Journal of Social Science Education (JSSE - Universität Bielefeld)
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What does Political Participation Mean to Spanish Students?
Get PDFThis article explores how a group of Spanish students (aged 11–19) understand the meaning of ‘political participation’ in society and discusses the implications of their views for debates and practices in citizenship education. The ways in which these students (n=112) describe and interpret political participation are analysed using an in-depth and interpretative approach employing open questionnaires and interviews. The results suggest that most students value political participation in positive terms and that ‘activist’ students have a more optimistic view of the effectiveness of participation and especially of new forms of participation such as protests
Knowledge and the Experience of Women Living Underground During the Portuguese Dictatorship
Get PDFThis paper assumes that formative processes are not limited to the school context or model but that other life contexts and experiences, even if not intentionally, have educational effects. These informal formative contexts and experiences can play a key role individual´s development, resulting not only in superficial changes, but also in deep changes in terms of subjectivity and identity. Our research involves clandestine militants of the Portuguese Communist Party during the dictatorship, and explores the type of knowledge acquired during their hiding experience (1940-1974) that allowed them to resist and survive over long periods. As our focus is the experience of women, based on narrative discourses of women (or about them) we will consider the role and status of women in hiding. The discourses were collected through several published autobiographical narratives and mainly interviews where we tried to identify the learning processes, the people seen as significant for knowledge acquisition, and also how knowing, knowing how to do and knowing how to be were constructed during living in hiding
What to Change – How to Have Influence? Children’s Ideas About Exercising Power and Participating
Get PDFInterest in children’s voice in society has been increasing gradually. This implies both the creation of new channels for participation, and also in the intensification of the research on children’s citizenship. This article asks what ideas twelve-year-old children have about using power and about their own opportunities of having influence in their schools. The study is based on qualitative questionnaires, in which the respondents were asked questions about how they would use power to make improvements in different spheres, starting from their classroom and ending up to the world. The questionnaire also asked about their experience of agency in schools. According to the responses, the children’s suggestions for changes were focused on the physical environment. As to their class and school, it was the informal level of the school that was important. In the global level, the children wished that the world would be safe. As to their agency in school, they mainly depended on adults who organize students’ participation
Speaking of Belonging: Learning to be “Good Citizens” in the Context of Voluntary Language Coaching Projects in Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Get PDFThis article explores citizenship education for adult immigrants through informal language education in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Based on data collected over thirteen months of ethnographic research among volunteer Dutch language coaches in Amsterdam, the primary methods used in this study were in-depth semi-structured interviews and participant observation. While the primary focus of this article is on the ways in which informal educational settings contribute to processes of adult citizenship education, this paper also underscores some of the perceived barriers to integration faced by adult immigrants in the Netherlands. Adopting a Foucauldian theoretical approach to governmentality, this paper considers how volunteer Dutch language coaches both reproduce and challenge contemporary discourses around citizenship and belonging in Dutch society. Experiences and expressions of citizenship among volunteer Dutch language coaches reveal how entangled discourses of cultural difference and neoliberal “active” citizenship shape state and everyday notions of good citizenship practice and integration
“A Good Citizen is What You’ll Be”: Educating Khmer Youth for Citizenship in a United States Migrant Education Program
Get PDFCitizenship education is a complex and multidimensional construct. This article adds to the discussion of citizenship education by examining, ethnographically the ways the “vision” of a US Migrant Education Program is circulated through the program’s discourse practices to Khmer American children of migrant agricultural workers. The article does not discuss the formal legal status of citizenship, but the program coordinators’ beliefs about the skills and dispositions needed for the Khmer youth to become “good citizens.” Within the coordinators’ visions, the fixing of the youth’s perceived deficiencies drive the curriculum, and as such the full participation of the youth as active citizens is not achieved
