Citizenship Education in Europe and Beyond. The Role of Research

• Speakers: Paulína Koršňáková (IEA & SERS, Slovak Republic), Joe O'Hara (Dublin City University Institute of Education, Ireland), Karen Pashby (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK), Maria Magdalena Isac (KU Leuven, Belgium), Andres Sandoval Hernandez (University of Bath, UK), Ralph Carstens (EA Hamburg, Germany)
• Chairperson: Paulína Koršňáková (International Association for Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) & SERS)
• When: 00 SES 09 A / Thursday, 24/Aug/2023: 9:00am - 10:30am
• Location: Joseph Black Building, B419 LT [Floor 5]

Contemporary societies are facing new and persisting challenges. Lack of trust in democratic processes, increased globalization, migration, economic inequalities, climate change, populism and the rise of illiberal democracies are among the most relevant issues that are shifting the concept of citizenship. This in turn implies changes to the ways citizenship education is conceived and the re-evaluation of its objectives and contents as well as the values and attitudes within traditional notions of nation-state-defined citizenship and global perspectives (Osler & Starkey, 2005; Alviar-Martin, 2018).

In the last decades, citizenship education has been the object of renewed attention at both national and international levels, considered as a means for providing students with the knowledge, awareness and skills to develop a deeper understanding of current issues and to act responsibly in contemporary societies (Eurydice, 2017). Promoting citizenship education at school has been an enduring aim of the educational policies European Union (European Parliament 2022, and the Council, 2006, 2018), with active citizenship recognized as one of the key areas that need further development in the education and training systems across Member States to achieve the European Education Area by 2025 (Council of the European Union, 2021). This is further exemplified by the work carried out by the Council of Europe, namely the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (Council of Europe, 2018).

The research in the field of citizenship education has continued to grow in academia and research centres and institutions, for example how citizenship values are taught across subject areas, philosophical bases for citizenship education, digital citizenship education, global citizenship education and its contestations, environmental education and action-competencies, and the challenges related to neutrality and impartiality in learning opportunities and teaching related to controversial issues.

In this space, the IEA (International Association for Evaluation of Educational Achievement) International Civics and Citizenship Study (ICCS) is investigating the ways in which young people are prepared to undertake their roles as citizens. As a curriculum-oriented study, ICCS gathers data on system, school and classroom-level antecedents, processes, and outcomes of citizenship education, including students’ knowledge and understanding, attitudes and engagement (Schulz et al., 2016; Schulz et al., 2018). ICCS 2022 is the third cycle of the study, involved 22 countries and two benchmarking participants - most of these from Europe – and takes recent developments and challenges into consideration, e.g. sustainability, engagement through digital technologies, diversity, views of the political system, and global citizenship notions (Schulz et al., 2022). Results will be released in November of 2023 and are expected to be discussed in depth at ECER 2024.

At a more global level, global citizenship education and education for sustainable development have received increased attention in the academic and political discourse, related especially to Target 4.7 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015). Within Europe, the recently adopted Dublin Declaration (Global Education Network Europe, 2022) links directly, yet goes well beyond, these advocacy initiatives.

The panel aims to discuss research developments in the area of civic and citizenship education and its desiderata, tackling issues related to its monitoring and evaluation, global influences, as well as European and national perspectives on research for policy and practice (e.g. Malak-Minkiewicz & Torney-Purta, 2021). It convenes experts on the importance of civic and citizenship education in democratically troublesome times and the study’s necessary evolution for the next cycle in 2027, examples of fruitful secondary analyses and interesting findings, and the way that research can support the monitoring of SDG thematic indicator 4.7. Importantly, the EERA’s mission in this space will be explored to ultimately present the motivation and intention to originate a new citizenship education research network within EERA.