Contribution
Description: This paper focuses on citizenship and education issues. The central idea is to explore Greek adolescents political conceptualizations on the 'ideal citizen' and the role of the state. The specific research questions refer to
a) whether adolescents in different social and cultural milieus develop different conceptions on citizenship and the role of the state, and
b) whether the students' concepts are in accordance with the aims of the Greek 'social and political education', as these are depicted in the textbook.
Citizenship education is broadly related to adolescents preparation for their roles and responsibilities as citizens (Kerr 2002). Current views on the issue could be summarized on two main points: (a) students active learning and (b) students socio-political experiences in extracurricular areas (Hepburn 1997, Hann 2001, Parker 2001).
Civic education is understood here as signifying a clear departure from understanding schooling as a "socializing-by-dictating" activity, and as a field where students' political experiences-inside and outside of schools-shape the way in which students interpret political knowledge taught to them in schools (Kontogiannopoulou-Polydorides 2002).
It should be noted that in current literature citizens, as cosmopolitan individuals (members of global community), are thought as related to each other under a set of common moral values beyond the state (Held ?a? McGrew 2004:142-148). While European dimensions of citizenship emphasize the extra/beyond state dimension, Greek citizenship has been highly emphasized in Greek political agenda as problematic in a sense of being strongly related to an intervening state. From this point of view traditional/Greek vs progressive/European notions of citizenship -could-emerge.
The point here though, is to keep an open theoretical dialogue to the field of a reflective understanding of students conceptualizations, which are not necessarily constructed in a way reflecting the content of the textbook and/or notions included in the global agenda. Moreover, Greek civic culture is viewed "as a form of structure in its own right, constituted autonomously through series of relationships among cultural elements" (Sommers 1995). Rather than approaching students conceptualizations as 'a collection of internalized expressions of subjective values or externalized expressions of social interests" the emphasis is given to "a configuration of representations and practices that exists as a contentious structural social phenomenon in its own right" (Sommers 1995). Students conceptualizations in this sense are not simply reflecting Greek civic culture as internalized concepts but as embedded in symbolic and historically constructed cultural structures and assigned meaning by their location in those structures.
We explore students' seemingly contradictory concepts as valid in their own right, in an effort to allow alternative possibilities for viewing the modes of the creation of meaning. The effort here, as in previous work, is to look for discontinuities rather than continuities and at the same time treat discontinuities as legitimate ways of creating meaning (Kontogiannopoulou-Polydorides et al. 2002).
Methodology: Students' concepts derive from a specific choosing of items-questions of IEA CIVICS Research (realized in May 1999). Their concepts have been identified through factor analysis.
The factors were estimated for students grouped by social origin-cultural capital. The assumption here is that cultural capital, related to students' social environment, experiences and practices, is important in shaping students' conceptualizations.
We examine the concepts that students from the two extreme cultural groups construct on citizenship and the responsibilities of the state, by exploring the following two steps:
i. the conceptual content of the (positively) chosen item in the IEA questionnaire ii. the specific blend of items (what the combination of items that the student chooses to agree to, indicates) (Kontogiannopoulou-Polydorides, Andritsopoulou, 2003).
The relevant concepts on citizenship and the role of the state in the textbook have been identified through qualitative analysis of the textbook. We used the IEA CIVICS Research items-questions as the main categories for the above analysis.
Conclusions: Students' conceptions on state and citizenship are not necessarily constructed in a way reflecting the content of the textbook. The proposed paper aims to examine convergence and divergence as well as explanations concerning why these emerge.
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