Title: Citizenship education curricula: the changes and challenges presented by global and European integration
Abstract: Abstract Citizenship education has been the subject of growing attention in policy and academic circles over the past 20 years. Citizenship education curricula have typically focused on national institutions, issues, and ties. Citizenship education has been closely bound up with the legitimacy of the nation‐state, and alternative institutions and citizenships thus present a significant challenge not only to the contents of national curricula, but also to the traditional purpose and assumptions of citizenship education. The articles in this special issue seek to explore how nation‐states have responded to this challenge by exploring, from a comparative perspective, the ways in which one supra‐national, regional citizenship (namely European citizenship) has been defined in the citizenship education curricula of states from across Europe. This Introduction describes the supra‐national policy developments that have led European states to consider reforming their citizenship education curricula. Keywords: citizenship educationcurriculaeducation policyEuropeanization Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank Ian Westbury for his thoughtful feedback as well as the Center for Urban and Multicultural Education at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) for final editing and proofing of this special edition. Notes 1. See UNESCO Education for All; http://www.unesco.org/education/efa, accessed 1 September 2008. 2. EU education policy co‐operation now encompasses: language learning; information technology; mathematics and science; standards in all the major subject areas (key competencies); guidance policy; accountability; credentials recognition and acceptance; teacher training; mobility; life‐long learning; and citizenship education. 3. The EU now has 27 member states, each of which has had to meet strict political and economic standards in order to gain entry. Membership of the CoE is determined solely on the basis of political concerns, and, as a result, the institution has a larger and more diverse set of 47 members. 4. Cf. Council of Europe, The Europe of Cultural Co‐operation: Education; see http://www.coe.int/T/E/Cultural_Co-operation/education/, accessed 1 September 2008. 5. The Bologna Process seeks to create a 'European Higher Education Area' in order to facilitate greater mobility, employability, and competitiveness. Specific areas of concern include: the harmonization of institutional structures; the development of a comparable grading and credit‐transfer systems; encouraging the mobility of students, teachers, and researchers; co‐operation on quality assurance; and the European dimension of higher education. See European Commission, The Bologna Process: Towards the European Higher Education Area, available online at: http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/educ/bologna/bologna_en.html accessed 1 September 2008. 6. The Bologna Process was initiated in 1998 as an intergovernmental process outside of the EU system of governance. Although it remains an intergovernmental rather than an EU process, the European Commission is now a partner in the Process (Wachter Citation2004). 7. For example, over 90% of European universities participate in the higher education programme (known as the Erasmus programme) and over 1.9 million students have studied abroad under its auspices. EU support for the various mobility programmes is reflected in the substantial increase in funding allocated from the Community budget to these projects over the past 15 years (from [euro]133m. in 1995 to over [euro]400 m. in 2008) (see European Commission for Education and Training, Erasmus: available online at: http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelong-learning-programme/doc80_en.htm, accessed 1 September 2008. 8. The Council of Europe also ran a project on 'Secondary education for Europe' from 1991 to 1996. One of the goals of this project was to define the European dimension to education, and to consider how European dimension to values, citizenship, cultural heritage, and a general 'European awareness' could be promoted (Luisoni Citation1997: 73).
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 67
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