Abstract
In recent years there has been an explosion of new scholarship in comparative civic education, which is reflected in this special issue of Research in Comparative and International Education (RCIE). The current scholars build on the early work of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, known as IEA. In 1975 IEA published the first cross-national study of civic education, which was based on a survey of students in nine countries (Torney et al., 1975). Almost 25 years passed before IEA again undertook a cross-national study in civic education (Torney-Purta et al., 2001; Torney-Purta et al., 1999). In the meantime, only a few researchers conducted studies that spanned multiple countries. The second IEA study, referred to as CivEd, was instrumental in bringing scholars from approximately 30 nations together on a regular basis over an eight-year period. The CivEd meetings not only produced an important study; they also stimulated cross-national conversations about research in education for citizenship and democracy.
Further, as many countries and regional associations, such as the European Union, were experiencing increased interest in democratic civic education, scholars shared information about the existing research base within countries and regions. New organizations formed around comparative civic education research, such as CitizED and the Citizenship and Democracy Education (CANDE) special interest group of the Comparative and International Education Society. A growing number of individuals and teams of scholars presented new research at annual conferences of these organizations. Consequently, both the quality and quantity of research in comparative civic education has increased dramatically over the past decade. The editorial board of RCIE decided that it was time to feature this active subfield of comparative education in a special issue of the journal on comparative civic education research.
Our goal was to illustrate the diversity of research methods employed and the varied types of questions explored by researchers. We sought to highlight work from a wide range of countries and regions and from both senior scholars and new scholars. In the past, other than the large-scale IEA studies, much of the research in civic education has been nation-specific, and published articles most often focused on civic education within a single country. In this issue, we sought research conducted across national boundaries giving attention to both the similarities cross-nationally and the differences rooted in particular socio-cultural contexts.
In the first two articles, researchers use new cutting edge analytical techniques with data from the most recent large-scale cross-national IEA studies. Arguing that too often Western values and perceptions have been the standard or benchmark against which other nations have been compared, Joseph Kui Foon Chow and Kerry Kennedy center their research in the Asia region. They use cluster analysis to examine student expectations of future civic participation in five Asian societies that participated in the International Civic and Citizenship Study (ICCS) in 2009: Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand. They identify four groups of students based on their similar response patterns, as opposed to a traditional approach that specifies groups such as by age, gender, or ethnicity before analysis begins. The researchers named the groups that emerged in this study active participators, conventional participators, radical participators, and minimal participators. Chow and Kennedy found much heterogeneity among students within, as well as across, societies.
In the second article, Carolyn Barber, Judith Torney-Purta, Britt Wilkenfeld, and Jessica Ross use multi-level modeling to explore differences in immigrant and non-immigrant student responses in Sweden and the United States in the IEA CivEd Study conducted in 1999. Using the Developmental Niche for Emergent Participatory Citizenship as a framework, the researchers examined differences in youth’s civic knowledge and support for women’s rights in the two countries. The authors’ extensive review of literature on research related to immigrant youth will be useful to scholars exploring immigrant education in many countries. In this study, the researchers found that differences in civic knowledge between immigrants and non-immigrants were partially explained in both countries by immigrants’ lower likelihood of speaking the tested language at home. Remaining gaps were moderated by differences in the association of school activities with knowledge for immigrant and non-immigrant students. Importantly, the researchers conclude, the knowledge differences between groups can be reduced to statistical non-significance in both countries when factors in the classroom, school, peer group, and home are taken into account and consideration is given to how particular activities may have been experienced differently by immigrants and non-immigrants. Gaps in support for women’s rights were partially explained by differences in language in the United States, but not Sweden. The researchers conclude that in spite of attempts to make support of women’s rights a priority, especially in Sweden, such attitudes may be too deeply embedded for schools to have much impact.
In the third article, Keith Barton uses qualitative methods to determine how young people understand human rights and human rights issues in four sites in Colombia, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and the United States. Barton uses an interesting technique—task-based interviews—in which questions based on photographs elicit students’ explanations of human rights. The visual images enable students to talk about rights using their own conceptual categories, rather than selecting from among predetermined categories. Barton identified a number of patterns suggesting some of the ways in which national, community, and personal factors can influence students’ understanding of where and under what conditions human rights are most salient. For example, many of the students in the Republic of Ireland and the United States tended to focus on human rights violations in countries that were far away, whereas more of the students in Northern Ireland and Colombia talked about human rights issues in their country. Barton’s findings add to the growing scholarship pointing to the influence of contextual factors on students’ thinking.
National identity development is the focus of Ana Solano-Campos’ study of children in one elementary school each in Costa Rica and the United States. Solano-Campos purposefully selected school sites where immigrant and native-born children interact daily in classrooms and on the playground. In addition to participant observation, Solano-Campos conducted individual interviews with children and focus groups in which she used an imaginative task to illicit student explanations of national identity formation. She introduced the children to a character named Bubbly and asked questions to prompt the children to define, identify, and ascribe national identifications. Solano-Campos found that whereas children in both schools reported ideas of civic nationality, more children in the US school than in the Costa Rican school expressed ideas of ethnic nationality and cosmopolitanism. Solano-Campos concludes by calling for future researchers to study the “national identity maps” of children in multicultural contexts, using research tools that engage children in higher level thinking through imaginative exercises.
Whereas the first four studies in this issue focus on students of different ages, in the fifth article, I focus on teachers’ perceptions. I purposefully selected teachers of civic-related subjects in secondary schools serving many students with immigrant backgrounds in the United Kingdom (England and Scotland) and Denmark. I found that although there are some similarities in the challenges teachers face in educating for democratic citizenship, teachers’ ways of thinking about issues and the approaches they use are quite distinct in each of the two national contexts. I describe the policies and practices implemented in the particular schools where the teachers work, as well as identify similarities and differences in the teachers’ understanding of citizenship, the school’s role in preparing youth for civic action, and the challenges and opportunities in teaching civic education in schools with many students from immigrant backgrounds. I identify similar global trends, as well as distinct civic cultures reflected in school practices. Like Solano-Campos, I found that for the most part the transnationalism that many students experience in their daily lives is not reflected in classroom instruction.
The last two articles in this issue discuss civic education in two regions of the world that have been the least studied by comparative civic education scholars and the least reported in English-speaking journals. Laura Quaynor shares insights that she gained from her research in Liberia and Ghana, as well as from other scholars who have conducted research in post-colonial African nations, to make suggestions for future researchers. She discusses how researchers need to situate conceptions of citizenship in the context of historical and contemporary issues specific to the country or region. She also argues that researchers should consider issues such as the importance of reciprocity, the possible impact of the researcher, and the influence of factors beyond the school. Of course, these issues are not unique to conducting research in Africa but they have distinct meanings in particular contexts such as the ones identified by Quaynor.
From another region and using yet another methodology, Maha Shuyab conducted a content analysis of the civics curriculum and textbooks that have been used in Lebanon since the end of the civil wars in the 1990s. She focuses on the treatment of human rights and peace education, two emphases that have been advocated by civic educators globally and which have particular meanings in a post-conflict society. Her article is timely as Lebanon is currently preparing to revise the civics curriculum and textbooks and the Ministry of Education is encouraging reflection on what has been done in the past. Shuyab finds that although the 1997 curriculum endorsed human rights, and to a lesser extent peace education, the treatment was not extensive. Further, although the curriculum advocated the use of constructivist pedagogy, the ways in which the two themes were presented in the textbooks did not reflect such an approach. Shuyab compares her findings to those of other researchers who have reported on civic education in other societies in the region, Turkey and Palestine.
Finally, Libby Tudball, an Australian researcher, has written an essay review of three newly published books related to civic education that focus on differing national and regional contexts. As a result of her experience with a series of civic education reforms in Australia over the past 20 years, Professor Tudball’s comments are particularly insightful.
Clearly, this issue demonstrates that in just a few short years comparative civic education research has moved well beyond where it was when I wrote a synthesizing article titled “Comparative civic education research: What we know and what we need to know” (Hahn, 2010). The articles in this issue show a greater diversity of research methods, more research from previously underrepresented regions, and increased attention to topics that transcend national borders, such as human rights, migration, and transnationalism. We hope this special issue stimulates further thinking and research that will be reported in this and other comparative education journals in the future.