Lawy RS & Biesta GJJ (2006) Citizenshipaspractice The Educational

lawy, r.s. & biesta, g.j.j. (2006). citizenship-as-practice: the educational implications of an inclusive and relational understanding of cit

Lawy, R.S. & Biesta, G.J.J. (2006). Citizenship-as-practice: the
educational implications of an inclusive and relational understanding
of citizenship. British Journal of Educational Studies 54(1), 34-50.
CITIZENSHIP-AS-PRACTICE: THE EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF AN INCLUSIVE
AND RELATIONAL UNDERSTANDING OF CITIZENSHIP
ABSTRACT: Over the last few years there has been a renewed interest in
questions of citizenship and in particular its relation to young
people. This has been allied to an associated educational discourse
where the emphasis has been upon questions concerned with ‘outcome’
rather than with ‘process’ – with the curriculum and methods of
teaching rather than questions of understanding and learning. This
paper seeks to describe and illuminate the linkages within and between
these related discourses. It advocates an inclusive and relational
view of citizenship-as-practice within a distinctive socio-economic
and political and cultural milieu. Citizenship-as-practice is closely
interwoven with the identifications of young people and in the
relations between all the distinctive and different dimensions of
their lives. An appropriate educational programme would respect the
claim to citizenship status of everyone in society, including children
and young people. It would work together with young people rather than
on young people, and recognise that it is the actual practices of
citizenship, and the ways in which these practices transform over time
that are educationally significant.
======================================================================
Keywords: Citizenship, citizenship education, inclusive, relational ,
1. INTRODUCTION
Citizenship is a status bestowed on all those who are full members of
a community. All those who possess the status are equal with respect
to the rights and duties with which the status is endowed. There is no
universal principle that determines what those rights and duties shall
be, but societies in which citizenship is a developing institution
create an image of ideal citizenship against which achievement can be
measured and towards which aspiration can be measured.
(Marshall, 1950, pp. 28-29)
Writing in the aftermath of the Second World War, Marshall’s major
achievement was to articulate a coherent description and analysis of
citizenship, founded upon clear and cogent view about what it means to
be a citizen. Crucially, his typology was grounded within a historical
framework involving three elements that were developed in successive
centuries. The civil component, which he traces through legislation
that developed largely in the eighteenth century (between 1688 and
1832), includes the right of freedom of speech, the right to justice
and the right to own property. Political rights, including the right
to vote and to stand for political office, followed in the nineteenth
century and early twentieth century when the franchise was extended to
include the majority of the adult population. The final component,
social rights, developed mainly in the twentieth century. Each of
these three components corresponded to a particular set of
institutions – civil rights to the court system, political rights to
the institutions of local government and parliament, and social rights
to the welfare state (which includes such provisions as social
security, health care and education).
Marshall believed that increasing wealth combined with the expansion
of the welfare state would irrevocably ameliorate and cut across class
inequalities and allow for the expansion of social rights. He did not
consider citizenship and class inequality to be opposing principles
but ‘raised the question of whether modern citizenship had become a
condition of class inequality’ (Isin and Wood, 1999, p. 26). By so
doing he sought to tie ‘the growth of the institutions of citizenship
to the growth of capitalism’ (Hall et al., 1998, p. 303). One of his
principal claims was that ‘with the introduction of universal social
rights, citizenship would become a form of equalization in which
individuals gained a common identity that cut across class divisions’
(France, 1998, p. 98). Hence, the introduction of social rights would
render citizenship compatible with capitalism by universalising
identity and by civilising the impact of the market.
Whilst there has been disagreement about the detail of policy required
to achieve these ends there was, up until the 1970s, a general accord
amongst the three main political parties in Britain, that greater
equality could, and should be achieved
through the expansion of the welfare state. However, despite the
persuasive claims of this thesis, the social Keynesian revolution and
the accompanying post-war reconstruction and policy changes, has not
resulted in a fairer and more equal distribution of society’s
resources (Hutton, 1995). Although the expansion of welfare provision
has had some emollient effects on the market it has done little to
allay the inherent tensions and contradictions between the ‘principles
of equality that underpin democracy and the de facto inequalities of
wealth and income that characterize the capitalist market place’
(Turner, 2001, p. 190).
Citizenship in a changing world
Marshall’s essay was written during a time of great optimism, when
Britain had just emerged from a debilitating war in Europe in which
the British people had been drawn together in a common cause. Nascent
issues which were bubbling under the surface of society, such as those
relating to the position of women and the need to recruit foreign
labour to compensate for the labour shortfall, were yet to become
pressing issues. For the time being, Britain remained a quintessentially
male-dominated, able-bodied and a paternalistic society characterised
by an ‘absence of any understanding of ethnic and racial divisions’
(Turner, 2001, p. 191).
The character and complexion of citizens in the postmodern state has
undergone a profound and substantial transformation in the last 50
years (see van Steenbergen, 1994; Barbalet, 1988; Bulmer & Rees,
1996). These changes have included the opening up of national borders
and the globalisation of mass communications, technologies, production
and consumption. It has been a time when individuals in the developed
world have become evermore conscious of their interconnectedness and
interdependence with people and cultures beyond their immediate ambit:
‘economic changes, technological innovation and globalization have
transformed the nature of work, war and the social relations of
production’ (Turner, 2001, p. 203). Despite all of these changes the
Marshallian discourse of citizenship has continued to cast a long
shadow over contemporary discussion about citizenship policy and
practice (see Roche 1992). Whilst it would be perhaps unfair to
describe Marshall as an apologist for this, his focus upon the
individual agency and his failure to consider the structural
constraints of the market and the possibility that the state may work
in the interest of one class or group of elites rather than function
as a neutral referee, was ‘naïve even in the context of 1950s Britain’
(Faulks, 1998, p. 44).
Rather than addressing fundamental questions about the contemporary
relevance of a concept that has been superseded by changes in the
national and global economy, and by the changing perceptions and
identifications of young people, a key concern of politicians and
policy-makers, particularly in the last two decades, has been to
fabricate policy that best inclines young people towards a set of
values and attitudes that are commensurate with a view of citizenship
forged in a different era. Having said this, there have been some
changes in the degree of emphasis that has been placed on different
aspects of policy and its presentation. For example, there has been a
more overt concern with the duties of citizenship as opposed to the
emphasis on rights; also a linguistic turn from the neo-liberal idea
of the consumer citizen, precedent in the 1980s and the 1990s, to a
‘third way’ (Giddens, 1998) approach, within a social and
communitarian attitude. Notwithstanding these changes, the emphasis
upon ‘universality’, and the corresponding ‘denial of difference and
diversity’ (Martin and Vincent, 1999, p. 235; see also, Säfstrom and
Biesta, 2001), which was undeniably part of the Marshallian
settlement, has remained a dominant theme within the discourse.
In this paper we claim that the notion of citizenship articulated in
official policy and practice discourse is no longer appropriate for
the 21st century. Central to this view has been an assumption that
citizens should act and behave in a particular way in order to achieve
their adult statuses. Hence, the conditional status of what we have
called citizenship-as-achievement has been linked to the language of
duty and responsibility, whether articulated in the passive and benign
form in the 1950s and 1960s or in its later more ‘active’
manifestation in the 1980s. Our claim is that
citizenship-as-achievement, represents only a narrow interpretation of
its meaning, and that the notion of citizenship-as-practice,
articulated as an inclusive and relational concept, provides a much
more robust framework for elucidating what it means to be a citizen.
Citizenship-as-practice not only encompasses problems and issues of
culture and identity, but draws these different dynamic aspects
together in a continuously shifting and changing world of difference .
In the next section we examine the two different conceptualisations of
citizenship that we have set out. We note that they are grounded in a
very different set of assumptions, and that their representation in
the educational policy and practice discourse has had a profound
impact on the legitimacy of different curriculum and policy
interventions and practices. In the penultimate section we consider
the educational policy agenda and framework and suggest an approach
that is tied to an understanding of citizenship-as-practice rather
than one that has for the most part, been seen as an exercise in
civics education and ‘good’ citizenship. In the final section we draw
together the main themes of the paper and draw some conclusions in
respect of citizenship and citizenship education.
2. TWO VIEWS OF CITIZENSHIP
Citizenship-as-achievement
Citizenship-as-achievement is founded upon an assumption that
citizenship is a status that individuals can achieve. It assumes a
largely singular identification of the necessary conditions of that
status, and is tied to a developmental trajectory and a commensurate
set of rights, duties and responsibilities. As a corollary, successive
governments in Britain, particularly in the last 25 years, have been
concerned to secure social and educational policies that foster the
requisite attributions of this prescription, and to nurture and
perhaps guide young people towards these objectives and goals.
In the post war period of 1950s and 1960s there was a general
acceptance, by both Labour and Conservative governments, that as long
as citizens supported the nation state in times of crisis, showed
respect for the law, and exercised their democratic responsibility to
vote in elections, they could and should remain largely passive.
Indeed, there are commentators, who even today, have concluded that
the debate about citizenship can been synthesised into a simple and
essentially straightforward and naïve psephological discussion
concerning the non-participation of young people in the democratic
process. Young people, it is claimed, lack interest in the democratic
process for a variety of reasons, which include both structural causes
and their individual proclivities (see, Wilkinson and Mulgan, 1995).
Other commentators (for example, Deveraux et al., 1995) argue that the
problem of non-participation is an outcome of the outdated UK
electoral system and structure that is in need of reform. Such
accounts have been favoured by politicians. They have provided simple
and easy-to-administer solutions to the problem of non-participation
which lay the blame upon young people themselves rather than more
complex causes. As we indicate below, this has helped to absolve the
state from addressing its social responsibilities and duties.
The initial challenge to what we have suggested was a relatively
benign citizenship agenda came, from the New Right in the 1980s.
According to Olssen (1996) this changed the relationship between the
individual and the state from one where the individual was ‘relatively
detached from the state’ towards one where the state has become
directly involved in the creation of, enterprising and competitive and
‘perpetually responsive’ (p.340) individuals. It followed a sustained
period of economic and political unrest and was championed by Margaret
Thatcher who insisted that a culture of ‘welfare dependency’ had
become endemic in society, and that as a consequence individuals
should take responsibility for their own actions. These
responsibilities extended through the family and were only mitigated
through ‘good neighbourliness’ – whereby citizens were encouraged to
work voluntarily with others in their own communities to make them
better and safer places to live in. (France, 1996). This thesis, which
discounts broader social and economic factors that lie beyond the
control of individuals, proved an effective challenge to the
consensual social welfarism of the 1950s and 1960s that had seemingly
become an impediment to Britain’s competitiveness in an increasingly
global market (see, Faulks, 1998).
A central concern of the administrations of Thatcher and Major was to
redefine the citizenship agenda, and the relationship between the
individual and the state. Although this redefinition did not preclude
– at least in theory – the need for shared values and reciprocal
obligations and loyalties, in practice it was more concerned with the
individual as an autonomous chooser who is self-reliant and takes
responsibility for her/his own actions. Under the Major government
(1992-1997), there was some softening of the rhetoric particularly in
terms of the explicit ‘valorization of the individual entrepreneur’
(Hall et al., 2000, p. 464), however the cornerstones of the New Right
agenda, with its emphasis on personal responsibility and individual
choice, was retained. Exemplified in documents such as the Citizens’
Charter, the citizen was reconfigured as a consumer of public services
who was now empowered to seek compensation or redress for
unsatisfactory service (see Miller, 2000).
The election of a Labour government in May 1997 after 18 years of
Conservative rule, offered what seemed to be a different if not
radical alternative to the individualistic rhetoric, including the
expectation that the welfare state would begin to be rebuilt. However,
in many important respects, the Labour administration, under Tony
Blair (1997- ) has continued with the pattern set by the
administrations of Thatcher and Major (Tomlinson, 2001). Although more
prominence has been placed upon the social values and the social
responsibilities of citizens (Etzioni, 1993), this has not presaged a
wholesale shift in policy. The ‘governmentalization of the discourse
of citizenship and community’ (Delanty, 2003 p. 598) has imbued it
with more active flavour, nevertheless, it has managed to achieve this
without compromising its essential individualism. In key areas such as
health and education where spending has increased the Labour
government has maintained the rhetoric of choice, delivery and
accountability. Whilst there are vague references to institutions and
organisations such as the family, workplace and other associations
which bond individuals to society, these relations are located within
a framework that starts with clear assumptions about what it means to
be an ‘active’ citizen. The overriding concern has been about how best
to engender a particular species of citizenship amongst young people,
in school, college and in other youth and community-based contexts. It
has been to find the ‘best’ and most ‘appropriate’ methods and
approaches of achieving what is regarded as a common goal that young
people can aspire to.
This emphasis upon social engineering – upon the ‘manufacture’ of
compliant yet ‘active’ citizens – is a fundamental component of the
mainstream citizenship discourse that we have described, and is
implicit within current policy and practice. In the next section we
suggest a different approach, which we have characterised as
‘citizenship-as-practice’. As we indicate this conceptualisation of
citizenship, and of the educational implications that arise from it,
is grounded in a very different set of assumptions about what it means
to be a citizen.
Citizenship-as-Practice
We have seen that the conceptualisation of citizenship-as-achievement
is associated with a particular set of assumptions about what makes a
citizen and about the necessary conditions of that status.
Furthermore, we have indicated that citizenship-as-achievement has
been associated with a particular view of the citizen-consumer, as a
rights holder and claimant, who is explicitly concerned with her/his
own interests.
Citizenship-as-practice does not start with the same assumption that
young people move through a trajectory into citizenship as status,
rather it assumes that young people move through
citizenship-as-practice. This conception of citizenship is inclusive,
because it assumes that everyone in society is a citizen ‘from the
cradle to the grave’, and also normative because it assumes that
citizenship is transformed through time. Indeed, it recognises that
individual young people may conceive of their citizenship in different
ways as they move through their lives, and also that the changes that
occur between successive generations, may transform the ways that
young people see their citizenship.
A second point that we need call attention to, is that citizenship-as-practice
is concerned with the conditions of young people’s lives, and with the
processes through which they learn the value(s) of democratic
citizenship. This understanding of what it means to be a citizen is
less concerned with delineating the necessary attributions of a ‘good’
and contributing citizen, and with describing the formula for the
production of such citizens, than with entering a ‘public dialogue
between rival value positions’ (Martin & Vincent, 1999, p. 236). As
Hall et al. (2000) note, ‘contemporary political and policy discussion
has been, for the most part, much less concerned to critically
interrogate the concept of active citizenship, than to debate how such
a thing might be achieved’ (p. 464). Citizenship education, therefore,
should be less concerned with the achievement of citizenship status,
than with the conditions of young people’s citizenship, including the
different meanings that young people attach to it. We claim that a
proper starting point for such a relational analysis needs to be
grounded in the experiences of young people.
As young people move through their teenage years and into their adult
identities and roles, they experience a number of structural ‘rites of
passage’, certainly from their formal and compulsory careers in school
into new post-compulsory careers in school, college, work or
unemployment, and even perhaps away from their family homes into
independent living. It is a time when they formally achieve full
status as citizens, and as a consequence are expected to bear full
legal responsibility for their own actions (Coles, 1995). These
changes in duty, responsibility and position are matched by contingent
changes in their perceptions that invariably cause them to reappraise
their understanding of themselves and of those around them (Furlong
and Cartmel, 1997). Viewed from this per­spective, citizenship is not
specifically an adult experience but is socially experienced as a
wider shift in social relations, common to all age groups, which are
shaping a new adulthood (Wyn and Dwyer, 1999, p.19).
Despite the fact that there is a body of interpretative research that
is focused upon young people’s identities and experiences of learning
inside and outside of formal educational and youth contexts (for
example, Bloomer and Hodkinson 1997, 1999; White, Bruce and Ritchie
2000; Lister 2001; Lawy and Bloomer 2003), the emphasis has not
generally been unequivocally concerned with citizenship. Such research
that has been initiated has centred upon curriculum policies and
institutional initiatives designed to increase the efficiency and
effectiveness of government interventions, and upon large-scale,
international and comparative quantitative research (for example,
Torney-Purta et al., 1999). Recognising this, researchers such as
France (1998), and Hall et al. (1999, 2000), have attempted to shift
the emphasis in citizenship research from questions about the
efficiency, effectiveness or quality of teaching of those working with
young people, towards a more direct concern with full and complete
lives of the young people. Working in informal youth work contexts,
and making use of a variety of ethnographic and other techniques and
methods, these researchers have sought to give voice to young people
in ways that are inclusive, and do not marginalize and exclude young
people as outsiders from a process that they are part of.
France’s research was conducted in the early 1990s, and was based
around a youth centre in an area of high unemployment in a working
class community in Sheffield. He sought to identify ‘the different
social processes which affected both how they [young people]
experienced citizenship and how they perceived themselves as present
and future citizens’ (France,1998, p. 102). Denied workplace
identities, France describes the ways in which young people
substituted these identities and relocated their meanings for
alternative and ‘newer’ consumer and lifestyle identities in other
domains of their lives. He goes on to suggest that the participation
of young people in activities and practices on the margins of the law
has been perceived as a community threat. In turn, this has led to
increased surveillance of young people. Hence, ‘the failure of
community to recognize “difference” or the right of young people to
have some form of control over their lives created conflict and
feelings of exclusion’ (France, 1998, p. 104). Hall, Coffey and
Williamson (1999, p. 505) – whose research was also based in youth
work settings outside of formal education – have sought to ‘to capture
and document some of the active processes by which young people
negotiate their transitional status outside the formal venues of
education and training, and the familial contexts of the home’.
Exploring these themes the researchers emphasise the importance of
‘space’ and of ‘place’ as concepts which provide young people with
‘room to nurture and explore their emergent sense of themselves as
individual people’ (Hall et al., 1999, p. 506), and also locate some
sense of belongingness and community through their shared identities.
Although researchers such as those that we have described above have
begun to question the underlying assumptions of the dominant
citizenship discourse, schools, colleges, and youth-based
organisations responsible for the ‘delivery’ of this prescribed
curriculum (see Bloomer, 1997), have continued to operate within a
rationale that is disconnected from the lives and identities of young
people.
The approach that we have described necessarily involves a critical
examination of the ‘claims of a fragmented, decentred subject as well
as of group rights and identities without succumbing to either
essentialist or constructivist views of identity’ (Isin and Wood,
1999, p. 13). It respects the claims and interests of young people as
social agents within a set of formal relations (Donald, 1996).
Moreover, it invests in their understandings and their agency and does
not seek to impose a particular interpretation upon them.
In the next section we consider the broad policy agenda and framework
for citizenship education, including the post-16 sector. We note that
a curriculum for citizenship education has been introduced and
formalised into the English National Curriculum and that a curriculum
for citizenship is currently being piloted in a number of further
education colleges as a non-compulsory option.
3. EDUCATIONAL POLICY AGENDA AND FRAMEWORK
==========================================
The introduction of purposive social policy in a climate where young
people have been judged to be a homogenous and reified social group
has had a profound impact on the articulation of the prevailing
citizenship discourse, and upon the educational and other policy
initiatives that have been directed towards young people. In recent
years young people have been targeted by a raft of government policies
and initiatives aimed at countering the claim that they have become
politically and socially alienated from the political and democratic
process. For the most part education for citizenship has been seen as
an exercise in civics education and ‘good’ citizenship rather than as
a way of developing and nurturing the social and critical capabilities
of young people. Questions about how- and what they need to be taught
to become ‘good’ and ‘contributing’ citizens have been addressed in a
variety of policy documents and educational reports (Commission on
Citizenship, 1990; Dearing, 1994; Qualifications and Curriculum
Authority, 1998; Further Education Funding Council, 2000). The
predominant emphasis has been upon largely technical issues – for
example, those pertaining to the introduction of citizenship as an
additional subject in an already overcrowded curriculum (see Garratt,
2000), and to technical improvements in the quality and efficiency of
teaching and the materials used for teaching – rather than upon more
fundamental questions about the quality of democratic learning or
about the processes of industrial, democratic and educational change.
Education for citizenship was incorporated into the National
Curriculum in England (1988)[1] as one of the five cross-curricular
themes and ‘from its inception, the cross-curricular “theme” of
Education for Citizenship was an area of particular political and
educational sensitivity’ (Beck, 1996, p. 350 ). The altruistic
intention of Curriculum Guidance 8: Education for Citizenship
(National Curriculum Council, 1990, p.1) was to provide ‘a framework
for curriculum debate’. However following a series of compromises, the
ensuing discussion was turned into an exercise in educating young
people for citizenship, that provided little opportunity for
‘adequately contextualising or conceptualising, let alone debating the
merits and de-merits of the variety of conceptions of “active
citizenship”’(National Curriculum Council, 1990, p. 356).
It has been only relatively recently (September 2002) that citizenship
has become a compulsory subject for 11-16 year olds. In setting out
the terms of reference for the Advisory Group on Citizenship
(Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, [Crick Report] 1998), which
laid out the fundamentals of the reform, David Blunkett, the Secretary
of State for Education and Employment, made it clear that he expected
the Group to operate ‘within the best traditions of past initiatives
and reports’ (Kerr, 1999, p. 278), and provide advice on effective
education for citizenship in and outside of the formal curriculum in
schools. Therefore, in practice the Advisory Group, whose
recommendations led to the non-statutory guidelines for citizenship
education for Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) at Key
Stages 1 and 2 (5-11 years of age) (Department for Education and
Employment / Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, 1999a; 1999b),
and to the statutory arrangements (2002) for citizenship education at
Key Stages 3 and 4 (11-16), was severely constrained by its terms of
reference and a political imperative that had compelled it – in a not
dissimilar fashion to that which occurred earlier – to conceptualise
young people’s ci­tizenship as a desirable ‘outcome’ rather than as a
process of transformation (see Crick, 2000). As if to emphasise this,
Hargreaves (2001) has proposed the adoption of what he terms ‘high
leverage strategies’ to specify ‘the conditions under which current
“best (and worst) practice” in citizenship might be identified’
(Hargreaves, 2001, p. 496).
The same agenda and political imperatives that have helped to define
developments in the compulsory phase of education have also been
evident in the post-compulsory sector. Whilst there are references to
citizenship as an entitlement and key life skill and to notions of
participation in the Advisory Group report (Further Education Funding
Council [Crick Report], 2000) there is little to suggest a significant
move in favour of a ‘joined-up’ approach to the values of democratic
learning. Nonetheless, efforts have been made, through 21 projects
that have been funded through the Learning and Skills Development
Agency (LSDA)[2], to develop and assess the impact of different models
of citizenship learning and teaching on young people, and to identify
forms of citizenship provision which appear most effective. (National
Foundation for Education Research [NFER], 2004, p.i). The most
successful were described as ‘“citizenship communities”, in that they
aimed for a citizenship ethos to run through all aspects of their
organisation, their work and their links with the wider community’ (p.
37). However, rather than pursuing this line of democratic learning
and participation, the NFER report suggests that such integrated
models and approaches are for the most part not feasible because of
‘logistical, financial and practical reasons’ (p. 38). This is of
course a very weak reason and one that leaves them with having to
justify an array of essentially ‘bolt-on’ programmes.
The recently published Tomlinson Committee report (Department for
Education and Skills, 2004) provides perhaps the greatest insight into
the thinking behind all of these developments. The focus of the
Working Group has been upon the creation of ‘a 14-19 phase
characterised by inclusiveness, challenge, quality and choice, where
all students are able to achieve qualifications which reflect their
very best performance’ (Department for Education and Skills, 2004, p.
8 ; original emphasis). It is interesting to note that the Committee
report sidesteps the issue of citizenship by suggesting that
achievement in it will ‘contribute to the main learning requirements
of diplomas at the appropriate level’ (Department for Education and
Skills, 2004, p. 23). It remains to be seen (September, 2004) whether
citizenship will find a more prominent place in the final report.
However, this does not seem likely. There would seem to be a
presumption that citizenship can be achieved and that ‘good’ and
‘contributing’ citizens will somehow emerge once the appropriate
structure is set in place.
4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
-----------------------------
To fully understand what it means to be a citizen in a democratic
society is to recognise that citizenship is an inclusive and
relational concept which is necessarily located in a distinctive
socio-economic, political and cultural milieu. Our aim has been to
illuminate the linkages between this broad understanding of
citizenship, and the educational practices that follow directly from
it. We would claim that the aim of citizenship education has been
quite simply to ‘manufacture’ or ‘engineer’ a particular species of
citizen – furthermore, to measure the achievement of that aim against
predetermined and taken-for-granted criteria of efficiency and
effectiveness.
Taking the post-war 1950s settlement as an appropriate starting point
for our analysis, we have described some of the important changes that
have taken place since that time. As we have indicated, there have
been global shifts in the interrelations between nation states and in
the relationship of individuals to those states. These changes, set
alongside changes in the relations between individuals in those
states, have had far reaching implications (see Giddens, 1991; Beck,
1992). The opportunity afforded by the changes that we have described,
to move away from an approach that has continued to be focused upon
teaching and learning about and for citizenship, has not been taken.
Indeed, we have contended that the ‘project’ of citizenship education,
articulated in official policy and in the formalised citizenship
curriculum, has failed to address what we believe are the principal
issues.
Whilst we recognise the value of citizenship education for young
people that is focused upon their rights, duties and responsibilities,
and of policy initiatives directed to the improvement of teaching, we
maintain that appropriate policy and curriculum responses have been
reduced to questions about efficiency, effectiveness and the quality
of teaching. Any thought that ‘the increased participation of students
in the learning process, the greater contextualization of the
knowledge and, most importantly, the involvement of student-owned
knowledge in school curricula might produce more empowered learners’
(Paechter, 2000, p. 112), has been set aside. Where young people have
been encouraged to participate, they have been persuaded to pursue a
range of activities ‘for the good of society’ rather than engage in
cooperative, thought provoking and critical practices, to empower
citizens. Although the UK government has initiated a lifelong learning
agenda and is attempting to address questions of inclusion and
exclusion (for example, Coffield, 1997; Macrae, Maguire and Ball,
1997), the responses and implications have yet to be coordinated
within an overarching and coherent (citizenship) strategy, let alone
one that privileges the educational experiences and identifications of
young people inside and outside of school, college and university.
To view young people as moving into citizenship status represents, in
our view, an impoverished view of what it means to be a citizen that
necessarily marginalises and excludes them from the mainstream of
democratic life. In this paper we have argued for an inclusive
citizenship attitude which recognises the full societal contribution
of young people. Young people do not qualify as citizens through some
magical mechanism or ‘rite of passage’ nor by engaging in a particular
mantra or by reproducing a set of practices. Their citizenry is not a
status or possession, nor is it the outcome of a developmental and/or
educational trajectory that can be socially engineered. It is a
practice, embedded within the day-to-day reality of (young) people’s
lives, interwoven and transformed over time within an overlapping and
intersecting ensemble of identifications (Hall and Held, 1989; Isin
and Wood, 1999) in all the distinctive and different dimensions of
their lives.
Finally, we would claim that the educational responsibility for
citizenship should not be confined to schools and colleges, nor should
it rest with teachers or the structuring of the curriculum. It is a
responsibility that extends to society at large (Biesta, 1997). Hence,
an appropriate educational programme would move beyond ‘passive’ and
even more ‘active’ models of citizenship and would work together with-
rather than on young people to nurture their democratic attitudes and
dispositions (see, Lave and Wenger, 1991; Biesta, 1994). Such an
inclusive and relational outlook would respect the claim to
citizenship status of everyone in society, including children and
young people, and recognise that it is the actual practices of
citizenship (citizenship-as-practice) and the ways in which these
practices transform over time that are educationally significant.
5. NOTES
========
[1] The claim of the Secretary of State for Education and Science
(Kenneth Baker) in outlining the bill to parliament was that the
government was regaining control of the curriculum through a national
core curriculum. This was achieved through a bureaucratic system under
which detailed subject specifications were laid down. Accordingly,
pupils are tested nationally according to standard attainment targets
at 7, 11, 14 and 16.
[2] The Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA) has superseded
the Further Education Development Agency (FEDA). Together with the
Learning and Skills Council (LSC) it is responsible for commissioning
research and development in the field of further education.
6. REFERENCES
BARBALET, J. (1988) Citizenship (Milton Keynes, Open University
Press).
BECK , J. (1996) Citizenship education: problems and possibilities,
Curriculum
Studies, 4(3), 349-366
BECK, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London, Sage).
BIESTA, G.J.J. (1994) Education as practical intersubjectivity,
Educational Theory,
44, 299-317.
BIESTA, G. J. J. (1997) ‘De pedagogische verantwoordelijkheid van de
samenleving’, [The educational responsibility of society]. In
Opvoeden, een
vrouwenzaak alleen? [Is upbringing only a concern of women?]. Den
Haag:
Nederlandse Vrouwenraad [The Netherlands Council for Women].
BLOOMER, M. (1997) Curriculum Making in Post-16 Education: The Social
Conditions of Studentship (London, Routledge).
BLOOMER, M. and HODKINSON, P. (1997) Moving into Further Education:
The
Voice of the Learner (London, Further Education Development Agency).
BLOOMER, M. and HODKINSON, P. (1999) College Life: The Voice of the
Learner (London, Further Education Development Agency).
BULMER, M. and REES, A. (1996) Citizenship Today (London, University
College
London).
COFFIELD, F. (1997) Introduction and overview: attempts to reclaim the
concept of
the learning society, Journal of Education Policy, 12(6), 449 – 455.
COLES, B. (1995) Youth and Social Policy (London, University College
London).
COMMISSION ON CITIZENSHIP, (1990) Encouraging Citizenship (London,
HMSO).
CRICK, B. (2000) The English citizenship order: a temperate reply to
critics, The
School Field, 11(3/4), 61-72.
DEARING, R. (1994) The National Curriculum and its Assessment: Final
Report
(London, School Curriculum Assessment Authority).
DELANTY, G. (2003) Citizenship as a learning process: disciplinary
citizenship
verses cultural citizenship, International Journal of Lifelong
Education, 22(6),
597-605
DEPARTMENT FOR EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT /QUALIFICATIONS AND CURRICULUM
AUTHORITY(1999a) The National Curriculum. Handbook
for Primary Teachers in England. Stages 1 and 2 (London, HMSO).
DEPARTMENT FOR EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT / QUALIFICATIONS AND
CURRICULUM AUTHORITY (1999b) The National Curriculum. Handbook
for Secondary Teachers in England. Stages 3 and 4 (London, HMSO).
DEPARTMENT FOR EDUCATION AND SKILLS, (2004) [Tomlinson Report] 14-
19 Curriculum and Qualifications Reform: Interim Report of the Working
Group on 14-19 Reform (London, DfES)
DEVERAUX, C., DRUMMOND, J. and HARVARD, C. (1995) M-Power: Young
Voter Registration Campaign Pamphlet (London, M-Power).
DONALD, J. (1996) The citizen and the man about town. In S. HALL and
P. Du
GAY (Eds) Questions of Cultural Identity (London, Sage).
ETZIONI, A. (1993) The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities
and the
Communitarian Agenda (New York, Crown Publishers).
FAULKS, K. (1998) Citizenship in Modern Britain (Edinburgh, University
of
Edinburgh Press).
FRANCE, A. (1996) Youth and citizenship in the 1990s, Youth and Policy,
43, 28
-43
FRANCE, A. (1998) ‘Why should we care?’: young People, citizenship and
questions of social responsibility, Journal of Youth Studies, 1(1),
97-111.
FURLONG, A. and CARTMEL, F. (1997) Young People and Social Change:
Individualization and Risk in Late Modernity (Buckingham, Open
University Press).
FURTHER EDUCATION FUNDING COUNCIL (2000) [Crick Report] Citizenship
for 16-19 Year Olds in Education and Training: Report of the Advisory
Group to the Secretary of State for Education and Employment (London,
FEFC).
GARRATT, D. (2000) Democratic citizenship in the curriculum: some
problems and
possibilities, Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 8, 323-341.
GIDDENS, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-identity (Cambridge, Polity
Press).
GIDDENS, A. (1998) The Third Way (Cambridge, Polity Press).
HALL, S. and HELD, D. (1989) Citizens and Citizenship. In S. HALL and
M.
JACQUES (Eds) New Times (London, Lawrence and Wishart).
HALL, T., COFFEY, A. and WILLIAMSON, H. (1999) Self, space and place:
youth
identities and citizenship, British Journal of Sociology of Education,
20(4),
502-513.
HALL, T., WILLIAMSON, H. and COFFEY, A. (2000) Young People,
citizenship
and the third way: a role for the youth service?, Journal of Youth
Studies, 3(4),
461-472.
HARGREAVES, D.H. (2001) A capital theory of school effectiveness and
improvement [1], British Educational Research Journal, 27(4), 487-503.
HUTTON, W. (1995) The State We’re In (London, Cape).
ISIN, F. I. and WOOD, P. K. (1999) Citizenship and Identity (London,
Sage).
KERR, D (1999) Re-examining citizenship education in England. In J.
TORNEY-
PURTA, J. SCHWILLE, AND J.-A. AMADEO, (Eds) Civic Education Across
Countries: Twenty-four Case Studies from the Civic Education Project
(Amsterdam, IEA).
LAVE, J. and WENGER, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate
Peripheral
Participation (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).
LAWY, R. and BLOOMER, M. (2003) Identity and learning as a lifelong
project:
situating vocational education and work, International Journal of
Lifelong
Education, 22(1), 24-42.
LISTER, M.R.A. (2001) Negotiating Transitions to Citizenship, An
ESRC-funded
research project conducted by the Centre for Research in Social
Policy.
Loughborough University (http://www.tsa.uk.com/YCSC).
MACRAE, S. MAGUIRE, M. and BALL, S. (1997) Whose learning society? A
tentative deconstruction, Journal of Education Policy, 12(6), 499-509.
MARSHALL, T. H. (1950) Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge,
Cambridge
University Press).
MARTIN, J. and VINCENT, C. (1999) Parental voice: an exploration,
International
Studies in Sociology of Education, 9(3), 231-252.
MILLER, D. (2000) Citizenship: what does it mean and why is it
important? In N.
PEARCE and J. HALLGARTEN (Eds) Tomorrows Citizens: Critical Debates
in Citizenship and Education (London, Institute for Public Policy
Research)
NATIONAL CURRICULUM COUNCIL (1990) Curriculum Guidance 8: Education
for Citizenship (London, NCC).
NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH (2004) National
Evaluation of Post-16 Citizenship Development Projects: second annual
report (Nottingham, Queens Printer)
OLSSEN, M. (1996) In defence of the welfare state and publicly
provided education:
a New Zealand perspective, Journal of Education Policy, 11(3),
337-362.
PAECHTER, C. (2000) Changing School Subjects: Power, Gender and
Curriculum.
(Buckingham, Open University Press).
QUALIFICATIONS AND CURRICULUM AUTHORITY (1998) [Crick Report]
Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools:
Final
Report of the Advisory Group on Citizenship. London: QCA.
ROCHE, M. (1992) Rethinking Citizenship (Cambridge, Polity Press).
SÄFSTROM, C.-A. and BIESTA, G.J.J. (2001) Learning democracy in a
world of difference, The School Field, 12(5/6), 5-20.
van STEENBERGEN, B (Ed) (1994) The Condition of Citizenship (London,
Sage).
TOMLINSON, S. (2001) Education policy, 1997-2000: the effects on top,
bottom
and middle England, International Studies in Sociology of Education,
11(3),
261-277.
TORNEY-PURTA, J., SCHWILLE, J. and AMADEO J.-A. (Eds) (1999) Civic
Education Across Countries: Twenty-four Case Studies from the Civic
Education Project (Amsterdam, IEA).
TURNER, B.S. (2001) The erosion of citizenship, British Journal of
Sociology, 52(2),
189-209
WHITE, C., BRUCE, S. and RITCHIE, J. (2000) Young People’s Politics:
Political
Interest And Engagement Amongst 14 To 24 Year Olds. (York, Joseph
Rowntree Foundation).
WILKINSON, H. and MULGAN, G. (1995) Freedom’s Children. Demos paper
no.
17. (London, Demos).
WYN, J. and DWYER, P. (1999) New directions in research on youth in
transition,
Journal of Youth Studies, 2(1), 5-21.
29