Journal of Social Science Education (JSSE - Universität Bielefeld)
Not a member yet
830 research outputs found
Sort by
„With tears upon our eyes?“: Commemorations of Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War in the School Practice in the Soviet Union and Russia
Get PDFPurpose: This article is devoted to the description and comparative analysis of the commemorations of Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War in the practice of Soviet and Russian school education, based on the example of the two regions of Central Russia (Tambov and Lipetsk region). The purpose of the article is to study the features of the transformation of the content and forms of organization of festive events and rituals of the holiday at the level of the school system.
Design/Methodology/Approach: The article was prepared on the basis of a wide range of the sources: educational and methodological materials, materials of social networks and school websites, legislative acts and normative documents of school institutions connected with patriotic education, and also qualitative observations of the authors with the support of several visual materials.
Findings: The analysis has shown that the activation of the patriotic rhetoric in modern Russia has transformed Victory Day into a central element of the official politics of memory, one of the most important resources of which is the system of school education and upbringing. At the same time, while preserving most of the external attributes and Soviet symbols of the holiday, the commemorative practices and rituals of celebrating Victory Day in the Russian school differ significantly from the Soviet era. This is due both to demographic and political causes, and to the growing influence of local practices of family memory. The performativity, temporal inversion, repressive nature of some events are typical of some commemorations of Victory Day in modern Russian school
Country Report: Civic and Citizenship Education in Polish School
Get PDFPurpose: The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the shape of current civic education in Polish schools.
Methodology: The results of the analysis presented in this article are based on the following research question: What shape of civic education can be reconstructed on the basis of the researched sources? The method of collecting data is finding secondary sources and documents. The method of analysing data is content analysis. The research sample includes legal act regarding education law, new school core curricula that have been implemented since 2017/2018 school year and publications showing results of research on civic education in Poland.
Findings: Within the framework of civic education in Polish schools, emphasis was placed on knowledge and on adaptive and reconstructive function of schools. Deficiencies in terms of skills and attitudes assumed in the core curricula indicate that neither has there been an establishment of active citizenship, nor has any emphasis been placed on developing attitudes. Results of the research indicates that legal regulation regarding social bodies such student self-government fail to give these authorities significant powers and opportunities for the experience of democracy by students are very limited. Civic education in Polish schools is not learning in democracy, it is learning about democracy
Developing cognitive complexity and value pluralism within prevention curricula:: An empirical assessment of the Living Well with Difference course for secondary schools in England
Get PDFPurpose: To promote gains in cognitive complexity (measured by integrative complexity, IC) associated with recognition of validity in others’ viewpoints/values, supporting peaceful conflict reduction.
Design: Assessment of effectiveness of Living Well with Difference (LWWD) course designed to promote critical thinking about contested social issues. LWWD was delivered to 199 secondary school students in England, comprising eight hours of sessions in curriculum time.
Findings: Results using Paragraph Completion Tests showed that IC increased in the intervention condition in comparison to the smaller control condition IC gains. Resilience scores did not show significant gain, although it correlated moderately with IC gain.
Research Limitations: Unequal numbers of control: intervention groups, non-random school sample, and a moderate amount of missing data are potential limitations.
Practical Implications: The discussion explores the possible contribution that LWWD can make to citizenship education and ‘deep’ critical thinking that engages with emo-tions and values, complementing prevention curricula in the light of EU recommendations
“You need to consider whether it is worth reaching for more radical measures“: : Student Participation in the Discourse of Polish Citizenship Education textbooks for upper secondary school
No full textPurpose: This paper aims to reconstruct the discoursive shape of student participation on the base of Polish school textbooks for citizenship education.
Methodology: The main research question is: What image of student participation can be reconstructed by analyzing the texts of Polish citizenship education textbooks? The method of gathering data was finding secondary sources. The sample included all textbooks used to teach a basic program of civic education at the upper secondary level of education. The applied method of analysis comes from the group of approaches defined as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The author adopted the approach represented by Ruth Wodak and Martin Reisigl.
Findings: Through discursive exclusion and numerous mitigating cases, students become passive objects of adult policy and all forms of their agency are diminished and deprived of features that determine their strength
Justification and Critique of Educational Reforms in Austria: How Teachers and Head Teachers (Re-)Frame New Governance
Get PDFPurpose: Against the backdrop of a new governance regime of schools in Austria, which combines policies of decentralisation and school autonomy with an accountability program of standardised outcome control, this article explores how the so called “agents of change” – teachers and headteachers – take up these ideas and corresponding governance instruments and frame them on grounds of moral considerations. The aim is to present a theoretical framework for analysing – at the individual level – moments of critical evaluation and affirmative justification of more general political actions as well as of every day’s work practices.Approach: Drawing on the concept of orders of justification and the pragmatist theory of conventions, a qualitative, interview-study with 15 teachers and head teachers in Austrian middle schools was conducted with the intention to discover a repertoire of educational conventions applied by the actors to criticise or justify reform-based decisions, expectations and subjective claims to work.Findings: Besides presenting seven conventions, the article puts a special focus on arguments and corresponding conventions that – on one hand – characterise an economic perspective on schools and education (the market, industrial and flexible convention) and are thus important in deciding whether the new education governance regime is supported by an ‘economised’ constellation of frames that teachers and head teachers use to interpret their actions as well as others. One the other hand, the role of the civic convention receives special attention in relation to the aforementioned ones to include a further aspect into the diagnosis of an economisation of educational practices
Creating Democratic Class Rooms in Asian Contexts: The Influences of Individual and School Level Factors on Open Classroom Climate
Get PDFPurpose: Literature indicates that open classroom climate (OCC) is a positive influence on civic outcomes. Few studies have explored factors that appear to facilitate OCC. Most research on OCC has focused on Western countries. The emphasis has been on individual student characteristics related to OCC with little attention made to school level effects. The purpose of the present study was to investigate both individual and school level influences on OCC using Asian student samples.Methodology: Data were drawn from the five Asian societies that participated in the 2009 International Civics and Citizenship Education Study. Multilevel regression analysis was used to test individual and school level relationships in the data. Findings: There were significant differences among the five societies with regard to student perceptions of OCC. At the individual level, results showed the importance of good student-teacher relationships, students’ discussion experiences outside school, and civic participating at school for promoting OCC. Civic knowledge and self-efficacy were positively related to OCC in four Asian societies. The roles of school level predictors differed from society to society, some predictors even working in the opposite direction. Different cultural contexts, local policies, and school system characteristics might account for these differences
Youth Political Engagement in Australia and the United States: Student Councils and Volunteer Organizations as Communities of Practice
Get PDFPurpose: Lave and Wenger’s Communities of Practice is presented as a conceptual framework for examining extracurricular activities as a part of democratic schools’ contribution to students’ civic engagement. Data from the IEA Civic Education Study is analyzed to investigate research questions on the association between participation in two civic communities of practice (student council and volunteer organizations) and two types of expected adult political participation as well as trust in political institutions in Australia and the United States.Method/Approach: The methodology examined data from students in nationally representative samples of schools that surveyed 14-year-olds in 1999. This was the most recent large scale study of civic education in which these two countries participated. Analysis of variance examined main effects and statistical interactions, especially by gender.Findings: Findings were that in both countries, participation in the two civic communities of practice was associated with higher levels of trust in political institutions and greater expectations to become an informed voter and an active citizen. The results also suggest that male and female students in the United States experience these communities of practice in different ways. Practical advantages to encouraging democratic communities of practice are important to the experience of democracy at school
Learning About the European Union in Times of Crisis: Portuguese Textbooks’ Normative Visions of European Citizenship
Get PDFPurpose: To investigate how EU related contents are represented in Portuguese upper secondary school textbooks of History and English as a Foreign Language (EFL).Design/methodology/approach: The study performs a textbook analysis on two History textbooks and three EFL textbooks to explore if and how EU related topics are addressed. The methodological approach was mainly qualitative, based on a content analysis of the textbooks, but also includes some quantitative data (e.g., number of paragraphs) to determine the importance given to European topics in each of the selected school subjects.Findings: EFL textbooks have a residual approach to EU topics that is mainly focused in students’ mobility. History textbooks, while containing a significant amount of information about the EU, present it mainly in a non-confrontational perspective and do not prioritize the development of students’ critical thinking about the EU. Our data also points to a predominance of national level citizenship related content, with European citizenship being briefly and normatively presented to the students.Research limitations/implications: EFL is attended by almost 100% of students in the academic track of secondary education, but History is a curricular subject only available to 25-30% of the students; as such, our findings refer to a specific group.Practical implications: Textbooks should include more information about the actual problems and challenges of the EU to foster the development of students’ critical thinking about the EU