The project, from which this paper arises, is an EU funded student exchange programme between Usak University, Turkey, and Leicester University, England (UK), to investigate understandings of Europeanness and raise awareness of European citizenship issues in Turkey in relation to proposed Turkish accession to the EU. It is explicitly designed to allow participants to explore their perceptions and understandings of citizenship at a crucial time in the reshaping of European identity. It investigates where and how they locate their constructed identities in a period of fluidity and tensions caused by shifting pattern of cultural identity, globalisation and the emergence of additional layers of identity, such as the European Union (Giddens, 1991; Kearney 2003). Education provides an important arena in which such tensions can be explored and understood. It is both a site and a conduit for struggles between competing ideas (Foucault 1976). Schools can be construed as sites of national and local policy processes (Grace, 1995; Riley and Docking 2002), sustained by asymmetrical and negotiable relationships of power, where competing values are contested (Starratt, 2007). This was partially recognised in the English education system in 2002 when the government made Citizenship Education a compulsory subject for pupils between the ages of 11-16. However, it did not follow the recommendation of the Committee of Inquiry it had commissioned that the subject should be compulsory from 5 years old, revealing a political ambivalence about the subject (Wilkins 2000) Parallel developments have taken place across most European states, albeit with different emphasis according to the national context (Kerr 2005, Osler and Starkey 1999). Identities are constructed in particular contexts to reflect how people position themselves in relation to others at any one point in time. Membership of a state or institution can therefore lead to the development of particular local and global perspectives on identity (Kearney 2003). This pursuit and enactment of self-identity is central to the development of agency (Giddens, 1991) through which people interact with others and with constructed social systems/structures (Giddens 1984). This paper reports on data gathered from exchange programme to answer questions about participants’ perceptions of: • European citizenship and citizenship education • The impact of EU expansion on European identity (particularly in the context of Turkish accession) • how schooling in each other’s countries reflect issues related to citizenship education • how schools help students to think critically about citizenship issues and European identity

Participants in the exchange programme and their post graduate colleagues in each university completed a questionnaire in Autumn 2008 reflecting on the extent to which they identified themselves with Europe. In England 80 students on Primary (3-11years old) and Secondary (11-19 years old) Initial Teacher Education courses completed the questionnaire. In Turkey 600 trainee teachers of Social Studies, Classrooms and Turkish, who will be responsible for teaching Citizenship in Primary level I and II classrooms, completed the questionnaire. During the exchange visits in Spring 2009, seven Turkish and British students will take part in moderated Focus Groups about citizenship and schooling in their host countries. The interviews will be carried out in participants’ mother tongues, recorded digitally and later transcribed and translated. All exchange students will be invited to construct blogs on the Project website to discuss their views of European citizenship, identity and schooling with colleagues and tutors.

Analysis of the data from the participants in this projects falls into two main aspects. The data arising from the questionnaires paints a broad picture of how postgraduate students in the participating university departments in Turkey and England perceive their and their country’s identities in relation to the European Union. Early analysis of the data suggests students hold differing views, but most are positive if sceptical. Early findings suggest that English participants showed considerably inaccurate knowledge of the construction of the European Union, but generally thought it had brought benefits to Britain, although there was some ambivalence about this. The countries they tended to think least like their own were those more distant from Britain. Analysis of data collected from the focus groups and blogs will focus on participants’ views on how schools (in both their home and the exchange country) construct, enact and disseminate notions of citizenship.