As a result of my reading, I’ve basically come to an understanding that there are three major points of view regarding citizenship education. I don’t think they are really ‘schools of thought’ or ‘theoretical standpoints’, mainly because they are so recent – for example, Westheimer and Kahne only stated their ideas about citizenship education in 2004. One of the most interesting parts of my research is the immediacy and relevance of it; citizenship education is still, very much, a current topic in education, cutting as it does to the heart of the question, ‘What is the purpose of education?’ and standing ideologically opposed to the ‘back to basics’, ‘high-stakes testing’ and ‘accountability’ approach that is beloved of the Australian government, amongst others, at the moment.

Anyway, I’ve identified three different points of view. Firstly, there is Terence McLaughlin, who suggested that citizenship education programs could be placed on a continuum between maximal and minimal.

Next, John Cogan suggested a model of multi-dimensional citizenship, with personal, social, spatial and temporal aspects of citizenship education.

Finally, Westheimer and Kahne suggested that there are three forms of citizenship educaition:

The challenge for me now, I believe, lies in finding some kind of synthesis or composite model of all of these points of view, because I’ve no doubt that they all have implications for citizenship education. Fortunately, I don’t imagine that this will be as difficult as it could have been. I’ve already had a bit of a go:

Personally, I think that an argument can be made that Westheimer and Kahne’s continuum fits neatly into McLaughlin’s – especially towards the maximal end of the scale. One of the traits of maximal citizenship education is that it encourages students to be activists in challenging injustices – there are obvious links between this and Westheimer and Kahne’s justice-oriented citizens. The crucial point of difference between each of the stages is, I think, related to Freire’s levels of consciousness, and the complementary level of activism. For example, a person who is a personally responsible citizen (who has probably learnt this behaviour through a minimal citizenship education program) is probably unaware of the necessity for social action to challenge injustice; rather, according to their limited understanding of citizenship, it is enough to pay their taxes and not break the law. This is the kind of simplistic understanding of democracy and citizenship that minimal citizenship education engenders; a person here is working, according to Freire, at the level of of magical consciousness – he or she ‘apprehends facts and attributes to them a superior power by which it is controlled and to which it must therefore submit.’

To set it out simply: a person who receives only the minimal level of citizenship education at school will develop a naive consciousness about the world and their place in it, and therefore will only ever develop into a personally responsible citizen, assuming that all other influences on this person are negated. Thus, educators and policy makers who advocate a minimalist approach to citizenship education are encouraging the maintenance of the status quo and the injustices that are present therein.

However, a student who receives a more maximal approach to citizenship education is more likely to develop a critical consciousness; that is, they will be able to “to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” (Pedagogy 35).

These are just ideas at this point; more work needs to be done on developing them, but I think this might be big.

Still have to identify the way Cogan fits in here, as well.

I took the opportunity afforded to em during the holidays to make sure I caught up with both my supervisor (Dr Rick Flowers) and associate supervisor (Dr Nina Burridge). It was a valuable experience, for a number of different reasons – firstly, I was able to get some meaningful feedback regarding my process thus far, but also get some ideas about where to go now.
Firstly, Nina – I skyped (is that even a word?) Nina early on a Monday morning, and explained my thoughts about research to her. She was very interested, especially on the overlap between her work in Human Rights Education and my own (in Citizenship Education.) However, when I came to speak to her about exactly what I intended to do, Nina really cut to the chase – she said that I needed to think with a little more clarity about my action research project – exactly what did I want to achieve, and how was I going to measure it?

On the Wednesday of that week, I met with Paul Vittles, who is the Chairman for the RSA A+NZ, and we discussed my funding proposal for the Passion, Proposal, Progress model. Again, he suggested something a little more concrete.

Taking this and some other thoughts into account, I then thought about how to change my proposal. The result was what I discussed with Rick on Wednesday. See the image below.

Rick made some useful suggestions, which I will try to put into practice.

1. Firstly, while my reading has been good, it has been limited in certain directions. I need to group my references into categories like:

a) Methodology

b) Freire and Popular Education

c) North American Critical Pedagogy

d) Curriculum Samples

e) Policy Documents

and so on. I’ve done this now, but there’s still vast tracts of stuff just located in ‘Citizenship Education.’

2. I also need to start working on building a community of educators that might have similar ideas about Freirean education as I do. To get this rolling, I have now created: Praxis Educators, a ning specifically for Australian (and other) educators to discuss ideas regarding Freire and Popular Education. Now all I need is some content and some members!

3. I also need to continue reading up on 2 things: Firstly, what is the current feeling/ state of Citizenship Education in Australia, and secondly, what exactly is my theoretical perpsective/ methodology etc etc.

Lots to do, lots to do…

Originally posted here.

I’ve been reading a lot about education for democracy at the moment, from a variety of interesting sources. For example, I’ve read work by David Kerr, from the UK, articles by Henry Giroux from America and by people like Kennedy and O’Loughlin from Australia. (I mention this in case you’re interested in following up some of the readings that have influenced my thoughts.)

The reason for my interest in this area is that I’ve been curious about the effect that the introduction of a national curriculum to Australia. Previously, I’ve worked in the UK, where there’s been a national curriculum in place since 1996, I believe, and, while politicians might, at times, claim that it has been a vast success, my experience working with teachers suggests the opposite. In fact, the improvements in test scores that are supposedly attributable to the introduction of said curriculum and national testing are beginning to decline, which I don’t find surprising, considering the problems inherent in large scale testing.

Regardless of this, the Australian government has introduced, for next year, a heavily content-led curriculum to be taught in all schools in English, Mathematics, Science and History. Other subjects will follow in the next few years.

Enough background. I’m a firm believer that democracy is not a static process; indeed, to be successful, democracy must be a lived-out experience; that is to say, we don’t have democracy, but we practice democracy. I remember reading somewhere that one of the best judges of how democratic a society is is by seeing how much complaining there is that the society isn’t democratic enough!

If you subscribe to this point of view, then it necessarily follows that, if democracy is a lived out process, requiring active participation from citizens to remain democratic, then those citizens must learn the specfic knowledge and skills necessary to participate in said democracy. These skills can be learnt in a variety of different ways, but the most common way was through participation in political parties, community groups and similar organisations in schools.

However, this participation is in decline; certainly in Australia and the US. In addition, students are not getting the opportunity to participate in these kinds of social movements and learn the skills required for democracy while they are at school, because schools have been forced to abandon these kinds of projects because of the necessity to prepare studenst for nationalised testing. Thus, social studies classes, citizenship groups and social justice action groups have been abandoned in favour of rote memorisation and repetitive exercises in reading, writing and arithmetic.

Therefore, my question is this: if we are de-skilling students of the ability to participate in democracy, and democracy relies upon those skills to survive, where are we heading?

As part of my training in Theology (so I can teach religion at school), I’ve been reading a book by Donal Dorr, called Divine Energy: God within us, beyond us, among us.

I was a little trepidatious before I began reading it; it’s certainly outside my normal genres. At least, so I thought. Imagine my surprise when I found that, during his discussion of the God among us, Dorr quotes the work of Wink, who presents Jesus as a challenger to varied forms of oppression, including the Roman empire and the regime of the scribes and pharisees of Jewish law!

In particular, Dorr argues that Jesus argues for a form of liberation theology in two areas: firstly, by refusing to surrender his human dignity, and secondly by providing his followers with an example of non-violent resistance.

Dorr suggests that when Jesus tells his followers that, when someone takes their shirt, they should give them the rest of their clothes as well, he is not suggesting a passive acceptance of oppression, but rather an opportunity to shame the oppressor; in this case, by standing naked before him. This argument is strengthened by other points, including  who Jesus chose to associate with – the marginalised elements of society. By associating with the poor, the weak and the sick, Jesus is demonstrating solidarity with these people.

Interesting stuff…

I was reading the New York Times and found a though provoking article by Elizabeth Green entitled ‘Building an Better Teacher.’ The link is here if you want to read it yourself, but I’ll paraphrase it briefly below, because I think it raises some interesting questions.

The article mostly focuses on the work of Doug Lemov, a former teacher, principal and now consultant for charter schools in the US. He is about to release a book about what has become known as Lemov’s taxonomy: a variety of strategies that Lemov believes improve learning. Interestingly, most of these strategies seem to be nothing more than basic classroom management. For example, he talks about ‘Cold Calling’, where a teacher nominates a student, rather than selecting a student who puts their hand up. There’s another technique, which is linked to positive reinforcement, and another related to giving clear and specific instructions.

Now, Lemov, at least in the article, argues that these are the kinds of strategies that will ensure maximal student achievement. It’s a pretty simple idea; to learn, students must be engaged. And for students to be engaged, teachers must be well trained in getting their attention. Therefore, teachers need more training, if students aren’t learning.

It’s a fair point; certainly from my own experiences at uni, there was much less emphasis on classroom management than I thought there would be, and I know for a fact it’s one of the most common areas that new (and experienced!) teachers struggle with. It’s always there at professional development days, certainly. There’s books about it, including the amusingly entitled ‘Getting the buggers to behave.’

That’s not to say that my uni courses were a waste of time; rather, I found it important to learn about the history of education, as well as the different theories of what learning is. I used my time during my lengthy pracs (all up, I spent at least a term on pracs) to hone classroom management, and the way I learnt to do this was by listening, talking and watching better teachers than me practice their skills. It’s where I learnt things like ‘no hands up’ and ‘tactical ignores’ and ‘three second delays’ and the host of other strategies that I use reflexively in the classroom now.

Personally, though, I’m wary about any kind of book offering instant solutions to behaviour management and learning. I’m especially wary about ones that insist on learning in rigid structures. Something else that I’ve brushed up against recently is Kagan – which is a highly commercialised pedagogical model which insists on grouping students and teaching through repetitive strategies or ‘structures.’

Why am I wary? Simply put, learning – and especially learning at schools – is about more than achieving competencies in particular skills or subject areas. Instead, people learn to become citizens – hopefully, justice oriented active citizens – at schools. If they don’t then there’s something wrong. It’s part of the process known as socialisation. Many of these strategies ignore this social aspect of learning – they focus solely on what I see as side issues, like behaviour or performance on tests, but ignore things like developing social skills and the ability to challenge oppression and work towards equality.

Perhaps it’s idealistic, but I think that if we don’t actively work towards making the world a better place, then what’s the point of being a teacher?

Critical Pedagogy  refers to teaching practices and theories which help students question and understand dominant ideologies in and out of the classroom, and the power structures served by those ideologies, so that they may transform oppressive conditions in their lives and their communities (Morrell, 2002)

Powerful stuff, huh?

So why don’t we do more of it? In this era of accountability and litigation, I wonder if we’ve lost the real point of education. Have we become too confused with regards to Personally, if we don’t make the world a better place through education – through the learning people take part in in educational facilities, then what’s the point?

If all we seek to do is reproduce little wage slaves, content with their half-asleep lives, then I am in the wrong profession – and so are a great many teachers that I care and respect for. And we’re selling students short!

First and foremost, an education should teach children how to think for themselves. Naturally, that might lead to questioning – but why are we afraid of questioning? Don’t we make the world better (whatever we think that means) by asking tough questions?

A little disorganised, I know, but just my thoughts.