The Nation, Europe and Migration: A comparison of geography, history and citizenship education curricula in Greece, Germany and England

Author(s):

Daniel Faas(presenting / submitting)Daniel Faas(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2011

Network:

7. Social Justice and Intercultural Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

07 SES 03 B, Intercultural Education Integrated

Paper Session

Time:

2011-09-13

17:15-18:45

Room:

KL 23/140,G, 23

Chair:

Dana Moree

Contribution

National curricula are being challenged and transformed by the impact of migration and European integration. This paper examines how cultural diversity and Europe are intertwined in geography, history and citizenship education curricula in Greece, Germany and England. This question is explored using quantitative and qualitative methods through a case study of curriculum content and discourses of five years compulsory schooling in all three countries. One might expect Germany and Greece, which have historically embraced a more monocul-tural vision, as having largely similar approaches. Yet, the cross-national analysis illustrates that the relationships between European and multicultural values are put together in rather different ways depending on the school subject. Whilst history is ethnocentric in all three countries, Greek geography and citizenship curricula veer between ethnocentrism and Euro-peanism. In contrast, in England, notions of multicultural Britishness are reinforced in geog-raphy and citizenship education. German curricula privilege national and European topics, but attempts have been made to address diversity, particularly in geography. Curriculum analyses have hitherto largely focused on either national and European dimensions or multicultural and global dimensions. This study provides new insights into how these dimensions intersect and their combined effect on migration and citizenship education in European societies.

Method

The study focuses on the extent to which Europe and multiculturalism have been intertwined in geography, history and citizenship education curricula in Germany, England and Greece. I found these subjects particularly important to analyse as they have been found to respond to cultural diversity and calls for a European dimension in education because of their identity-formation intent. Historically, these three subjects, and citizenship education in particular, have represented the state’s most formal and direct means of creating citizens and shaping young people’s identities. Two main criteria were applied to the curricular analysis in an attempt to minimise cross-national problems of equivalence: (a) age and (b) compulsory schooling. Most students were aged between ten and fifteen and my analysis included the first five years of secondary schooling. The quantitative analysis referred to the presence of European, multicultural and national (including subnational) topics in the curriculum.The qualita-tive analysis focused on the discourses employed in the curriculum. For example, attention was given as to the extent to which ‘Europe’ was constructed in political, economic, geo-graphical, historical or socio-cultural terms and the ways in which these discourses combine European and multicultural issues.

Expected Outcomes

The curriculum analysis further revealed that, in most cases, the relationship between (national), European and multicultural values and agendas was put together in rather different ways depending on the school subject. Although history was largely ethnocentric in all three countries, the level of ethnocentrism was considerably higher in Greece than in both England and Germany. In fact, in Germany, there was not much difference between national and European history topics. The analysis of the geography curriculum indicated Germany’s at-tempts through recent curricular reforms to add more multicultural and global topics to its European dimension. Similarly, in Greece, geography was perhaps the most ideal subject to trace recent policy shifts – in this case from ethnocentrism to a more European dimension. In England, the political approach of allying the national with the multicultural could also be seen in education where both citizenship education and geography revealed an equal number of national and multicultural topics, recently complemented by a more global dimension. Despite converging trends around the need to respond to the increasing cultural diver-sity across Europe, EU member states continue to set different priorities in relation to European and multicultural issues.

References

Alexiadou N. (2007) The Europeanisation of education policy: researching changing govern-ance and ‘new’ modes of coordination. Research in Comparative and International Education, 2 (2), 102-16. Banks J.A. 2004. Multicultural education: historical development, dimensions, and practice, in Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education, edited by J.A. Banks and C.A.M. Banks. New York: Macmillan, 3-29. Coulby, D. (2000) Beyond the National Curriculum: Curricular Centralism and Cultural Di-versity in Europe and the USA (London: Routledge). Council of Ministers of Education (1988) Resolution of the Council and the Ministers of Edu-cation: meeting within the Council on the European dimension in education of 24 May 1988. Official Journal of the European Communities, C 177. Dale, R. (2009) Studying Globalisation and Europeanisation in Education: Lisbon, the Open Method of Coordination and beyond. In R. Dale and S. Robertson (eds) Globalisation and Europeanisation in Education. (Oxford: Symposium Books), 121-40. Department for Children, Schools and Families (2007) Guidance on the Duty to Promote Community Cohesion, DCSF/00598/2007. (London: HMSO). European Commission (2008) Migration and mobility: challenges and opportunities for EU education systems. Available online at: http://ec.europa.eu/education/school21/com423_en.pdf, accessed 9 February 2010. Hinderliter Ortloff, D. (2005) Becoming European: a framing analysis of three countries’ civics education curricula. European Education, 37 (4), 35-49. Kultusministerkonferenz (1996) Interkulturelle Bildung und Erziehung in der Schule: Beschluss der Kultusministerkonferenz vom 25.10.1996 (Bonn: Sekretariat der Ständigen Konferenz der Kultusminister der Länder in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland). Marshall, H. (2009) Educating the European citizen in the global age: engaging with the post-national and identifying a research agenda. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 41(2), 247-267. Schissler, H. and Soysal, Y.N. (eds.) (2005) The Nation, Europe and the World: Textbooks and Curricula in Transition (Oxford: Berghahn Books).

Author Information

Daniel Faas (presenting / submitting)

Trinity College Dublin

Sociology

Dublin

Daniel Faas (presenting / submitting)

Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, Republic of

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