Being a democratic citizen is related to certain rights and duties and certain skills to be able to ensure this. Communication, participating, and shared construction of meaning appear as basic skills for democratic citizens. The purpose of this article is to describe and discuss some changes and possibilities to develop these skills in a Kurdish setting where this represents a new and completely different way of teaching. Iraqi Kurdistan is country with a relatively short tradition of democracy, and teaching these skills in a Kurdish classroom in basic education is the focus of this paper.

The research is focussed on the question: How can one change the teaching in order to improve the pupils’ ability to be active, participating democratic citizens. The aim is not to make a definite list, but to put forward and discuss some ideas used by a teacher.

According to Kalliola, Nakari and Pesonen (2006) practical changes are more likely to occur where the participants involve themselves in active expressions of varying views and give and receive critical (but basically positive) feedback. In this project participants from different parts of the educational system and different parts of the world are involved.

Critical, democratic participation and using language in exploring dialogues are the two main theoretical perspectives in the paper. Democracy is a principle as much as a set of institutions and according to Osler and Starkey (2010, p. 50) democracy is a dynamic process of enabling people to live together through the provision of security and justice. But this depends on the citizens as active participators. Communities where conflicts are solved through participatory processes are in a mode of a more robust form of democracy with a more direct form of citizen participation and this again is an important element in “strong” democracy (Hyslop-Margison & Thayer, 2009). They also refer to the notions minimal or thin and maximal or thick democracy. These notions are used when I in this research discuss the observations in the classroom.

The pupils should learn to master language and to explore for more information (Mercer, 2008), to elaborate on information in order to construct knowledge (Wertsch, 1991, 1998) and to have dialogues with peers to create meaning (Bruner, 1999; Dewey, 2008; Vygotskij & Kozulin, 2001). Mastering of language and communication are both important when educating pupils to be active, democratic participators in their community.

When the pupils participate in exploring dialogues they investigate, elaborate and “think aloud”. They take a risk when presenting not quite finished ideas. “Risktaking” depends on experiencing confidence in the classroom, and language functions both as a psychological tool in the learning processes of each pupil and as a shared cultural tool (Wertsch, 1991). The aim is for the exploring dialogues in collaborative groups to be democratic dialogues (Kalliola, et al., 2006). Peer collaboration and dialogues increases the level of pupil-activity (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1989; Rogoff, 1995), and can be focused on and learned in the schools (Mercer & Dawes, 2008; Santa & Engen, 1996).

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