Abstract

This empirical study examines teacher students’ understandings of nation and citizenship though investigating their perceptions of national citizenship and human rights. Informants are teacher candidates for secondary schools in Norway. I investigated their understanding of shared values and definitions of national citizenship and whether and how they recognize unequal power relations. The analysis focuses on student teachers’ experiences in everyday life because citizenship and shared values can be defined both formally and informally, which is more subjective. For example, a person might be considered as a non-citizen despite of having full legal status because of his/her language skills, appearance or cultural knowledge (Murphy-Shigematsu, 2004). The paper concludes with a discussion of how teacher education programmes can provide a space for inclusive notions of citizenship that can serve a pluralist society.

Conceptual and theoretical framework

Citizenship consists different dimensions and criteria of national membership include more than one element. Delanty (2004) argues that there are two dimensions of citizenship: formal and informal/substantial citizenship. The former is defined as a legal relationship between state and individuals that focuses on rights and responsibilities, and the latter emphasizes more on identity and practice. Formal criteria of citizenship also vary in different countries, for example; the most important criterion to be the US citizen is to be born in the country (jus soli), and in Germany it is to be a German descent (jus sanguinis).

There are two approaches regarding the perception of nation: demos and ethnos. Nation can be understood as ancient Greek’s idea of demos which based on communication of people who share norms and regulations of a community, or as ethnos which based on an ethnic community distinct from other ethnic groups (Besson, 2006). Therefore, a conception of national citizenship as demos is based on rights and duties of citizens, while that as ethnos requires shared culture of an ethnic community. It usually accompanies with own name, shared mythology, history, an unique culture, such as language, custom and religion, and a connection to a particular place such as holy place, homeland (Smith, 1986).

These two approaches of nation correspond to the civic and ethnic of national citizenship in the modern society. According to Hjerm (2003)’s study about national pride, while cultural pride tend to be emphasized in Eastern European countries, civic dimension, such as democratic system and social welfare is also emphasized in Western European countries. He highlights that civic dimension of national pride negatively correlates with xenophobia. This study focus on these civic and ethnic dimensions of national citizenship and examine how teacher candidates understand nation and citizenship.

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