratic attitudes and attributes in the first grade will result in more progress along these lines than allowing the development of these characteristics to be an un-sought-for by-product of the school program"--Introduction. / "August, 1953." / Typescript. / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fullfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-76).