"Children Are Part of a Community": Teachers' and Children's Perspectives on Being a Good Citizen

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Policy, Reform, and Civic Development

Abstract

This paper draws data from an ethnographic study that examined how faith-based schools promote citizenship and provide a democratic environment through school values which are formally and informally represented in teacher talk and curriculum as well as in the school program. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in two K-1 multiage classrooms at the Quaker school to understand how the school’s values are put into practice in the teachers’ implicit and explicit beliefs as they emerge from their pedagogy, dialogues, and their discourses. In addition, I worked to understand how the teacher’s approach to the curriculum may produce different and inequitable outcomes related to the children’s senses of intellectual, capacity, and emotional well-being as well as children’s understanding of being a citizen.

Author

• Muge Olgun-Baytas, Pennsylvania State University - Abington