Are schools educating toward active citizenship? The internal school struggle between contradictory citizenship models

Abstract

This article investigates the phenomenology of Social Education Coordinators in Israeli high schools regarding school’s civic education. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted, followed by a two-stage coding process. The Social Education Coordinators indicate that their schools seem to be unified behind the goal of maximal citizenship. However, their unique position as agents of non-formal pedagogies gains them insight into the role of pedagogy in advancing various citizenship models and the struggle in schools between opposing pedagogies and citizenship models. Formal pedagogies are understood to be incoherent; they speak of maximal citizenship, however, habituate minimal citizenship. Informal pedagogies are understood to be coherent, to both speak and habituate maximal citizenship. From the Social Education Coordinators’ perspective, their attempt to insert meaningful informal pedagogies and true maximal citizenship is subversive and a show of agency. They perceive themselves as still weak but significant players in providing students with ‘voice’ in the public sphere. This analysis may advance our understanding of schools as arenas of incoherency and contradictions, of simultaneously pushing toward contradictory civic education ideals; it may highlight the civic significance of pedagogy choice and raise the issue of cultivating informal civic education pedagogies as a basic student right, a democratic right to cultivate ‘voice’.