Education for Citizenship

The Routledge Handbook of Neoliberalism seeks to offer a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon of neoliberalism by examining the range of ways that it has been theorized, promoted, critiqued, and put into practice in a variety of geographical locations and institutional frameworks. Neoliberalism is easily one of the most powerful discourses to emerge within the social sciences in the last two decades, and the number of scholars who write about this dynamic and unfolding process of socio-spatial transformation is astonishing. Even more surprising though is that there has, until now, not been an attempt to provide a wide-ranging volume that engages with the multiple registers in which neoliberalism has evolved. The Handbook of Neoliberalism accordingly serves as an essential guide to this vast intellectual landscape. With proposed contributions from over 50 leading authors, the Handbook of Neoliberalism will offer a systematic overview of neoliberalism’s origins, political implications, social tensions, spaces, natures and environments, and aftermaths in addressing ongoing and emerging debates. Numerous books have been published on neoliberalism, including important edited volumes, but none of these contributions have attempted to bring the diverse scope and wide-ranging coverage that we plan to incorporate here. Most of the edited volumes and monographs on neoliberalism that have been published to date have a very specific thematic focus, either on particular empirical case studies, or alternatively attempt to wrestle with a specific theoretical concern. In contrast, the Routledge Handbook of Neoliberalism aims to provide the first comprehensive overview of the field.

With authors working at institutions around the world, the Handbook of Neoliberalism will offer a thorough examination of how neoliberalism is understood by social scientists working from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Our goal is to advance the established and emergent debates in a field that has grown exponentially over the past two decades, coinciding with the meteoric rise of neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology, state form, policy and program, and governmentality. In short, the Handbook of Neoliberalism will intervene by both outlining how theorizations of neoliberalism have evolved and by exploring new research agendas that we hope will inform policy making and activism. The Handbook of Neoliberalism will include a substantive introductory chapter and seven main thematic sections. By presenting a comprehensive examination of the field, this edited volume will serve as an invaluable resource for undergraduates, graduate students, and professional scholars alike. We envision the book as both a teaching guide and a reference for human geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, heterodox economists, and others working on questions of neoliberalism and its multifarious effects.

(FULL TEXT: https://rdcu.be/PqHA)

Civic education, i.e. activities aimed to teach citizens of recipient countries basic values, knowledge, and skills relating to democracy, has become a popular form of promoting democracy by NGOs from Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. This paper examines whether democracy promotion programmes, such as civic education, implemented by NGOs from Central and Eastern European countries towards young people in former post-communist countries affect participants’ civic engagement and political participation. We test the impact of one of the civic education programmes on young people from Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, and the Russian Federation. The analysis of the programme and the results of the survey conducted among the civic education programme’s former participants from 2004 to 2014 contribute to a better understanding how youth participation can be built through mechanism of knowledge created by outside actors. The paper reveals some potential of programmes focused on educating young people in diffusing democratic ideas and behaviour in the region; however, it also shows the limitations of methodology used to evaluate the impact of democracy promotion efforts.

Commonly conceived, sustainable development is concerned with social and economic equity and maintenance of ecological stability for future generations. The Brundtland Report addresses the ethical principles of intragenerational and intergenerational equity as fundamental pillars of sustainable development. This equity is often defined in economic terms, involving fair distribution of natural resources, and in practice dependent on the workings of a neoliberal market economy. Simultaneously, it is assumed that democratic learning enables students to be critically rational and ethical agents able to make informed choices in regard to sustainability challenges. This article questions whether the benefits of sustainable development should be meant for humans only, and whether concern for environmental sustainability should be limited to the environment's ability to accommodate social and economic equity. It is argued that the dominant form of pluralism employed within education is essentially anthropocentric, prioritizing social justice over interests of more-than-humans. This article will argue for a bolder move in the direction of inclusive pluralism through eco-representation and reinstatement of education for nature.

Sant, E., Lewis, S., Delgado, S., & Ross, E. W.,  (2018). Justice and global citizenship education. In I. Davies, L-C Ho, D. Kiwan, C. Peck, A. Peterson, E. Sant &  Y. Waghid (Eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of Global Citizenship and Education (pp. 227-243). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

In this chapter, we examine justice and global citizenship. More precisely, we discuss how globalization can shed some light to discussions on universal justice and how different approaches to justice can inform more democratic approaches to global citizenship education. We examine three different discourse on justice: economic, recognition and democratic justice. For each discourse, we outline the conceptual underpinnings and we discuss the key implications for global citizenship education. We conclude by examining points of encounter that might help us to identify more justice-oriented practices for global citizenship and education.

Over the past two decades, various policy initiatives have been proposed to solve the perceived problem of youth disengagement from politics. This article examines the impact of one such policy initiative – namely the introduction of activities that seek to teach ‘education through citizenship’ at school. In short, ‘education through citizenship’ involves formal and informal learning opportunities that enable students to acquire civic skills and knowledge through hands-on experiences. School councils, debate teams and/ or mock elections are some of the most common ‘education through citizenship’ activities in schools in England, and drawing on data from the Citizenship Education Longitudinal Study (CELS) in England, this article shows that such activities can indeed have an effect, not just in the short-term (as previous studies in England have shown), but also in the medium-term (by encouraging political engagement once the students have left the confines of the school). This article thus argues that school activities can have a lasting and independent impact on youth political engagement, and provides support for the continuation of education through citizenship, and not just about citizenship.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) sets agreed minimum standards to secure children’s rights in education, as in other areas of social policy. States Parties to the Convention ‘undertake to make the principles and provisions of the Convention widely known, by appropriate and active means, to adults and children alike’ (Article 42). Schools clearly have a key role to play in this process of dissemination. They can do this not only by educating children about their rights, as part of the formal school curriculum, but also by establishing themselves as model human rights communities, which reflect the principles of the Convention and of other key human rights instruments. Neither of these approaches is simple. for example, Osler
and Starkey 1996).  Here, we focus on ways in which those
responsible for the management of schools, in any area of the world, might create learning communities which prepare their pupils for ‘responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of
sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin’ (Article 29.d). If they fail to do this, any messages on children’s human rights presented through the formal curriculum risk being immediately contradicted by the messages transmitted through the structures and organisational practices of the school, the so-called hidden
curriculum.

Religion has become a prominent issue in times of pluralism and in relation to citizenship in school and in society. As religious education (RE) is assigned to be one of the main school subject where issues of what religion is are to be raised, RE teachers’ conceptualizations of religion are of vital concern to investigate. In this article, RE teachers’ descriptions of ‘religion’ are scrutinized and analysed in terms of implications for citizenship with special regard to the role of RE. Three vital conceptions of religion emerge in teachers’ descriptions. First, religion is mainly individual or private, secondly, it denotes ethical guidance, and thirdly, it relates to sociocultural systems for thinking. Taken together, these conceptualizations share two characteristics about religion: religion as being individual-centred and private, and religion as being mind oriented. Out of this analysis, we discuss the role of religion and RE in contemporary liberal democratic life in society. The discussion is concluded by addressing two key things; the importance of the RE teacher as a curriculum maker, and the importance of religion and RE as active interventions in today’s contemporary discussion about pluralism in liberal democratic societies.