This thesis takes as its title, Citizenship and Democracy in Further and Adult Education. Currently, citizenship and democracy in English education is focused almost exclusively on the school sector. There is very little in the educational or philosophical literature that deals with citizenship or democracy from the perspective of either further or adult education. I have used key texts from political philosophy to identify the theoretical underpinnings necessary to citizenship education and deliberative democracy in the post-compulsory sector. Alasdair Maclntyre's After Virtue (1981) offers important historical arguments for the use of social roles regarding citizenship within specific communities. Chantal Mouffe's The Return of the Political (1993) portrays active citizenship as a site of conflict between groups. I use Macintyre and Mouffe to inform the different contexts around citizenship in further and adult education. Further and adult education broadly consist of two rich historical traditions - the 'apprenticeship' tradition in further education and the 'self-help' tradition in adult education. I make the case that embedding citizenship education within vocational programmes in further education offers a realistic method of broadening the vocational curriculum. Citizenship within vocational education in England is compared with Germany and France. Adult education's heritage of students creating their own programmes as a form of empowerment is an appropriate model for promoting citizenship education. Citizenship education needs to have democratic educational institutions to enable students to participate as citizens inside and outside of the classroom. Deliberative democracy, in the form of Joshua Cohen's 'ideal deliberative procedure' (see Cohen in Matravers and Pike 2003), offers an effective method of decision making based on fairness and equality that educational institutions could adopt to ensure their procedures are democratic and participatory. The connection between citizenship education and democratic educational structures is an inextricable one. This is the central theme of my thesis.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:572958 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Hopkins, Neil |
| Publisher | University College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10020662/ |
Page generated in 0.0017 seconds