The importance of democratic education in today’s schools is highlighted in this article by Susan Engel and Marlene Sandstrom. This article identifies that, rather than shiny binders and expensive anti-bullying programs, the best way to deal with bullying and its attendant problems is through building a sense of community, where everybody involved in childrens education works to challenge incidences of bullying and encourage the democratic essentialities of
tolerance, participation and inclusivity.

The full article can be read here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/opinion/23engel.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=there%27s%20only%20one%20way%20to%20stop%20a%20bully&st=cse

The part I particularly liked was where the authors highlight the problems associated with standardized testing and an increasingly crowded curriculum. They write:

Yet, in American curriculums, a growing emphasis on standardized test scores as the primary measure of “successful” schools has crowded out what should be an essential criterion for well-educated students: a sense of responsibility for the well-being of others

Makes my research seem even more vital in this context.

Recently, I met with Dr Rick Flowers, my supervisor, for another doctoral meeting. The purpose of this meeting was to consider how my research has been getting on, and to decide what are the best ways forward regarding said research. It was a really good meeting. Once again, as I was reviewing my notes before the meeting, I was pleased with how far I had come. Then again, as soon as I’d had this meeting, I was reminded by how far there is still to travel!

Anyway, there were a few key learning points about for my research from this meeting. Firstly, Rick suggested that I needed to ground my research in a particular issue. This was of vital importance. To be honest, I think this exposes a bit of a lack of understanding on my behalf; I’d got so convinced of the idea of the importance of a completely student-negotiated curriculum that I’d kind of lost sight of the fact that this is precisely what Freire himself had done. For Freire, it was illiteracy that was the grounding for his work on empowerment.

Therefore, it is important for me to consider what kind of issue that I want to ground my work in. It is easy for me to say that I want to look at citizenship education or active citizenship – but these ideas are probably a little too broad if I’m going to be working on specifically active citizenship. In brief, the students I work – and myself, of course – need something to be active about. Fortunately, there are plenty of possibilities for just such a topic. Rick and I brainstormed a few ideas: the environment, specifically water pollution. Substance abuse. Drink Driving. Alcohol fueled violence. Refugees, racism and asylum seekers.

We did discuss one of these at length: the issue of refugees and racism. It must be stated that, considering the headlines of today, it is certainly a very topical issue, with the talk of the Pacific Solution and so on. Even more so, it is particularly appropriate for Western Sydney, which is often identified as a ‘heartland of racism’.  Originally, I had concerns about this kind of project, because, as is clear from even the most limited understanding of Freire’s work, Freire worked with those who were oppressed; he used a kind of bottom up approach. I didn’t see how it would be possible for me to do this, considering my limited access to people who were refugees; my school is pretty uniform, although there are changes taking place pretty slowly.

Secondly, although I had read quite a lot of Freire, it had been quite narrow in scope. Thus, when Rick asked me about my action research project and how it would be based on Freire’s principles, I struggled to explain how it might work. What I need to do know is read more about the ways that Freire’s work has been applied in particular contexts. Rick suggested that I explore two phenomena in particular; photovoice and popular theatre, so these two ideas will be the focus of my reading for a considerable period to come.

Thirdly, we had the opportunity to discuss what my portfolio might look like. Although we didn’t discuss this much, we did talk about the online forum. Here, Rick cautioned me to make sure that I kept this as an intellectual exercise, because it needed to be this if I was going to keep using it as part of my forum. We talked about the best ways to keep it working, and agreed that the use of social media would be a valuable tool, as well as the university mailing lists. Getting this up and running will be one of my key projects over the holidays.

However, the part of the discussion that I thought was the most important focused on what I’m contributing to the academy by my research. In short, what am I doing that is new or unique? What are the particular features of my research that are important?What is the importance of my research? What am I doing that is new or different? I think that it is important to be clear about the benefits of my work. Here are my original thoughts to answer this question:

• It’s the first time (at least, the first time that I’m aware) that educators in Australia have tried to link Freire’s pedagogy with citizenship education.
• The context of the work is vital – it’s intensely practical. It’s not simply a theoretical discussion of Freire and education, but it is using Freire’s pedagogy to challenge the oppression of Racism in Emu Plains, Sydney. Personally, I think that this makes my research vital.
• Finally, unlike may Freirean approaches to education, this particular project is looking at children and Freire. Most Freirean prjects explore adult education. This too makes it valuable to the academy.

I’ve spent much of my career involved in what you might call progressive education, although that term itself is somewhat problematical. One of the depressing things about education is that some things (like PBL and student centered learning) seem to come back every 30 years or so.

Certainly,  I’ve worked in schools that have thought of themselves as innovative. I’ve experienced 1:1 laptop programs – at a time when they were relatively new and exciting. I’ve worked in schools that adopted flexible learning spaces, and collaborative practice. I’ve seen handheld devices before iPod touches. I’ve done this in a number of different schools, too, both in Australia and in England

I’m not bigging myself up here, just establishing some credentials. Because really, the point for this blog posting is actually all about the perils of working in such a school. You see, creating such a culture – where, firstly, the need for change is recognised, and then there is a culture that supports such change is incredibly difficult. Schools don’t move forward on their own. The school I’m currently working at sometimes feels like it’s stuck in a timewarp, and we’re back in the 1980s.

To begin such a change takes a special kind of principal: one that is highly enough respected by his or her peers that he or she can begin such a project (usually won through hard years working at traditional schools) and is still brave or determined enough that they are willing to take on such a risky project. Above all, such a person must have vision – an idea of what education should look like. It is not necessary to understand how such a vision might be created; that is the work of others.

So, armed with this vision, a principal must endeavour to make it a reality. The only way this can happen is through the staff employed at such a school. They must have the skill and expertise to turn the principal’s vision into reality, along with all the requisite changes that are necessary in transforming theory into practice.

But – and it’s a big but – it’s a double edged sword for principals and the staff they employ. Because they are challenging the status quo, they are surrounded by detractors, who wish to see them and their school fail. Added to that, often these schools struggle for survival, isolated as they are, and surrounded by hostile or ignorant communities. Education’s funny like that: because everyone went to school, many people feel qualified to speak about education with some kind of authority. By this rationale, everyone who’s ever been sick should be capable of performing open heart surgery.

And so, these schools are ultimately forced into either failing or changing their ways. The principal, generally frustrated at the lack of support from their own organisations or communities, leaves the school – or if they are lucky, are identified and recruited by a forward thinking community (yes, they exist). And so, the school is kind of half-born, and the principal is replaced by (usually) a more conservative principal, who generally (and often while still talking the talk, but not walking the walk) reshapes the school into a more traditional model. It’s easier to do that than actually try to carry though the vision. And so, once again, progressivism is thwarted by traditionalism, and schools retreat to become little more than institutions for maintaining the status quo.

Depressing, isn’t it?

I recently had the opportunity to have another informal conversation regarding my research project. In this, I interviewed a member of staff at a school who is responsible for facilitating the Student Representative Council (SRC) at a middle-sized systemic Catholic high school.

I wanted to speak to her (lets call her Miss P) to get an idea of what the SRC’s aims and purposes are – and how effective they are in meeting these aims and purposes. The results were interesting – and also quite heartening. Firstly, I explored the ideas behind how people become members of the representative council. The process is quite convoluted:

1. A student must be nominated by 2 other students, and also a member of staff must countersign this nomination.

2. Then students take a vote on the nominated studenst.

3. The students with the most votes are then interviewed by the teachers responsible for facilitating the SRC. During this interview, they are presented with the SRC role description (more on this below) and asked whether they could uphold the qualities and expectations outlined in the document.

I was lucky enough to get hold of a copy of the SRC role description, and I thought that the fact that one exists suggests an interesting perspective already. The role description generally sets out the expected code of behaviour of a member of the Student Representative Council: for example, one of the statements suggests that students on the SRC need to ‘model behaviours that demonstrate integrity, jusctice and peace’ or ‘be committed to the school community through attendance at reflection days, athletics and swimming carnivals, fundraising events, extra curricular activities and information evenings.’

There is little that is explicitly managed about fostering democratic ideals, but I didn’t expect that. When I asked Miss P about what she thought the purpose of the SRC was, she said that she didn’t really have a role deciding that; rather, the purpose of the SRC was determined by the students – all Miss P did was facilitate what they wanted to do. So, if, for example, there was a really heavy emphasis on sporting and house involvement from the SRC in a particular year, that’s what the focus or purpose of the SRC would be. On the other hand, if the SRC was not a vibrant community, or not particularly motivated, then the SRC would have limited impact upon the school.

I did question what kind of power that the actual SRC had within the schooling environment (linking both to my ideas about empowerment of students and Cogan’s description of Australia’s SRCs as without real power or meaningfulness) and Miss P suggested that, really, the SRC were on their own. Miss P could advise and assist them to run presentations, for example, to deal with issues that they had identified, but they actually had little access to the existing power structures within the school.

This raises a number of important issues:

1. Firstly, I think that the idea of a student-negotiated issues is essential.

2. Secondly, I was concerned that, if this is a typical features of SRCs, they are really more of a regulatory body – responsible for monitoring and addressing behaviour amongst the student body – more than a democratic body aiding in the empowering of students.

The leadership team at my current school was kind enough to book a table of 10 for a resent presentation by the Australian College of Educators. It was at the Waterview Convention Centre at Homebush, which was very nice, and all the bigwigs, including some of those from CEO were there, as well, which wasn’t.

It was meant to be about the national curriculum and the relationship between the values and the national curriculum but the presenter, Professor Deakin Crick from the UK, didn’t really talk about that.

She began by briefly listing the curriculum values that the national curriculum will be based on – critical thinking, creativity etc etc, and then compared them (again, very briefly) with the values that other countries have adopted, like the OECD, or the UK, or the European Council, suggesting that there was more in common between them than there was differences. All pretty interesting stuff; one thing that Professor Deakin Crick did say that stuck with me was that she couldn’t identify any theoretical basis for these values of the national curriculum; rather it just seemed a random grab bag of what should be important in schools.

Professor Deakin Crick then went on to explain what she thought was important in education; she basically gave us a potted history of her research, which had 2 main factors (at least as I understood it.) The first factor was the dimensions of learning, or learning power dimensions. These are thinks like making meaning, creativity, resilience, critical curiousity and a number of others that are ways that Deakin Crick suggests we can encourage young people to not only be less passive in their learning, but to also become lifelong learning. Essentially, Crick’s research suggested that, for a lot of students, their ‘learning power’ decreased as their schooling progressed, which is pretty concerning.

The second part of Crick’s presentation focused on using narration as a central metaphor for curriculum delivery and interpretation; essentially, telling stories to learn. She gave us a number of examples, from both Australia and the UK, where students created stories with animals based on the learning power dimensions; for example, the platypus was meaning-making, or the wedge-tailed eagle was strategic awareness or something similar. The reason this metaphor worked and allowed students to develop these learning dimensions was because it allowed them to both tell their story and also to address complex issues through a relatively simple medium. I was especially captivated by the Taronga Breakout story from students in the Hunter Valley.

However, at the end of the evening, I was still left with a sense of despair; for all the rhetoric of grass-roots change and bottom-up support in the face of the authoritarian top-down approach, I personally am struggling to see  a way we, as teachers, can change the system. Decisions already seem to be made; essentially, the curriculum is signed, sealed and delivered, although I am sure there will be a few changes after the consultation process to prove that policy-makers listened to teachers.

It’s because I’ve seen it all before, and I don’t have any faith in pollies at the moment. I’m struggling with where to go to from here…

*fading muttering about neoliberal ideology and capitalist hegemonies*

But I’ll be back, with a new plan. As soon as I work it out…

So I was lucky enough to have a chance to speak to another person who is on my list of important people – a leading academic in citizenship education, who’s been heavily involved in the development of Discovering Democracy, as well as its evaluation. Let’s call him, for the sake of confidentiality, Professor Y. (I do feel like I’m in a bad James Bond rip-off with all these cheesy nicknames, but nevertheless…)

Unlike my previous informal conversation, my discussion with Professor Y was quite challenging. I had to navigate a tricky line of politeness, because he was involved in Discovering Democracy, and my argument is that Discovering Democracy is pretty ordinary. I broached the subject early on, and Professor Y agreed with me, generally, arguing that while the quality of the materials was high, the implementation left a lot to be desired, mostly because of the mismatch between funding for development of materials and funding for professional development for teachers. In addition, there were issues with the state-federal system nexus, and, in NSW especially, the problem with CCE being spread across History and Geography.

So far, not much new there. Something that Professor Y did say that I found interesting was that there really was very little difference caused by the Howard govt – apparently the finished model was quite similar to what was originally planned in the Keating administration. This is different to what a lot of critics say… He also suggested that CCE was a bit of a wait and see with regards to the National Curriculum – that is, announcements would be made shortly about it.

Anyway, we got to talking about my research project, and Professor Y warned me about taking too much on; he effectively argued that my evaluation of discovering democracy was a separate thesis project to my independent research project. He also urged me to consider what I wanted to do with my finished research – if I wanted to go further with it, then he recommended the evaluation of DD was a much better path; effectively, my IRP was limited in its generalisability.

I was a little put out.

Nevertheless, it does bear some thought. I am going to discuss some of these issues with Rick at our next meeting…

Recently I completed my first ‘informal conversation’ for my doctoral work. The purpose of these conversations, which are part of the exercise of mapping my research field, is to use the expertise of colleagues or people that have been involved in the area of my research. The first conversation that I had was with a principal from the Parramatta diocese who I obviously won’t name for privacy reasons. Although this is not part of my official fieldwork, I believe that it is still important to maintain confidentiality.

Anyway, despite the obvious busy-ness of the principal, I was lucky enough for her to devote 30 minutes of her time to me; I’d already provided her with the abstract for my research, but I found it useful to spend the first part of our time to brief her, especially as I had made some important changes to my research plan. Although I had created a number of different questions to ask each of the interviewees, I found that the conversation simply flowed from the discussion of the abstract and quite naturally

My interviewee – let’s call her Ms X – generally agreed with a lot of statements in my abstract. Firstly, she was aware of how poorly the Discovering Democracy program had been implemented across the diocese. She struggled to remember many HSIE coordinators embracing the idea, and there was a general feeling that it had all been simply left to the individual teachers to incorporate it into History and Geography lessons. I expect that I will hear a lot more of this kind of view. Interestingly, Ms X also suggested that within Catholic schools, the idea of citizenship becomes subsumed into the wider religious and moral education – and that this shouldn’t be the case. The ‘selling point’ of catholic education is that these schools educate the whole child; education there is ‘authentically catholic’ and incldues catholic values and morals. How these morals and values are linked in with the values for Australian school students is not something that I’ve explored in any great detail, but I imagine it would be quite interesting to compare the two.

In addition to that, Ms X was interested in the notion of Active Citizenship and raised a really crucial idea that I might have overlooked; basically, Ms X questioned how many of us were active citizens – in the truest sense of the word? She suggested that there were levels of active citizenship – one could argue that someone who donates to the red shield appeal is an active citizen, but are they as active as someone who goes to East Timor to work in education over there? Clearly not. I agreed with her about this, and we spoke for a little about the different models of Active Citizenship and the ways that they fit together.

Furthermore, we discussed how we encouraged young people to become ‘active citizens.’ Ms X suggested that (and she referenced Dewey here) experience is as vital, if not more so, than simply retaining facts and figures. Ms X argued that lived experience of democracy and education would be more valuable in inculcating citizens to be active than the current limited form of education.

Regarding the methodology, Ms X urged me to be careful with ethical considerations, especially as I would be working with young people. I assured her that I would follow all requirements.

Those of you who’ve read my earlier posts know that my main research interests lie in the domains of civic and citizenship education. In reality, I guess citizenship education is really a part of a wider issue; that is, it’s a subset of education for democracy. At the heart of my work are the questions: how can we make students and young people feel more empowered about the role that they play in our societies? How can we encourage them to actively seek out injustice in the political, social and cultural spheres and then take action to work against these injustices? For a long time, I’ve been trying to fit together the different theoretical perspectives regarding citizenship education. Some of the most prominent are Cogan’s, Westheimer and Kahne’s and Terence McLaughlin.

Cogan advocates a model of multidimensional citizenship education where the personal, social, spatial and temporal needs are linked together to create a complete framework for citizenship education. Westheimer and Kahne advocate a continuum of citizenship education – at the most basic end is the idea of being a personally responsible citizen (someone who takes out the rubbish, votes in elections, doesn’t speed etc). Next is the idea of a participatory citizen (someone who can organise community groups to have an influence on decisions that are directly affecting them, but works within the framework of the current status quo) and finally there is the justice-oriented citizen, who actively seeks out and challenges injustice in the world – and is willing to work towards real change from the status quo if that is required.

Overlying all of these is the original citizenship education continuum – that of Terence McLaughlin, who said all progams of citizenship education can be placed on a continuum between minimal (knowledge-based, didactic, civics, concerned with remembering facts, non-participatory) and maximal (interactive, skills-based, broad definition of citizenship, activist). None of these definitions are really complete – they are the short versions, but will suffice for the sake of my argument. Something that I have struggled to do is draw out a common thread between these different explanations of citizenship education – what, precisely constitutes an acitve citizen?

However, I recently reconsidered these frameworks through the lens of consciousness; that is, I tried to fit Freire’s different models of consciousness against these different theories of citizenship education. Immediately, I felt that the muddied landscape became a little more clear. My thoughts – and they are still thoughts at the moment, really, that I am posting up here in the hopes that you learned individuals can share your expertise with me – run along these kind of lines. Although the purpose of citizenship education (no matter where you go in the world) depends firmly on the country’s stance on values-based education and is therefore national in context, this doesn’t necessarily mean that citizenship education should be like that.

Let me explain; before embarking upon a program of citizenship education, teachers, parents, policymakers and stakeholders need to come to an agreement of what kind of citizen they should be attempting to create. Essentially, what is a citizen? If you are a neo-liberal, then a passive acceptance of the rule of law and individual autonomy is probably going to be enough. If, on the other hand, you are a radical democrat, you might argue that citizenship itself is an essential, social movement. Therefore, these decisions will affect the kind of materials and learning experiences you provide for students. So what kind of education should we be providing for students?

I believe that it is possible to synthesise Freire’s depictions of different levels of consciousness with different programs placed on the continuum of citizenship education. To be precise, if a student experiences a minimal form of citizenship education at schoo, then he or she is more likely to develop a magical consciousness about the world, and therefore will become a citizen that Westheimer and Kahne might classify as ‘personally responsible.’ This kind of consciousness is based on a person that ‘apprehends facts and attributes to them a superior power by which it is controlled.’ Thus, for example, a person doesn’t speed because he or she is afraid of the fine, or getting caught.

A person who experiences a more maximal form of citizenship education (let’s call it a middle form, for the sake of the pleasing alliteration) might develop a naive consciousness about themselves and the world. They are capable of taking action, but it is essentially limited to themselves and their community – their are no links to the wider world.

Finally, a person who take part in a maximal program of citizenship education is more likely to become an activist, and develop critical consciousness. Freire wrote, ‘Democracy requires oppressed groups to develop political determination, that is, to organise and mobilise in order to achieve their objectives. Education can make possible such a democracy.’ These are also qualities of a justice oriented citizen.

Like I said, these are preliminary thoughts, but I certainly think they are worth following up. Looking forward to hearing your comments.

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 stumbled across this article while doing research – thought that it was, while quite brief, very useful. The article is by a history teacher and writer called Tristan Ewins. It was published in Agora 41 (3), and is entitled ‘Re-invigorating Civics and Ctizenship Education.’

Basically, Ewins sets out everything that was wrong with the implementation of Discovering Democracy. He writes, ‘the original blueprint for civics education espoused by the Howard Government may seem somewhat conservative and ‘uncritically celebratory…’ To be honest, I couldn’t put it better myself. However, this criticism is only the starting point for Ewins. Next, he points out the difficulty of finding space in the curriculum: ‘Civics and citizenship has, nevertheless, struggled to find a space in a crowded curriculum.’ A little later, he points out, ‘Also the institutions and processes model largely incorporated in the Discovering Democracy kit is in itself insufficient to meet a broader and more progressive civics and citizenship agenda.

And in addition to that, the actual curriculum limits the effectiveness of CCE, due to it being taught at the same time as SOSE: ‘Unfortunately, as things currently stand, SOSE attempts far too much with too little time available, combining the study of history, geography and society. This effectively crowds out the critical study of society.’

It’s like this guys been reading my mail.

However, where the article gets really good is when Ewins starts to explore ways that he would, in his terms, ‘reinvigorate’ the CCE curriculum. Personally, I think that it’s much more of a complete rewrite. Anyway, Ewins makes a number of points, which I’ve included below (only the most salient for my purposes):

1. ‘Critical analysis of how identity and social relations are constructed and contested… including a consideration of whether said social relations are just.’

2. ‘Critical analysis of how citizens organise to pursue their interests…’

3. ‘Development of an orientation towards active citizenship, including individual and collective social action… Students would be encouraged to involve themselves in active citizenship…’

Pretty impressive stuff. Certainly a very valuable article; I feel really reaffirmed about everything that I’ve been doing so far.

Thank you, Tristan Ewins.