Actions Speak Louder Than Words? The Development of Active and Critical Approaches to Civic Education in a U.K. Context

• In Event: Critical Approaches to Civic Education: International Perspectives

Abstract

Objectives/ Background:This paper explores the question ‘what constitutes apt civic education in response to the complex ecologies of young people’s civic engagement? It draws from the ‘EngagED - Building voice, civic action and learning' research project conducted within the UK, and funded by the Society for Educational Studies. This project used a mixed methods approach to explore young people’s patterns of civic engagement and learning with a specific focus upon those growing up in socio-economically disadvantaged communities.

Perspectives/Theoretical framework:The Engaged research project adopted a maximal notion of civic engagement in order to capture more fully the extent and nature of young people’s civic engagement in the 21st century, encompassing in particular ‘informal participation’. An eco-systemic model of human development and complexity theory were used to help frame the interconnected nature of influences over young people’s civic engagement across both spatial and temporal dimensions.

Study Design, Methods, Data Sources: The EngagED research project used a systematic literature review and series of empirical investigations to prioritise the voices of young people. This paper draws its data specifically from a series of 22 focus groups conducted with young people aged between 11 and 21 in a variety of educational settings within the UK. These focus groups sought to explore the variations in young people’s civic engagement, and to identify the patterns and contextual factors that might be of influence, such as peers, family, school life, and the world of work.

Results: Findings highlight the complex, global and interconnected contexts of young people’s lives. It reveals that the general picture of young people’s civic action and learning, and particularly those from socio-economically disadvantaged communities, is diverse and multi-faceted.
This paper goes on to consider how these research findings were used to seek to improve educational practice. It presents a case study of a joint initiative between the research team and an inner city secondary school to introduce a new civic engagement programme within their Citizenship Education provision. The case study of this innovation draws from observations, teacher interviews and student evaluations. It highlights some of the difficulties, but also benefits, of going beyond knowledge-transfer based approaches in order to embrace community action based approaches that integrate the pedagogical elements of co-construction, criticality, service and reflexivity.

Significance: Internationally, concern continues to be expressed over young people’s patterns of civic engagement. Increasingly young people are being portrayed as apathetic and dis-engaged from their neighbourhoods. As a consequence educational policy is giving increasing attention to how young people’s civic engagement can best be supported. This paper offers some important lessons learnt from listening to young people themselves in order to better understand their patterns of civic engagement. It also offers an account of how research can help to inform innovative educational practice in order to draw out young people’s capacity for civic action and learning in new ways.

Author

• Paul Neil Warwick, University of Leicester