Abstract
In July 2013, members of the of the International Association for Citizenship, Social and Economics Education (IACSEE) met at the University of Auckland in New Zealand for their 10th biennial conference. The conference attracted attendees from Europe, North America, Asia, Australasia and the Pacific. This Special Issue of the Association’s journal brings together a representative set of articles from the conference. It is divided into two sections. First, the four invited keynote speakers have reworked their conference addresses for publication. Second are articles that were presented by attendees at the conference. Together these articles highlight the varied interests and concerns of association members and the varying theoretical, disciplinary and methodological approaches to investigating and debating these matters.
Nowhere is the variety of approach more obvious than in the keynote addresses. This was deliberately done. In each case, the speaker was asked to interrogate the conference theme – Citizenship, Globalisation and Education – through their respective disciplinary lenses. Dr Airini, then Head of the School of Critical Studies in Education at the University of Auckland, now Professor and Dean of Education at Thompson Rivers University in Canada, spoke in a way that reminded attendees of the conference location in the Southern Pacific Ocean, in the land known by its indigenous inhabitants as Aotearoa. Airini, however, did not paint a romanticised picture of life in this part of the world; she addressed issues of inequity head on. The call for action to deal with child poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand, she states, is ‘urgent and serious’. In addressing the rights of all young people to experience the fullness of well-being and citizenship, we need to take responsibility for social investment and community-based solutions. Her talk centred on the metaphor of a journey. This metaphor resonates through the other contributions to this Special Issue as the authors share their own journeys to seek answers to the problems that beset our world.
In his keynote, Professor Michael Peters, from the University of Waikato, New Zealand, offered a framework for understanding the complexity of education’s problems and solutions. By introducing the notion of the financialisation of education, he highlighted how the emphasis had moved from education as a social and common good to education as a private and economic good. In the article in this Special Issue, Professor Peters and colleagues examine these matters further. As neo-liberal policies have reduced education to a commodity to be traded in the global marketplace of the knowledge economy, we lose sight of the important social and cultural dimensions of education and the role of the nation state in the provision of education best suited to its citizens.
Dr Bronwyn Hayward from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, interrogated citizenship through the disciplinary lenses of the political sciences. Hayward’s concern is that climate change will need new understandings of the rights and responsibilities of citizens. Her research, with co-investigator Elin Selboe from the University of Bergen in Norway, is that New Zealand youth see rights as individual and contractual, whereas Norwegian youth consider responsibility for the good of the community as an important part of being a citizen. Climate change, they argue, needs citizens who see beyond themselves and their communities and demonstrate a willingness to take collective action.
The address from motivational speaker Ralph Brown drew on the body of work located within the positive psychology movement. His approach seeks opportunities for young people to develop citizenship through dispositions and strategies that will stand them in good stead in an ever changing, uncertain globalised world of the future. Brown’s address focused on what young people need in order to thrive. In his article, he articulates these further. He takes notions that seem to be commonplace – optimism and happiness, for example – but uses research to illustrate that these are not always as they seem. Optimism works best when people have a sense of control and attribute their successes to their own efforts. Happiness needs to look beyond the self and include gratitude, mindfulness and altruism. He claims that focusing on self-esteem encourages young people to feel a sense of entitlement. It is more important to praise them for what they do, rather than for who they are.
The second part of this Special Issue shares two articles from conference attendees. Dr Howard Gibson’s article investigates Prime Minister David Cameron’s intention to turn his nation into a ‘Big Society’, diverting social responsibilities from centralised government to local communities through a form of conservative communitarianism. Gibson argues that as an attempt to revitalise citizenship and local community agency, it was destined to fail because the causes of social ills, such as globalisation and capitalism, were not addressed. Rather than a genuine attempt to rejuvenate communities, it was a way of the government off-loading risk. Critics suggest that the policy was engineered to fail, leaving the way open for private interests to have a bigger stake in social policy implementation. While the Big Society has faded as a policy initiative, central control, especially over curriculum, has not. The most recent guidelines for citizenship education have removed the possibility of students learning citizenship competencies in favour of teaching civics content.
In the final article, Monika Oberle and Johanna Forstmann raise questions about civics education in Germany in the context of the European Union (EU). Many of Germany’s political decisions are influenced to some extent by wider EU matters, yet Germans remain largely unaware of the complexity of the EU’s structure and reach. The authors argue that a key task of a school’s civic education programme is to enhance students’ political understanding and their ability to make political judgements and participate in political decision-making when they become adults. The authors report on a continuing education programme for teachers designed to enhance their knowledge and ability to prepare students for such a task. Teachers’ knowledge of the EU tended to be related to their attitude towards the EU, but overall, the programme was able to improve their knowledge and give teachers more confidence in fostering political competence in students.
In conclusion, the articles in this post-conference Special Issue highlight the concerns and interests of the members of IACSEE. They also provide varying disciplinary lenses on the place of citizenship and economics education in the curriculum. Whether examining issues of global, regional or local concern, the authors represented here provide collective challenges and critiques, ensuring that we never become complacent about the status quo and that the world we leave for our children and young people gives each of them a chance of fulfilment.