Negotiating participation and power in a school setting: the implementation of active citizenship within the undergraduate sociology curriculum

Abstract

Koster, S. (2006) 'Negotiating participation and power in a school setting: the implementation of active citizenship within the undergraduate sociology curriculum ', No. 3, Negotiating participation and power in a school setting: the implementation of active citizenship within the undergraduate sociology curriculum Abstract Since the Crick Report, active citizenship has been promoted as a vehicle for enhancing community involvement and political literacy among school and higher education students. This ostensibly progressive educational and social goal is beset with a number of tensions and contradictions, notably around the nature of participation and between enhancing social control and encouraging political engagement. This paper examines the various tensions surrounding citizenship education with reference to an evaluation of an innovative undergraduate sociology module called 'Teaching Citizenship'. The aim of the module was to provide students with an experience of active citizenship based on local community involvement that took the form of students facilitating citizenship education at two secondary modern schools. Drawing upon evaluation research findings, the paper discusses the ways in which the sociology students actively negotiated the dilemmas of participation and power characteristic of citizenship education.

Risk: the ethics of a creative curriculum

“…Box One: creativity and mental health nursing: Keen (1999) Gifford et al (2005) describe an innovative module introduced as an option to third year social science students to develop their understand of and skills relating to citizenship. In this module groups of students are involved with developing student councils and debating skills in partnership with pupils and teachers from local secondary modern schools.…”

“…The second case study (Gifford et al 2005) is an example of how this has been achieved in one particular programme. Citizenship is a very relevant topic within social science and for the secondary school sector.…”

“…Whether or not the student is anxious about failing creative endeavour is unpredictable so if it is combined with assessment tasks and criteria that are incompatible it may actually lead to variable success rates, thus validating their fears. Gifford et al (2005) minimised the anxiety regarding assessment by uncoupling the assessment tasks from the performance within schools. For Keen (1999) this was achieved by focusing on students professional development and making the exam, whist important, a secondary concern at the end of the course.…”

“…The lack of syllabus in the Keen (1999) example above illustrates this factor: if you are going to allow students to stray from a given content and direction the lecture needs to be knowledgeable enough roll with the punches this entails, confident enough to allow students the freedom to learn in their own way and shrewd enough to offer enough supervision and guidance to enable them to succeed in the assessed components. For Gifford et al (2005) a significant amount of extra time was spent making contact with the school and setting up the student's access. Students worked in teams rather than alone and were given positive support and supervision.…”

“…Had they failed it would have been too late for that cohort, and the ones following to easily change direction, and hardly fair to just say the students had made a free choice to join this particular course. For Gifford et al (2005) students clearly opted in as this module was optional and was supported by modules in previous years, so it is reasonable to assume that students had a good idea of the theoretical concepts they were engaging in. However, once engaged in the module it may have been difficult to withdraw; the semesterised system means that missed modules leave students with greater workloads in later months and little slack in the system to make good lost time.…”