This dissertation examines the role of education in the formation of the Singapore developmental state, through a historical study of education for citizenship in Singapore (1955-2004), in which I explore the interconnections between changes in history, civics and social studies curricula, and the politics of nation-building. Building on existing scholarship on education and state formation, the dissertation goes beyond the conventional notion of seeing education as providing the skilled workforce for the economy, to mapping out cultural and ideological dimensions of the role of education in the developmental state. The story of state formation through citizenship education in Singapore is essentially the history of how Singapore’s developmental state managed crises (imagined, real or engineered), and how changes in history, civics and social studies curricula, served to legitimize the state, through educating and moulding the desired “good citizen” in the interest of nation building. Underpinning these changes has been the state’s use of cultural constructs such as Confucianism and Asian values to shore up its legitimacy. State formation in Singapore has been very successful, as evidenced by its economic prosperity and education has played a key role in this success. However, the “economic growth at all costs” ethos comes, arguably, at a price – the potential loss of zeitgeist, or the loss of the “World-Soul”. Nation building in the sense of fostering a sense of rootedness and belonging to the country in its citizenry – the “World-Soul” – had to be relegated to the backburner in the relentless pursuit of economic development, in order to sustain and legitimize the developmental state. By harnessing the educational sphere for its economic growth objectives through the discourse of crisis, the developmental state gained political legitimacy in the eyes of a citizenry increasingly accustomed to educational mobility and material wealth, even if at the expense of political freedoms.

Today's increasingly interconnected world creates new challenges related to the use and understanding of the concept of citizenship. The idea of a global citizenship is not new; however, in recent years there has been an evolution of increasing research leading to the expansion of interest with regard to the exploration of the concept and how it could be implemented in practice. This study attempts to deepen the understanding of the qualitatively different ways of perceiving this concept amongst a number of Indian and Nepalese young adults. The study is based on a phenomenographic research approach, where the data material was collected through semi-structured interviews. The results of the study show that global citizenship can be perceived as being related to equality, cultural diversity, global responsibility, global communication and cosmopolitan governance. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that the young adults perceive themselves either only as national citizens, or as both national and global citizens. Finally, the respondents believe that formal education can contribute to the promotion of global citizenship by including the concept in the educational curriculum and by encouraging cultural exchange. The role of formal education in promoting global citizenship is also perceived to be unclear due to terminological confusion.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Catholic University of America, 1942. / Bibliography: p. 172-186.

The thesis explores the plausibility of grounding citizenship education in a plural moral philosophical perspective without the danger of relativism. This is meant to enrich and allow citizenship education to reach its full potential of developing responsible and participatory citizens. Most societies require education to develop responsible citizens who have a questioning attitude as well as willing to contribute to the general welfare of society and the environment. However, citizenship education often fails to reach its full potential because it is theorised on a single moral philosophical perspective such as deontic rights. To date there has been little intellectual engagement in the research literature on citizenship education with the question of whether it might be possible, let alone valuable to have a citizenship education underpinned by a plural moral philosophical perspective. Drawing from literature in moral philosophy and education, the study follows a philosophical approach to analyse a conceptual framework which includes deontological ethics, virtue ethics, care ethics, utilitarian ethics and the capabilities approach. It is argued that teachers may draw from a plural moral philosophical perspective on citizenship education so that we do not only develop citizens with rights, who participate in making and obeying laws, but citizens who are motivated to participate for the right reasons, at the right time and for the right motive, and, at the same time are sympathetic to the plight of others and willing to facilitate the capabilities of others. In particular, virtue ethics and care ethics are essential for personal (moral) and social dimension of citizenship education while deontological ethics and the capabilities approach contribute towards the political dimension. It is also proposed that teacher education should include moral philosophy as well as the reading of literature in order to promote a broad conception of education which enables teachers to draw from a plural moral philosophical perspective in teaching citizenship education as a theme across the curriculum.

L'éducation à la citoyenneté et la transmission par l'école des valeurs essentielles au maintien de la cohésion sociale et politique sont des questions socialement vives dans le contexte de crise qui caractérise, dit-on, la société française. En quoi les interactions verbales en contexte didactique participent-elles de cette entreprise ? Pour répondre à cette problématique, nous avons construit un corpus constitué de la transcription de huit séances menées dans des classes de cycle 3 du sud est de la France, que nous analyserons en mobilisant des outils d’investigation pluriels, fédérés par l’engagement dans une démarche sociolinguistique. Il s’agira de montrer comment les interactions verbales, en permettant notamment la co-construction des objets du sens, la régulation des conflits, la rencontre de l’altérité, ou encore la conscientisation de la pluralité et de la variation, pourraient favoriser la formation des citoyens de demain. / Delivering citizenship education and pass down at school values that are essential to uphold social and political cohesion are burning issues in the French society, especially in these times of crisis. In what way do verbal interactions occurring in didactic context participate in this undertaking? To answer this issue, we put together a corpus made up of the transcripts of eight lessons observed in 3rd cycle classes located in south east of France. These data will be analysed with pluralist tools, united by a sociolinguistic approach. We aim to show how verbal interactions contribute to shape citizens, particularly by allowing co-construction of meaning, conflict regulation, otherness encounter, as well as plurality and variation awareness-raising.

In September 2002 citizenship education became a compulsory element of the secondary school curriculum in England. This policy development launches new interest in the spatial politics of childhood and youth. With increased focus on teenage apathy and declining civic engagement, citizenship education centres upon creating future responsible citizens. Using questionnaire surveys, group discussions, photography, diary completion, as well as more innovative techniques such as a teenage-centred radio phone-in discussion and web-based media, this thesis focuses on a case study of 600 teenagers, aged thirteen to sixteen, living in a variety of rural communities in an area of Southern England. Within many representations of rurality, teenagers are situated between a 'natural, innocent childhood' in idyllic, close-knit communities and threatening and 'out-of place' youths. Such representations foster complex experiences of citizenship. This study, therefore, sets about examining themes of socio-spatial exclusion and political engagement. For some, the deficit of meaningful spaces of citizenship results in frustrated relations with key decision-makers. Others are engaged in their own practices of citizenship, devising creative ways in which to carve out and reconstruct everyday spaces and identities. Contributing to new geographical knowledge(s), this thesis concludes by calling for schools and (rural) communities to support and respect teenagers' own interests, needs, aspirations and current acts of citizenship in their own diverse spaces. Furthermore, it is argued that teenagers, as 'citizen s-i n-th e-p resent' should be provided with the opportunity to engage meaningfully with decision-makers as an integral facet of the political mainstream.

Magister Educationis (Adult Learning and Global Change) - MEd(AL) / This study seeks to determine to what extent undergraduate students in a research university in South Africa are involved in activities that contribute to citizenship education. The research design involves a case study at the University of Cape Town (UCT) whereby an electronic survey, called the Student Experience at the Research University-Africa (SERU) survey, was indigenised to fit the South African context and it was conducted at UCT. The survey had a census design and all undergraduate students at the university were invited to participate. At the end of 2012 a sample of 861 surveys were analyzed using SPSS to determine the activities students were involved in during the research period.

Cette thèse s’intéresse à la possible contribution de l’étude des questions socioscientifiques (QSSs) à une Éducation Citoyenne (EC). L'EC est affichée comme l’enjeu éducatif des QSSs par la recherche en éducation aux sciences ainsi que par le curriculum du secondaire Français à travers l’enseignement des thèmes de convergence communs à plusieurs disciplines. Or le concept de citoyenneté est un concept dynamique et mouvant. En effet, le citoyen se présente dans une pluralité de profils au regard de la recherche en socio-politique et la visée d’EC n’est pas consensuelle dans le champ de recherche sur les QSSs quant au citoyen à construire. Notre travail de recherche pose alors la question de quel citoyen nous (au sens de société) voulons construire et quelle EC serait alors à privilégier. Si le projet est de construire un citoyen qui participe aux discussions et aux prises de décision en matière d’enjeux technoscientifiques dans le cadre d’une participation démocratique, orientation promue par certaines recherches sur les QSSs, alors il nous faut privilégier une EC émancipatrice et critique. C’est pourquoi, l’étude d’une QSS par le débat dans le cadre de la demande institutionnelle d’enseignement des thèmes de convergence nous a semblé une voie propice pour répondre à ce questionnement de possible contribution des QSSs à une EC critique. Nous positionnant dans cette orientation d’EC critique pour laquelle nous avons élaboré un modèle, nous avons construit une séquence pédagogique étayée par ce modèle et par le modèle de scolarisation des controverses de Albe (2007) dans une approche méthodologique des recherches « design-based ». Cette séquence est construite comme une conférence de citoyen pour des jeunes élèves de 11 à 12 ans. Ils ont alors été invités à s’exercer à une citoyenneté critique autour de recherches documentaires, d’un débat finalisé par une décision et d’ activités de formation à l’expertise documentaire, sur une question réelle d’installation de l’Internet dans leur établissement par le système Wi-Fi ou le système filaire. L’analyse des différentes données écrites ou orales a été effectuée dans le cadre analytique de notre modèle d’EC critique. Nous avons eu recours à la dimension épistémologique du modèle de Albe (2007) pour déterminer quels sont les savoirs que les élèves mobilisent lors de ce dispositif de débat. Pour déterminer comment les élèves expertisent l’information, nous avons eu recours aux travaux de Kolstø (2001) et de Klosterman et Sadler (2008). L’argumentation des élèves a été analysée suivant l’interaction argumentative développée par Plantin (1995, 2000). L’analyse de la prise de décision a été conduite en référence aux travaux de Ratcliffe (1999). Nous avons établi à travers nos analyses que les élèves mobilisent de façon importante des savoirs scolaires relatifs à la question des ondes Wi-Fi, qu’ils ont des argumentations construites, qu’ils évaluent peu les sources des documents mais qu’ils évaluent leur contenu. L’analyse de la prise de décision a montré différents niveaux de complexité dans le choix des critères. Par ailleurs, des modalités de prise de décision ont été construites et proposées par les élèves dans lesquelles les enjeux sanitaires et économiques liés à la question des ondes Wi-Fi ont été pris en compte. Notre étude montre que l’étude d’une QSS peut engager des jeunes élèves dans l’exercice d’une EC critique qui vise à construire un citoyen capable de participer aux discussions et aux prises de décisions en matière de QSSs. / This thesis focuses on a potential contribution of the study of socioscientific issues (SSIs) in school context to a Citizenship Education (CE). The CE is the declared aim of the SSI research movement. It is also the one of the French middle school curriculum, promoted through “convergence topics” teaching which are common to several academic subjects. But the concept of citizenship is a dynamic and moving concept. The socio-political research field highlights a plurality of citizen profiles. Also, regarding the citizen building, the SSI research movement is not consensual about the meaning of CE. Our research raises the question of what kind of citizen, we (according to society) want to build and what EC should be promoted. If the project is to build a citizen who participates in debate and decision-making about technoscientific issues through democratic participation, view also promoted by some researchers, then we need to focus on an emancipatory and critical CE. Therefore, the SSI study using debate through “convergence topics” teaching seems to be a good way to explore this potential contribution of the SSIs studies to a critical CE. Promoting a critical CE, for which a model has been build, we have developed a educative design, supported by this model and Albe’s model (2007) in the methodological approach of the design-based research. This design has been built such as a citizen conference for 11-12 years old students. They were asked to practice a critical citizenship through literature search, a debate finalized by a decision and an activity around the evaluation of the selected information in the web. They have to work on a real situation: the installation of an Internet connection in their school by the wireless system using waves or by the wire line system using cables. The various written or oral data were analysed in the framework of our model of critical CE. The epistemological dimension of Albe’s model (2007) was used to determine what knowledge were mobilized by the young students during the debate. To examine how students have evaluated the selected information, analytical tools were developed from Kolstø (2001) and Klosterman and Sadler (2008) researches. The student argumentation was analysed according to the argumentative interaction theory (Plantin, 1995, 2000). The decision-making analysis was conducted in reference to Ratcliffe (1999) studies. The different analyses show that students have mobilized a lot of academic knowledge related to the waves and built their argumentation. The sources of the different documents haven’t been evaluated while their content has. The decision-making analysis has shown different levels of complexity in the criteria choice. In addition, several decision-making processes have been proposed and developed by the students. The health and economical aspects related to the waves issues were considered. Our study shows that a QSS study can engage young students to express a critical EC in practice, which aims to enable citizens to participate in discussions and decisions regarding the QSSs.

EVC , Martina. Ob anské postoje a participace ák v eské republice. Praha, 2011. 120 s. Diplomová práce (Mgr.) Univerzita Karlova, Fakulta sociálních v d, Institut sociologických studií. Katedra sociologie. Vedoucí diplomové práce PhDr. Ing. Petr Soukup. Abstract This thesis focuses on civic participation of Czech pupils in the realm of civil society. The main task is to find out which factors influence civic attitudes and engagement of youth in current society. There has been an increased interest in concept of civil society since the fall of Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe with respect to political, economic and social changes. These changes resulted in a need to rethink the content of civic and citizenship education. Firstly the author describes civil society as a context for civic participation with special emphasis on Czech civil society and then she deals with the theory of political socialization, which helps her to identify the key determinants of civic engagement. Family, school, peer groups and media are seen as the main agents of this socialization. Using data from the International Civic and Citizenship study the author concludes that context of schools and classrooms and motivation are the most important direct factors in civic engagement.

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