Within European education and social policy, the promotion of active citizenship has been considered to be one tool to enhance democracy and social cohesion. It has been a strand of the social cohesion element of the Lisbon strategy within the Education and Training Work Programme (European Commission 2001). The method used for monitoring progress made towards the Lisbon Strategy in the field of education is through the use of indicators. In 2005 the research project on which this symposium is based, Active Citizenship in a Learning Context, began in order to develop exploratory research on indicator development in the field of active citizenship. The aims of the project, ‘Active Citizenship in a learning context’ was to develop exploratory research on indicators on active citizenship and learning for active citizenship with the purpose to monitor the success of education and training policies in this field. The project aimed for a pragmatic and where possible empirical approach to the development of results. This project has a research network. It is comprised of 20 key experts from the fields of education (formal and non-formal), sociology and political science working in the field of active citizenship. It contained representatives of major international surveys and data collections: the European Social Survey, the IEA’s survey on citizenship (International Civic and Citizenship Education Study), the OECD and Eurydice. Active citizenship was defined as; ‘Participation in civil society, community and/or political life, characterised by mutual respect and non-violence and in accordance with human rights and democracy’ (Hoskins, 2006) The role of the network has been to provide a living source of knowledge on active citizenship from across Europe. It brought together a variety of knowledge and experience to inform the development of indicators and subsequently policy development in the education field. The network has met 4 times and there was 1 conference. Some of the results of this network will be presented in this symposium. The first results were two composite indicators. The first of these was the Active Citizenship Composite Indicator (Hoskins et al 2006). The revised model is based on 61 indicators from existing data, predominantly European Social Survey data from 2002 specific module developed on this topic. The composite indicator was comprised of 3 types of participation: Representative democracy, Protest and social change, Community participation and a fourth dimension on Democratic values combining items on democracy, human rights and intercultural understanding. This composite Indicator marked a useful starting point for measuring active citizenship and was used in the 2007 Education and Training Progress Report on the Lisbon Strategy (European Commission 2007). This symposium discusses the latest results of this research project on measuring civic competence (the attitudes, values, knowledge and skills required to be an active citizen) and the learning inputs required to develop civic competence. The symposium will also analyse the competences that teachers require to teach citizenship and qualitative research on how critical instances can be used to develop civic competence. The final contribution will reflect on the European Commission process of the development of indicators on citizenship.

Quantitative mainly composite indicators Qualitative mainly document analysis

Indicators on various aspects of Active Citizenship in a Learning Context