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Abstract

Contemporary liberal democracies face complex and disruptive challenges, such as toxic populism, culture wars, political polarization, religious fundamentalism, the climate emergency, global conflicts, and the influence of powerful social media platforms. This is the disconcerting world that young people are growing up in and need support in understanding and mediating. This paper critically analyses the Australian Civics and Citizenship education curricular response using the theoretical insights of Basil Bernstein to understand the types of citizens it aims to nurture. Through analysing the language of the Australian Curriculum, the processes and intellectual influences behind its creation, and specific curricular content descriptors, the paper illuminates the social and ideological assumptions embedded in its vision of educating for democratic citizenship. We argue that political education remains a domain that Australian curriculum framers, schools, and teachers have approached cautiously. The paper highlights the curriculum's inadequacy in addressing early twenty-first-century political imperatives related to democratic deconsolidation, falling short of Bernsteinian ideals.

Keywords

Citizenship education Basil Bernstein Australian curriculum political literacy

High quality political education which provides young people with opportunities to explore contemporary social and political issues, and which supports them to have an active voice in contributing to debates around pressing local, national and global events, is a compelling civic necessity. Contemporary liberal democracies face complex and disruptive challenges. Phenomena such as toxic populism and culture wars, political polarisation, religious fundamentalism, the climate emergency, global conflicts and a proliferation of increasingly powerful social media platforms represent major issues for late modern civic modes of existence (Bauman, 2013; Kennedy, 2019; Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2019). This is the disconcerting world that young people are growing up in and need support in understanding and mediating. Civics and Citizenship Education [CCE] has the potential to play an important role in structuring and shaping school approaches to developing active and informed citizenship amongst young people - both globally and in Australia (Black, 2017; Carr et al., 2018; Davies et al., 2019; Heggart et al., 2020; Kennedy, 2019; Peterson & Bentley, 2017). However, political education is a frontier that Australian policymakers, schools and teachers have approached with caution.

The specific purpose of this paper is to critically analyse the Australian CCE curriculum, guided by the theoretical thinking and insights of Basil Bernstein, to more fully understand the kinds of citizens that it seeks to produce. It addresses the research question ‘What light does the thinking and writing of Basil Bernstein cast upon the kinds of knowledge which are privileged in the Australian Curriculum: Civics and Citizenship [AC:CC]?’ Through analysing the language of the AC:CC, the processes and intellectual thinking that have influenced the creation of the document, alongside some of the curricular content descriptors, are unpacked. Drawing upon a completed Master's project (Casey, 2023) and an in-progress doctoral thesis (Nicolson, Forthcoming), the paper illuminates through discourse analysis of key documents not only the kinds of citizens the AC:CC seeks to nurture, but also the social and ideological assumptions present in its positioning of students as citizens. We highlight the inadequacy of the curriculum's response to early twenty first century political imperatives in relation to democratic deconsolidation.

A Global and National Context of Democratic Deconsolidation

Current policy and the CCE curriculum in Australia were developed largely before the marked acceleration of democratic deconsolidation in late modern societies observed across the second decade of the twenty-first century (Kennedy, 2019). This term describes the process by which ‘a sizable minority of citizens loses its belief in democratic values, becomes attracted to authoritarian, populist or simplistic alternatives, and start supporting and voting for ‘antisystem’ parties, candidates, or movements that flout or oppose constitutive elements of liberal democracy’ (Foa & Mounk, 2017: 9; see also Inglehart, 2016).

Generally, a declining trust towards most things political can be observed throughout the world (Bauman, 2013; Riddle, 2022; Verma & Apple, 2020). Longitudinal data from the World Values Survey found that between 1995 and 2014, the number of citizens who reported a preference for a government leader who was ‘strong’ and who did not need to bother with elections increased in almost every developed and developing democracy (Foa & Mounk, 2017: 6). Pew Research Center data from 2020 further found that one in five American citizens, compared to one in 16 in 1995, agreed that it would be ‘good’ or ‘very good’ for the military to govern the nation instead of elected officials (Greenwood, 2021). This predilection for the strong, authoritarian leader who is not hamstrung by judicial or legislative checks on power has been popular in several nations.

Examples can be seen in Russia's Vladimir Putin, Recep Erdoğan in Turkey, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu. Donald Trump's stubborn denial of defeat in the 2020 U.S. presidential election although less extreme than, for instance, Putin's suppression of political opponents, still notoriously stands out. In Australia, the rise of populist right movements, far-right extremism and far-right ultra-nationalism since the turn of the millennium has been highlighted by several scholars (Hutchinson, 2021; Mauk, 2024; McSwinney & Cottle, 2017; Poynting & Briskman, 2018). This preference for demagogic, illiberal, or populist characteristics in leaders indicates a growing appeal for majoritarian styles of autocratic leadership by some populations willing to exchange ideals of civic cohesion and human rights for leaders believed to deliver practical results, albeit via undemocratic means.

Whilst democratic ideals and institutions have helped to navigate previous societal challenges, global trends indicate decline across many markers of democratic and social health (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2023; Evans et al., 2019; International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), 2021; Neelam, 2023; Putnam, 2000; Repucci & Slipowitz, 2021). These trends necessitate new understandings for preparing young people and educators to navigate increasingly disruptive socio-political realities (Crick, 2019; Print, 2023; Tam, 2023).

Australian citizens’ support for democracy has wavered in line with international trends. The 2017 Lowy Institute's Attitudes to the World report indicated historic lows in Australians’ preference for democracy as a form of government. Survey data on attitudes towards democracy reported that more than one third (36%) of Australians agree that ‘in some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable’ or ‘it doesn’t matter what kind of government we have’ (Oliver, 2017: 4). In younger people (18 to 44 years old) this reached 42%. While these figures have somewhat decreased since 2017, (26% of Australians; 33% of young Australians surveyed in 2023) they remain a cause for concern (Neelam, 2023). Recent work by Evans, Grattan and McCaffrie (2019) traced sharp declines in political trust in Australia between 2015 and 2018. They noted reasons for growing distrust in democracy in Australia including: a perceived similarity among major political parties; excessive power held by business and media institutions; a lack of representation for women, diverse cultures, and young people; too much compromise in political decision-making; disproportionate influence of minor parties and independents; adversarial conflicts within and between political parties; emphasis on personality politics over policy; a disconnect between citizen issues and political agendas; and, frustration with limited accountability for broken promises. Similar sentiments were corroborated in a recent student article by Xu (2022), which called for a more realistic admission of the ‘current flaws in politics’ (46) to help restore young people's political support and engagement.

Limited Educational Response in Australia to Democratic Deconsolidation?

While policy goals in Australia affirm the role of education in striving for healthy democracy, several scholars have argued that both policy and curriculum can in fact paradoxically constrain learner outcomes and educator practice (Doecke & Huo, 2024; Holloway & Larsen Hedegaard, 2023). This represents a serious risk to Australian democratic health as the nation accelerates towards destabilising political and social outcomes. There is growing distrust by young people, and Australians more broadly, in democratic institutions such as government, media, and business (Evans et al., 2019); flatlining CCE learning outcomes evidenced by young Australians in triannual national testing (Fraillon et al., 2020); and, ongoing devaluation of the place and status of Humanities and Social Sciences education in the Australian educational context (Pike, 2023).

As Australian State systems and schools embark on their journeys implementing Version 9.0 of the Australian Curriculum [AC] from May 2022, they have done so relying on the same key policy texts and a curriculum that has struggled to respond to the phenomenon of democratic deconsolidation since its launch in 2012. Despite efforts to maintain its contemporary relevance, the Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Civics and Citizenship (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), 2012) has remained largely static over this period to ironically become ‘out of shape’ in the increasingly fractured playing field of liberal democracy. Moreover, notwithstanding two revisions since its publication in October 2012, overseen by the conservative jurisdiction of a Liberal/National Federal government, the AC:CC itself has grown unfit for purpose. The task of teaching CCE in a global context of democratic deconsolidation has changed, but the policy map has, if anything, retreated.

Education has long been accepted for its role in nurturing and sustaining democratic citizens and societies (Dewey, 1916). Contemporary scholars reiterate its promise as a vehicle for reversing democratic decline and responding to many of the current and emerging threats to democracy (Culp et al., 2023; Print, 2023). While the notion of education as an emancipatory cure for a ‘populist disease’ has been critiqued by some as potentially representing little more than progressive ideological wishful thinking (Sant & Brown, 2021), significant opportunities remain for realising the benefits of education as, in and for democratic citizenship (Aly et al., 2022). As Fyfe (2007: 130) observed nearly twenty years ago, ‘The re-enactment of political literacy is surely worthy of further attention by academic commentators, policymakers and practitioners alike in the ongoing development of civics and citizenship in Australia’.

A Bernsteinian Framework

Basil Bernstein's work on the sociology of education has long been misunderstood and subsequently largely ignored by the academic community (Barrett, 2012: 73; Frandji & Vitale, 2011: 2). His writing has been criticised as being too dense to be accessible and too theoretical to have practical applications (Bernstein, 2000b: xi). This is unfortunate, considering that he ‘arguably tells us more about curriculum than any other writer. He provides a well-developed set of concepts and criteria for understanding curriculum’ (Harley, 2010: iii). Bernstein is important not only because of the useful tools he provides for discussing curricula, but also for the way he links curricular analysis to what it means for societal participation.

Bernstein was centrally concerned with the changing relations generated within the pedagogic discourse of the school curriculum when education reform takes place (1975, 1990). He wrote about an ideological space that opens up when knowledge from the site of production – normally the academy – is recontextualised into schools (2000a). For Bernstein, this had much to do with the power relations inherent in pedagogical transactions, but it could equally apply to the wider educational aims that come into play when a disciplinary learning area (such as CCE) is recontextualised. Bernstein observed that the enacted curriculum in schools is reconstituted by an explicit or inexplicit set of principles (‘recontextualising discourse’) that reorders knowledge or practice into a form suited for pedagogic practice (Bernstein, 2000a).

Bernstein (2000b) defined re-contextualisation as the process of developing a new educational order through selectively appropriating, relocating, refocusing and relating disciplinary discourses. In school and classroom contexts, teachers reframe a number of different discourses in the practice of planning lessons and teaching (Bernstein, 1990; Bernstein & Solomon, 1999). This is a messy process - one in which the presence and expectations of curricular expectations, students, school objectives, pedagogy and time are all necessary and invariably more pressing than questions of epistemological purity and definitional clarity. Nevertheless, clarity of purpose is essential to successful teaching and learning.

Among Bernstein's key contributions was the proposition that, within the institutionalisation of schooling hitherto, knowledge had conventionally been organised, classified, and transmitted in ways that had reinforced broader structures of power and social control (Bernstein, 2000b). In other words, curricula are not power-neutral, but fundamentally tied to politics – an observation subsequently strongly supported and exemplified in the work of Michael Apple (Apple, 2003). The curriculum, as defined by how ‘certain periods of time and their contents are brought into a special relationship with each other’ (Bernstein, 1975: 79) has its basis in a marketplace rhetoric, which favours certain subjects and ways of thinking over others. This insight applies with especial force when the curriculum content of a disciplinary area such as CCE involves engagement with political content matter and contemporary issues. A Bernsteinian approach to analysing CCE in Australia has the benefit of pinpointing the mechanisms through which dominant values and interests are imbued in the articulation, distribution, interpretation and enactment of educational knowledge (Bernstein, 2000b).

Central to Bernstein's work was the relationship between symbolic orders (rules around the selection of content), social orders (the nature of practice), and how these two sets of processes structure the nature of experience or, in the case of schooling, learning. Bernstein's conceptual framework is capable of delineating the structures and devices of social control and compliant socialisation; at the same time, his ideas are able to locate the degree of structural autonomy and agency that teachers have in accommodating curriculum aspirations articulated by federal authorities and in implementing the Australian curriculum (in successive iterations), in accordance with State and local school settings.

Most schools’ curricula in Australia, in common with many countries in both wealthier and poorer socioeconomic regions, are dominated by highly defined subjects with detailed articulations in programmes of study. In Bernstein's terms the subjects are strongly classified and framed. Strong interests to preserve the collection codes within disciplines have reinforced the traditional school discipline areas (Bleazby, 2015). The existence of high stakes testing within English and Maths further drives this hierarchy, as well as political and community expectations that schools’ prime role is to secure the basics of literacy and numeracy. The next order of priority tends to lie in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) domain with their powerful vocational and national economic development drivers. As strong classification promotes closed relationships, subject loyalty, and boundary maintenance, so too does it encourage a relative weighting between disciplines. As Bernstein suggested, the ‘stronger the classification and the framing, the more the educational relationship tends to be hierarchical and ritualized…’ (1973: 376). This disequilibrium in educational knowledge results in different values being placed on different school subjects. As a relative newcomer at the curriculum table and lacking both a deep disciplinary tradition and often disciplinary specialist teachers, CCE generally lacks the status of more established subject areas.

A lack of status for CCE in Australia was manifest, for example, in the way subjects were located within the hierarchy of three phases of implementation of the Australian Curriculum [AC], and the subordinate (and unassessed or reported upon) status of General Capabilities [GCs] and Cross-Curricular Priorities [CCPs]. The latter were designated as Sustainability, Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures and the evidence is that they have not been priorities in curriculum enactment (Salter & Maxwell, 2016). CCE was relegated to the third and final phase of curriculum implementation in the rollout of the AC. There is a dominant vertical discourse predominantly framing the AC structure; subjects are laid out in a ‘…coherent, explicit, systematically principled structure, hierarchically organised…’ format (Bernstein & Solomon, 1999: 273). What exists is a collection type curriculum – ‘rigid, differentiating and hierarchical in character’ (Bernstein, 1975: 82).

According to Bernstein (1985), pedagogic discourse denotes the aggregate relations of contents and competencies to be transmitted to learners; it concerns how curricular knowledge is transmitted and acquired in the teaching process. He further noted that the pedagogic discourse is guided by the pedagogic device. The pedagogic device is the ensemble of rules or procedures by which policy knowledge is selectively translated into what is taught to whom, when, where, why, and how it is evaluated or deemed to have been acquired (Bernstein, 1990, 2000a, 2000b).

Bernstein pointed out that citizens cannot become ‘transformational’ without access to specific theoretical knowledge. Bernstein differentiated between esoteric and mundane knowledge, ‘the means through which society navigates between the concerns of everyday life (the mundane) and a ‘transcendental realm’’ (Bernstein, 2000b: 29 in Wheelahan, 2010: 48–49). For Bernstein, mundane knowledge related to the day to day ‘ordinariness’ of life, whereas the esoteric allowed one to imagine what might be and to understand how and why things are the way they are. In order to become a transformative citizen, young people needed to have access to de-contextualised knowledge. That is, esoteric knowledge that permits the knower to transfer information and concepts from one setting and apply them in another. In this way, transformative citizens can seek to transform the world around them, rather than act as passive participants within existing rules and frameworks.

In learning CCE, students encounter biases that ‘lie deep within the very structure of the educational system's processes of transmission and acquisition and their social assumptions’ (Bernstein, 2000b, p. xix). For Bernstein, it is the kinds of knowledge students are given access to that has implications for the practice of democracy. He posited that effective democracy relies upon universal access to abstract theoretical knowledge because ‘such knowledge is the means that society uses to conduct its conversation about what it should be like and how it should change’ (Wheelahan, 2010a, p. 48). Involvement in that conversation is to participate in civic life, to be an active member of an ever-changing community. Bernstein declared that in order for this participation to take place, individuals ‘must feel that they have a stake in society’ (Bernstein, 2000b, p. xx). Not only should they feel that society gives them something, but also that they can offer society something in return. Secondly, he declared that ‘people must have confidence that the political arrangements they create will realise these stakes, or give grounds if they do not’ (Bernstein, 2000b, p. xx). In order to be a part of society, a person needs to feel that their part in it is worthwhile, that their active participation is meaningful. As Jerome and Kisby (2022) put it ‘social progress can best be achieved by engaging young people in collective acts of citizenship, in which political problems are met with political responses’ (p. 257). These kinds of perspectives, translated into a series of pedagogic rights, underpinned Bernstein's conceptualisation of knowledge and power.

Shaping Civics and Citizenship in the Australian Curriculum

Civics and political education scholar Murray Print characterised the evolution of CCE in Australia as ‘mercurial’, describing how its fortunes ebb and flow ‘in response to political ideology, federal election outcomes and bureaucratic whim’ (Print, 2017: 7). Yet the CCE curriculum can play an important role in shaping students’ understanding of their place within Australian democracy (Black, 2017; Heggart et al., 2019). The Civics and Citizenship [CC] subject was published as a defined learning area in 2012 and endorsed in late 2015 by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority ([ACARA] but is still in the process of being interpreted, implemented and re-implemented in schools in 2024 in a contracting space for the humanities and social sciences (Tudball, 2023). It was preceded by the publication of a ‘Shaping Paper’ articulating the nature of CCE's content and purposes (ACARA, 2012). CCE constitutes a combination of knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that citizens require to participate in society and to contribute to the common good. CC seeks to teach students not only about the formal legal and political processes operating in the society in which they live, but about their roles in it and the kinds of changes they can make in the world around them.

More recently, the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Declaration of educational aims in Australia signposted encouraging and more ambitious curriculum intent - intent that could be said to, in relation to this study, support important outcomes for CCE in schools (Education Council, 2019). It supports the preparation of ‘active and informed members of the community’, but additionally aspires for them to, for example:
‘act with moral and ethical integrity

have empathy for the circumstances of others and work for the common good, in particular sustaining and improving natural and social environments

be committed to national values of democracy, equity and justice, and participate in Australia's civic life by connecting with their community and contributing to local and national conversations’ (2019: 5–6).
However, the Australian Curriculum has never prescribed how schools must organise their curricula to achieve these important goals. Moreover, there is limited accountability around how schools might (or might not) be contributing to civic and political goals.

The CCE Shaping document is not especially helpful in signposting how the civic and political goals of the Alice Springs Declaration might be met (ACARA, 2012). In the document's context statement, informing principles, rationale and aims the words ‘politics’ and ‘political’ are absent except in the context of knowledge and understanding of political and legal institutions. The focus is upon the processes and structures of Australian government. There is comparatively little focus upon the esoteric knowledge signposted by Bernstein and a concomitant failure to align with the aspirational goals for transformative citizenship put forward in the Mparntwe Declaration. Only later in the Shaping document, amongst the small print, is there reference to ‘interpreting political policies and decisions and critiquing media messages’ and a generalised exhortation that ‘the Australian Curriculum must be relevant to the lives of students and address the contemporary issues they face (ACARA, 2012: 9 & 15). This is markedly different from the comparable foundational document in England – The Crick Report (QCA, 1998) – which saw political literacy as a defining pillar of the Citizenship education curriculum. A stronger case for CCE needs to understand what makes democracy valuable in the first place.

The Curriculum Discourse and Active Citizenship in Retreat

Information about political policies is more relevant to citizens’ voting choices than are dry facts about political institutions. However, since its inception, the Australian CCE curriculum has not at its core prompted learning about key policy issues. There is thus no requirement for students to think about and debate issues such as taxation, poverty, the cost of living, healthcare, immigration, inequality or housing in the course of their school lives as part of their CCE learning, despite these topics featuring prominently in the results of a recent Ipsos survey asking Australians what they saw as the most important issues facing the nation (IPSOS, 2024). In Year 5 students learn about ‘features of Australia's democracy, including elections, and the roles and responsibilities of elected representatives’. In Year 6 students study ‘the key institutions of Australia's system of government [and] how it is based on the Westminster system’ and are also introduced to ‘the roles and responsibilities of the three levels of government in Australia’. In Year 7 students focus on the Australian constitution, including responsible government, the rule of law and federalism. In Year 8 students focus upon how laws are made and on the different kinds of law. In Year 9 study how political parties, interest groups and the media influence government and legislative processes. In Year 10 students compare Australia's government to governments in Asia and explore Australia's role in international organizations. The teaching and learning of political literacy can be so much richer and more practical than this. As Sir Bernard Crick put it:
‘To have achieved political literacy is to have learnt what the main political disputes are about, what beliefs the main contestants have of them, how they are likely to affect you and me. It also means that we are likely to be predisposed to try to do something about the issue in question in a manner which is at once effective and respectful of the sincerity of the other people and what they believe’. (Crick, 2000: 15)
The dry structural and knowledge-centric emphasis of the content that is foregrounded in the AC:CC fails to recognise the importance of nuance, debate, disagreement and contestation in democratic life, and as such, crucial to meaningful CCE. The procedural has been prioritised over the esoteric, downplaying the central role citizens play in interrogating democratic processes and procedures to ensure they continue to participate in a thriving democracy. Civics takes priority over citizenship and safe socialisation takes priority over open-minded exploration.

An avowed aim of the most recent revisions to the Australian Curriculum was to ‘declutter’ it in order to provide ‘a more stripped-back and teachable curriculum that identifies the essential content of our children should learn’ (ACARA, 2020). This potentially represented a strengthening of the classification around CCE, reducing an emphasis on ‘decontextualised’ knowledges (Bernstein, 2000b: 29). However, some unfortunate things occurred in the exercise of ‘de-cluttering’ the curriculum and amending version 8.4 of the curriculum to its 9.0 variant (ACARA, 2024c). The process suggests that what one educator views as decluttering, another educator might see as a shifting in focus from maximal to minimal models of citizenship, since many references to active, participatory forms of citizenship were removed. There were clear retreats in the domains of active citizenship and values.

The curriculum language supporting active citizenship and the valuing of young people as change agents (Akin et al., 2017) which was already cautious – “Words not Deeds” as Brian Hoepper (2014) put it – was further diluted. For example, Year 6 teachers could no longer look to the curriculum justifier and enabler of their students ‘Working in groups to … plan for action’ (ACARA, 2015a: 32). And the requirement that both Year 7 and Year 8 students ‘Use democratic processes to reach consensus on a course of action relating to a civics or citizenship issue and plan for that action’ (ACARA, 2015b: 43 & 47) was also removed. Presumably this was seen as constituting too much action, despite only referring to planning action rather than taking action. The text instead is articulated as ‘explain the methods or strategies related to making decisions about a civic participation’ (ACARA, 2024b). This signposts a convoluted, cognitive and passive exercise rather than an active citizenship experience. Students are explaining strategies rather than having to do anything. This can be contrasted with Bernstein's emphasis on maximal citizenship education, and his thesis that as a precondition to democracy, student learning in CC should have real outcomes (Bernstein 2000b: xxi). A Year 8 statement that previously referenced students ‘contact with their elected representatives, use of lobby groups, and direct action’ (ACARA, 2015b: 45) becomes the vaguer and more passive ‘how Australians are informed about and participate in democracy’ (ACARA, 2024b). The notion that Year 8 students might ‘[r]eflect on their role as a citizen in Australia's democracy’ (ACARA, 2015b: 48) was also excised.

Some of the language of the Australian Curriculum's General Capabilities similarly reflects the curriculum's passivity around student action. For example, a failure to include a language of action was further evidenced in the General Capability of ‘Ethical understanding’. Here in the Years 7 and 8 elaboration ‘Explore rights and responsibilities’ the verbs “analyse” and “evaluate” are used in the context of exploring ‘rights and responsibilities in relation to the duties of a responsible citizen’ that could otherwise be used to encourage actions with potential for active civic participation. The student is represented as a passive viewer of the world rather than as an active participant and consequentially is unable to access Bernstein's ‘decontextualised’ knowledge. Under the ‘Personal and Social Competence’ General Capability, within an earlier version of the curriculum in a strand entitled ‘Social awareness’ and a sub-element entitled ‘Contribute to Civil Society’, there had been intimations of encouragement to actually do something. The Year 6 statement hints at participatory citizenship actions (‘identify a community need or problem and consider ways to take action to address it’ (emphasis added). But the Year 10 statement was relatively unambiguous (‘plan, implement and evaluate ways of contributing to civil society at local, national regional and global levels’). However, an expectation of social awareness and associated civic and community involvement as part of contributing to civil society was also excised as a part of the curriculum decluttering exercise and no longer exists in the current curriculum iteration.

That an official suspicion about active citizenship has been systematised is seen in parallel changes to the language of the Geography curriculum. It had been an accepted aim of the Geography curriculum in an earlier iteration that it develop students ‘as informed, responsible and active citizens who can contribute to the development of an environmentally and economically sustainable, and socially just world’ (ACARA, 2015c). No more apparently. This statement, which highlighted the value of engagement and participation in the political realm as an integral component of geographical learning was removed. Nor is Geography going to claim in the most recent iteration of its aspirations that ‘students learn to question why the world is the way it is and reflect on their relationships with and responsibilities for that world’ (ACARA, 2015c). A principled and reflective sentiment is also decluttered. The conclusion could be drawn that this was deemed too critical of the status quo. Looking back to the Alice Springs declaration of Australian educational goals (Education Council, 2019) young people can usually only explore, consider, examine or analyse what it means to act with integrity, contribute to reconciliation, sustain and improve natural or social environments, work for the common good or participate in Australia's civic life rather than be provided with opportunities to have any kind of involvement or voice in the things that they learn about (Hall, 2019). Plans rarely get translated into action.

A call for young people to have opportunities to discuss and explore contemporary issues is not about turning all young people into political activists but an acknowledgement that when faced with a topical policy area or decision that they feel strongly about they are armed with the knowledge, confidence and agency to attempt to do something about it – such as form a group, participate in a campaign and get off the couch. They can also come to appreciate that democracies are less healthy when people cease to engage with public issues (Putnam, 2000). We acknowledge, however, that there can be tensions in raising participative expectations in societies that are facing curtailments of previously experienced democratic rights (Yan, 2020). Moreover, precisely because Civics and Citizenship education is directed unabashedly towards the goal of cultivating critical and participative values in the future citizenry, educationists, politicians and the media can sometimes articulate fears of indoctrination (Cotton, 2006). Such fears, while quite common, are largely unfounded and underestimate both the professionalism and prudence of teachers in bringing balance and multiperspectivity to contested issues under debate in the public realm.

There also seems to have been a suspicion on the part of the Australian curriculum revisers of the notion of identity – perhaps perceived as too sociological and tied to the rise of identity politics. A focus within the Year 4 Achievement Standard that students “describe factors that shape a person’s identity and sense of belonging” is omitted (ACARA, 2015a: 29). In another example, the Year 7 content descriptor that students explore “How groups, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, express their particular identities, how this influences their perceptions of others, and others’ perception of them.” (ACARA, 2015b: 42) evolves in version 8.4 to referencing “cultural and religious groups” (ACARA, 2023) before falling victim to decluttering and disappearing entirely in version 9.0. And in Years 9 and 10 students are no longer required to ‘recognise and consider multiple perspectives and ambiguities and use strategies to negotiate and resolve contentious issues’ (ACARA, 2024a: 53 & 57). This approach fails to signpost for students how issues get complicated, contested, political, nuanced or might engender some healthy classroom debate.

Important values and dispositions also tend to go missing. There seems to have been an edict enacted against deployment of the word ‘empathy’ – it is omitted as a core historical concept for students to learn about and practice in both primary and secondary contexts. The words ‘compassion’ and ‘civility’ were in the 8.4 version of the curriculum in a Year 7 Civics and Citizenship content descriptor but have been removed – presumably again characterised as ‘clutter’. From Year 3 students understanding of ‘[h]ow and why decisions are made democratically in communities’ (ACARA, 2024a: 22) is also removed.

There are few explicit mentions of ‘human rights’ – seen by many experts as sitting at the heart of citizenship education – although they are occasionally sighted in optional ‘Elaborations’. The only formal mention of human rights is in the Year 10 curriculum content. Global citizenship is circumscribed. The Year 6 statement that students explore ‘The obligations citizens may consider they have beyond their own national borders as active and informed global citizens’ (ACARA, 2024a: 36), which was also an important element of that age group's achievement standard and global theming of the broader Year 6 HASS curriculum, is excised. Also removed from the Year 6 curriculum is the invitation to find out more about ‘the world's cultural diversity, including that of its indigenous peoples’ (ACARA, 2024a). In a Year 10 optional elaboration linking to human rights the invitation is to ‘investigate how many of the nine key human rights treaties Australia has signed and ratified and then research how at least one of these has shaped Australian law or government policy’. There is no suggestion that teachers might ask questions such as: Why is the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights or the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child so important? How do such declarations impact the lives of individuals? Why is a commitment to human rights an essential feature of healthy democratic societies?

Sir Bernard Crick usefully reminded teachers in England in relation to their citizenship education curriculum choices of content that ‘what is not ruled in is not ruled out’ (Crick 2000: 118), but it takes a brave Australian teacher to step outside the tramlines of the explicitly articulated curriculum expectations. As Bernsteinian scholar Parlo Singh has observed (Singh and Heimans, 2019: 461), Bernstein was interested in ‘how the very organisation or structuring of curriculum effects students and a teacher's relation to the possibilities of thinkable and unthinkable’. Through inclusions and exclusions curriculum-makers can significantly guide the parameters of the thinkable.

CCE curricula globally can be assessed on a maximal/minimal or thick/thin continuum (McLaughlin, 1992; Zyngier, 2013). A maximalist approach views young citizens as conscious members of a living community ‘with a shared democratic culture involving obligations and responsibilities as well as rights, a sense of the common good, fraternity and so on’ (Mclaughlin, 1992: 236). A maximalist CE approach broadens the horizon of civic virtues shared by the minimalist approach in ‘more general and universal considerations’ that will lead citizens to empowerment. In terms of political involvement, it favours a “fully participatory approach to democracy” (Mclaughlin, 1992: 237). Version 9.0 of the Australian Curriculum has become more minimal and knowledge-oriented, thinner in its commitment to active learning and participation, narrower and more nationalistic, docile and socialising in its vision. The curriculum changes are inconsistent with the ongoing professed rationale of Version 9.0 the HASS curriculum, which continues to posit that ‘it plays an important role in assisting students to understand global issues, and building their capacity to be active and informed citizens who understand and participate in the world’ (ACARA, 2024c).

Bernstein constructed a theory of knowledge that can be used to discuss and measure the extent to which education affords individuals the opportunity to become ‘transformative’ citizens. Citizens must have an understanding not only of the ‘mundane’ (features and mechanics of governmental and societal institutions and structures) but also the practical and esoteric knowledge of how and why they function as they do in relation to particular issues. Without this knowledge a citizen cannot understand let alone effect change in society should they desire to make the attempt. The right to practice and participate as a citizen in a way ‘that must have outcomes’ is highlighted by Bernstein (2000b, p. xxi) as a key pedagogic right within a democracy (for related discussions see Adams and Calvert, 2007 and Kang, 2010). They are insights that are still relevant today if CCE in Australian schools seeks to be more than a weakly framed learning area relegated to the curricular margins.

The current Australian Civics and Citizenship program is open to the charge of failing democracy itself - it harks back to the minimalist, knowledge and structures-dominated old civics. It has little place for agentic and active students or proactive community involvement. It is useful to be reminded of the insight of the Crick Report – ‘Community involvement cannot be divorced from the social and political reality of community, addressing not only ‘what is the case?’ but ‘what ought to be the case?’ and ‘can it be done better?’’ (QCA, 1998: 63–64). This article supports the idea that schooling should enhance an individual's personal horizons through providing new access to - and thus new possibilities to internalise and apply - political and critical understanding (Bernstein, 2000b). It also supports the idea that schooling should guarantee that all children are included socially, intellectually, culturally and personally, encompassing the right to be autonomous (Lovett, 2024). This is a key idea if citizens are to exercise their democratic rights and responsibilities. Finally, our paper endorses the idea that schooling should prepare children to participate in civic debate and practices that have outcomes in society, that is, ‘to participate in the construction, maintenance and transformation of social order’ (Bernstein, 2000b: xxi).

Conclusion

It is at the level of schools, classrooms and specific practices of pedagogic communication that state mandated educational policies are re-produced or enacted, ‘very often after complex processes of advice seeking and consultation’ (Fitz et al., 2006: 18). Curriculum language needs to be both interpreted and translated. Interpretation can be seen as ‘an initial reading, a making sense of policy – what does this text mean to us? What do we have to do? Do we have to do anything? It is a political and substantive reading –a ‘decoding’’ (Ball et al., 2011: 219). Translation is the process of ‘recoding’ policy. Thus, translation involves: ‘an iterative process of making texts and putting those texts into action, literally ‘enacting’ policy, using tactics, talk, meetings, plans, events, ‘learning walks’, producing artefacts and borrowing from other schools, from commercial materials and official websites, and being supported by local authority advisers’ (Ball et al., 2011: 220). As one recent scholar has observed perceptively, Bernstein's precepts assist in locating ‘the structural autonomy that teachers have in accommodating policies delegated by the state and in implementing…school curriculum in accordance with particular school settings (Yan, 2020: 616). Nevertheless, the analysis in this paper has demonstrated the scale of the translation challenge that teachers face in seeking to make sense of the AC:CC, especially when curriculum language touches upon matters political.

Policy enactment refers to ‘the creative processes of interpretation and recontextualisation – that is, the translation of texts into action and the abstractions of policy ideas into contextualised practices’ (Ball et al., 2012: 3). Bernstein's theoretical concept of framing determines the ‘strength of the boundary between what may be transmitted and what may not be transmitted’ in the educator/learner pedagogic relationship (Bernstein, 1975: 88). However, with CCE the processes of framing in terms of interpretation and translation by both schools and teachers are potentially fuzzy and epistemologically complicated. Westheimer (2019) outlines the current tensions and challenges facing citizenship education globally and warned that the failure of schools to agree on what CCE entails has led to a ‘watered-down notion of civics that emphasizes good character and patriotism over critical thinking and engaging with multiple perspectives’ (p. 4). The analysis of the AC:CC provided in this paper tends to support this observation. We see a minimalist CCE vision, perched upon epistemologically vague foundations, largely treating young people as citizens in waiting. Many dimensions lack clarity – including internal cohesion with other HASS learning areas and external links to GCs and CCPs.

Bernstein challenged educators to think more broadly about the outcomes of schooling, and what a child, who has been institutionalised for 12 or more years of their first 18 years of life, can rightfully expect as their take-away knowledge and skill set. He identified different kinds of rights promoted by schools including the right to individual enhancement (individual level), the right to social inclusion (social level) and the right to political participation (political level) (Bernstein, 2000b). These rights, according to Bernstein, could be seen as a minimum requirement for students to secure access to in schools if they are to have any stake, or confidence in the school or, in the long run, the society they live in. Individual enhancement is, at its core, about education offering each student ‘tension points condensing the past and opening possible futures’ or in other words, ‘the right to the means of critical understanding and to new possibilities’ (Bernstein, 2000b: xx). Social inclusion at its core, is about ‘the right to be included, socially, intellectually, culturally and personally’ (Bernstein, 2000b: xx). It is well worth policymakers, schools and teachers thinking about students’ citizenship and rights’ entitlements in this way, which is also consistent with the thinking of seminal human rights education scholars (Banks, 2020; Osler and Starkey, 2010).

Given its political intentions and content the CCE curriculum is a crucial arena of symbolic control. CCE is potentially an educational disruptor – it crosses subject/disciplinary lines and benefits from integrated and inter- and trans-disciplinary study. In a maximalist form it pushes the pedagogic envelope in terms of encompassing active citizenship, learning outside the classroom, student voice and agency and deep and authentic learning. Moreover, it can engage with contemporary and political issues where there may be sharply different opinions and contested points of view. And yet – in the main – CCE in Australia has not disrupted. It has been quietly absorbed, neutered, de-radicalised and marginalised. The analysis of CCE within the Australian Curriculum undertaken in this paper illuminates some of the reasons for CCE's impact upon schools’ and teachers’ practices being relatively limited. The political frontier in Australian schools and classrooms is one that it is well worth exploring and extending if the threat of democratic deconsolidation is to be acknowledged and confronted.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Peter Brett

Lachlan Nicolson

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Exploring the political frontier in Australian schools: Bernsteinian insights on Civics and Citizenship education

Abstract

Keywords

A Global and National Context of Democratic Deconsolidation

Limited Educational Response in Australia to Democratic Deconsolidation?

A Bernsteinian Framework

Shaping Civics and Citizenship in the Australian Curriculum

The Curriculum Discourse and Active Citizenship in Retreat

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iDs

References