This proposal aims to discuss school cultures and practices around citizenship education in secondary schools of the border regions of Mainland Portugal. This is done based on interviews with teachers who coordinate civic education in their schools.

Citizenship education has taken centre stage at the global level, indicating the need to develop competencies for active global citizenship for democratic and sustainable development (UNESCO, 2016; EU, 2018). In this regard, schools play a central role as fundamental social context for the creation of opportunities to promote citizenship and participation (Biesta, 2011; Menezes & Ferreira, 2012).

Recently, Portugal has developed the National Strategy on Citizenship Education (Portugal, 2017), which highlights the importance of the students' involvement in the definition of school curricular dimensions in the scope of citizenship education. Moreover, schools have now the possibility to define 25% of the curriculum and to choose a curricular approach to develop citizenship education contents (disciplinary, transdisciplinary). Finally, an appreciation of local specificities emerges as an important factor for citizenship education in school contexts (Portugal, 2017).

It is our aim to understand how schools are, in the face of these regulations, interpreting this educational policy, giving rise to diversified school cultures. The appropriation of educational policies is not vertical but interpreted by educational actors inserted in their contexts (Ball, Maguire & Braun, 2012), which may give rise to specific school cultures around citizenship education. We understand schools’ cultures as a set of beliefs and perceptions shared by different educational actors (Stoll, 2000), influencing school practices around citizenship education. In this alignment we consider that schools located in rural border regions of Portugal may bring additional factors when considering the development of citizenship education. Although being a national level strategy and policy, there are specific factors that may influence how schools appropriate and contextualize the main guidelines.

This proposal is part of a PhD research project (Ref: SFRH/BD/143733/2019) under development that aims to study how different schools, in border regions of mainland Portugal, are developing their work on citizenship education in secondary education. Our intention is to understand how, in this work, dimensions such as the involvement and aspirations of young people and aspects related to local culture are considered in citizenship education in their schools. This PhD project is part of the GROW:UP – Grow Up in Border Regions in Portugal: Young People, Educational Pathways and Agendas project (PTDC/CED-EDG/29943/2017), also under development, which aims to study how young people construct their biographical and educational pathways and how different contexts seek to respond to young people's aspirations around these pathways.

This proposal is grounded in empirical data resulting from semi-structured interviews conducted with teachers that coordinate Citizenship Education development in their schools. Although there are 38 municipalities in border regions with Spain, we selected only schools that offer Secondary Education (Pordata, 2021). Therefore, 28 schools were selected and teachers in charge of coordinating citizenship education were invited to be part of the research. The interviews were conducted online, via zoom and the script included as dimensions: a) the impact of the National Strategy on Citizenship Education and construction of the School Citizenship Project; b) Work on Citizenship Education in School Context; c) CE and networking with the wider educational community. The main aim of the interviews was to understand how schools appropriated the National Strategy on Citizenship Education and what school practices resulted from this appropriation, considering the normative of this guiding document. Content analysis procedures were performed resulting in 5 dimensions of analysis that contribute to understand aspects that bring together and differentiate the different contexts regarding the appropriation of educational policy: a) perceptions and priorities of the school regarding citizenship education; b) approaches to develop citizenship education (disciplinary, transdisciplinary); c) network with the surrounding community to develop CE; d) integration of local specificities and local cultural heritage in citizenship education; e) openness and inclusion of young people in decision-making processes regarding CE. In addition, three structural documents that all schools have - Educational Projects, Annual Activity Plans and Strategy for Citizenship Education of the school – were analysed to understand the educational practices developed by each school regarding citizenship education. These documents were analysed focusing on the following dimensions: formal aspects around citizenship education; initiatives/projects/areas valued by the school in an EC work; networking strategies around citizenship education; valorisation of local aspects; youth involvement in the citizenship strategy. In this analysis, we also tried to understand the number of documents that fulfilled each category of analysis.

Data has shown that there are similar discourses on perceptions and priorities around CE, in a position very similar to what is consigned in the guiding documents: the development of social skills and an active citizenship in favour of a democratic society (Portugal, 2017). This is a vision also present in 9 educational projects and in the 6 CE Strategies of the School. However, two interviews seem to reveal a vision around CE that goes beyond, where these coordinators highlighted the importance of a work on CE that, not forgetting the national and global dimensions, is developed from the local level, influenced by the territory and affecting it, perceiving CE as an enabler of local development and learning as an exercise of citizenship (Lawy & Biesta, 2006). Some results also point to the valorisation of aspects of local heritage, where two documents fulfilled this dimension. It was also verified in three interviews that this is a present concern, namely in the development of strategies involving local stakeholders and social initiatives. Regarding the involvement of young people, namely in the choice of domains and projects to be developed, it is verified, so far, that only two schools have initiated strategies to involve them in the co-construction of the CE project, as enshrined by Decree-Law 55/2018. This dimension was not fulfilled by any guiding document. It should be noted, however, that two coordinators extolled the importance of this involvement, even if it was not enshrined in the project they coordinate. Results suggest that schools integrate this educational policy differently, as in the involvement of the students or in the valorisation of local cultures, converging in other aspect as in the discourse on priorities. Similarities may be explained due to the transversality resulting from the some strict regulations present in the guiding documents.

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