Session Information
25 SES 12, Children’s Capacities for Conceptualising and Research
Parallel Paper Session
Contribution
Nowadays, we live in times of excitement towards our private life. This has implications such asfamily relationships, compromising the process of socializing and integration as well as the participation in political issues. This is an image that also describes children’s position and disposition to be part of school activities.
It is well known that democratic experiences in school develop children’s conscience and civic attitude. Today, curricula and educational school projects have a wider component of civic and citizenship training, but are schools truly facilitating a more democratic way of living? Do schools have a true established culture of citizenship? Have students time and space (in formal and informal way) to discuss and explain their points of view, opinions and contributes about school decisions that directly affects their school experiences?
Children’s rights provide a provocation to think and practice differently but, are teachers ready, aware and “empowered” to prepare children to become committed citizens, assuming an active rolecapable of controlling the world that surrounds them by the conscientious exercise of its freedom and responsibility?
It’s also known that teachers have a strategic and fundamental role in the way that students’ actions are not only passive and submissive to what is institutionalized by schools, and educational policies, but otherwise it should be more active and more committed, promoting its own subject condition.
Children, being asked to express themselves about decision-making, feeding critical pointsof view about daily life school problems, become themselves the ones who promote a culture of citizenship, wanting to bein places and situations, taking care of their rightsand not being tolerant towards injustice.
This essay is part of a larger case study research, following a critical and qualitative approach. We start from the base that all and each student has its own personal history as an active subject/individual. And we assume that school today is still educating citizens with a passive character.
Society and its’ formal, non-formal and informal educative institutions (school, family and civil-organizations in general) has, nowadays the great responsibility to be partners in a difficult educative process of young generations that will be the future adults. Promoting educative democratic experiences since young children, make them sure that they have the right to be children, students, individual and social learners to be persons in developed societies.
The goals of this research were to know:
1. What students’ feelings regarding their absence in certain school spaces and moments.
2. How students react to certain decisions taken by the school decision-make bodies.
3. What are teachers’ perceptions relating to the exercise and participation of students in different school contexts and meet the real chances of students in a more participant and active citizenship.
Interviews with students and teachers show different opinions, however with a common certainty as to what concerns the relevant and necessary presence of students in school decision-making bodies.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Biesta, G. & Lawy, R. (2006). From teaching citizenship to learning democracy: overcoming individualism in research, policy and practice. Cambridge Journal of Education, vol. 36, nº 1, pp. 63 - 79. Carspecken, P. (1996). Critical Ethnography in Education Research: A Theoretical and Practical Guide. London: Routledge. Covell, K. (2010). School engagement and rights-respecting schools, Cambridge Journal of Education, Vol.40, nº1, pp. 39 - 51. Dubet, F. & Martuccelli, D. (1996) A l’école. Sociologie de l’expérience scolaire. Paris: Seuil. European Commission (1998) Treaty of Amsterdam, Education and Active Citizenship in the European Union, Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Franklin, B. (2001). The New Handbook of Children's Rights: Comparative Policy and Practice. London: Routledge. Galston, W. (2004). Civic Education and Political Participation. Political Science and Politics, 37, pp. 263 - 266. Guggenheim, M. (2005). What's Wrong with Children's Rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Haste, H. (2004). Constructing the citizen. Political Psychology. Vol. 25, nº 3, pp.413 - 439. Hedtke, R. Zimenkova, T. & Hippe, T. (2008). A trinity of transformation, europeanization and democratization? Current research on citizenship education in Europe. Journal of Social Education, vol. 6, pp. 5-20. Ichilov, O. (2003). Education and democratic citizenship in a changing world. In Sears, Huddy & Jervis (eds) Oxford handbook of political psychology, Oxford University Press, pp. 637-668. Jimerson, S., Campos, E. & Grief, J. (2003). Toward an understanding of definitions and measures of school engagement and related terms. The California School Psychologist, 8, pp. 7 – 27. Lindlof, T. (1995). Qualitative Communication Research Methods. London: Sage. Richards, L. (2005). Handling qualitative data: a practical guide. London: Sage.
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