Citizenship education in Canada: ‘Democratic’ engagement with differences, conflicts and equity issues?

Abstract

Recent research on multi-faceted citizenship education policy and practice in Canada illustrates five enduring themes of interest to educators around the world. First, citizenship education policy mandates reveal diverse goals for ‘good’ or ‘active’ citizen engagement, critical and inclusive awareness, and skills. Students from different social identity and status locations tend to have unequal citizenship learning experiences, and school education is often disconnected from their lived experiences and concerns. Second, intersecting questions of national and ethno-cultural identity and social justice are prominent in Canadian curricular rhetoric, although achievement of inter-group equity, mutual understanding and justice is elusive. Third, although transnational issues and perspectives are increasingly included, some Canadian curricula seem to reinforce ignorance and stereotypes about other nations and peoples and about the causes of global problems such as war. Much of the global citizenship education activity in Canadian schools seems to be focused on co-curricular activities, often emphasizing charity fundraising, leaving the causes of human misery largely uninterrogated. Fourth, curriculum policy discourse in civics, social sciences, language and media literacy emphasizes the importance of student-centred pedagogy for development of critical thinking skills, while typical classroom practice seems often to retain teacher-centred transmission approaches. Last, implicit citizenship education is embedded in day-to-day school-related activities and relationships: patterns of discipline and conflict management, community service activities, and student voice and leadership roles. Thus active, engaged citizenship, attentive to multicultural diversity, is a prominent goal in recent Canadian citizenship education policy and programming – yet in practice, Canadian students (especially those from less privileged backgrounds) have few opportunities to practice democratically relevant citizenship learning in school.

Educación ciudadana y convivencia en contextos de violencia: desafíos transnacionales a la construcción de paz en escuelas de México

“…Participation and engagement are not democratic until they bring opportunities for collectivities to address systemic shortcomings with regards to justice, creating means to engage with conflicts and differences. For us, conflict is not a negative force threatening democratic relations but rather the energy that keeps them alive and creative (BICKMORE, 2014b;BIESTA, 2009;NIETO, 2012a;RUITENBERG, 2010).…”

Reimagining “Active” Participation in Ontario’s History Curriculum

“…Some scholars acknowledge this conception of active citizenship, which can encourage democratic reforms that will provide numerous opportunities to develop new understanding of citizenship education. Bickmore [4] has argued that some new reforms could identity citizens as being more responsible, deliberative and participatory individuals in society. Active citizenship helps to reinforce the continuing dominance of neo-liberal individualistic ideology.…”

“…Historically, the Ontario Government under Premier Mike Harris brought about significance changes to education in Ontario; for example, in the late 1990s the government introduced "a new, half-year high school Civics course... mandating high school students to complete 40 hours of extra-curricular community service before graduation…[and introduced the] Ontario Character Development Initiative, explicitly framed as citizenship education. This new addition to the Ontario Curriculum formally mandates co-curricular character education activities, focusing on individual character traits rather than social or political institutions, in every school Bickmore [4].…”

Revisioning curriculum in the age of transnational mobility: Towards a transnational and transcultural framework

“…Yet the official public school curricula of Canada continue to largely ignore the experiential knowledge of both teachers and students (Bickmore, 2014). At best, the curricula seek a tokenistic assimilation of cultural plurality while in practice insisting on a Eurocentric, singular, authentic, national culture that is generous enough to include its subordinated "Other" (Ali, 2009;Bickmore, 2005Bickmore, , 2014Lightman, 2015Lightman, , 2016.…”

“…By curriculum, we are specifically referring to the "curriculum-as-plan" (Aoki, 1993), a conception that signifies officially designed and sanctioned "set of learning objectives, instructional materials and approaches" as well as "learning activities and assessments" (Skerrett, 2015, p. 40) that Canadian students are expected to engage with in K-12 classrooms. Clearly there is no reason to assume that the officially designed curriculum is precisely and consistently implemented and taught in all classrooms (Bickmore, 2014). Still, it is important to pay attention to the ideology and politics behind curriculum planning, for people in positions of power, provincial governments, school authorities, and other stakeholders are often primary agents when decisions are made on the content of the curriculum, as well as instructional materials and texts chosen, thereby legitimating and enforcing what students should learn and teachers ought to teach (Bickmore, 2005;Skerrett, 2015).…”