Understanding Factors Affecting Students’ National and European Dimensions of Citizenship

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday III)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Regional and national perspectives on the processes and outcomes of citizenship education

Proposal

For the past three decades, globalisation and Europeanisation have led to traditional conceptions of citizenship and identity that were typically associated with the nation-state being challenged and transformed. Citizenship and identity now transcend the nation-state and extend to other political and cultural communities (Keating, 2016) and theoretical discussions are focusing on how to make sense of the changing nature of citizenship and identity, which are multiple, hybrid, nested and flexible (Keating, 2016). Yet, while globalisation and, along with it, forms of citizenship and identity are expanding, people are also clinging to local and national identities and resisting some of the changes brought about by globalisation. This is particularly evident in the rise of disaffection amongst European citizens for further integration, the rise of nationalism, populism and anti-immigration sentiment, and the poor reception of refugees and migrants in Europe. The Brexit vote and the election of right-wing politicians in countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary are recent examples of this backlash to globalisation.

Education and schooling are seen by both national and European institutions as an important means of influencing young peoples’ citizenship and identities. Indeed, the idea of developing a sense of European citizenship and identity amongst young people continues to be promoted by the EU and many educational initiatives have been launched in pursuit of this objective (Savvides & Faas, 2016). How far and in what ways schools across Europe include curriculum content and pedagogy related to various dimensions of citizenship varies and there are also other key factors including home, school and country-level influences that affect these.

In light of this background, this paper reports on the methodological approach and intended empirical analysis of a small funded project that is investigating factors affecting students’ national and European dimensions of citizenship. In particular, we are interested in aspects of schooling and education related to these outcomes of citizenship education as well as aspects of students’ personal and social background associated with citizenship outcomes. Our key research questions are:

1) How can we conceptualise and measure in a comparative fashion students’ national and European citizenship?
2) What individual and school-related factors influence students’ national and European dimensions of citizenship?

To this end, we make use of the data from the international and European regional modules of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS, 2016) representing 12 European (EU member states) countries. The study investigates the ways in which lower-secondary school students (usually in grade 8) are prepared to assume their roles as citizens. Students completed a knowledge test and questionnaires inquiring into attitudes and background information. In addition, ICCS 2016 also includes a set of instruments designed to gather information from and about teachers including a teacher questionnaire completed by the teachers themselves and a school questionnaire completed by school principals.

We conceptualize national and European citizenship as a feeling of belonging (national/supranational), inclusion and identification to a community of citizens, and as a set of attitudes and practices associated with democracy and human rights, involving agency (i.e. participation and action) for change (Osler and Starkey, 2005). Applying this conceptualisation to the ICCS 2016 data, we look at how students see and understand themselves as national and European citizens (national and European and nested identities), their support (attitudes) for equal rights of Cultural Others (e.g. immigrants, ethnic minorities, women) in society, their endorsement of good citizenship behaviours, and their (intended) participation in political and social activities at national and European levels. Moreover, in line with theories of youth citizenship development (Sherrod, Torney-Purta, & Flanagan, 2010) and educational effectiveness approaches (Isac et al, 2014), we envision that these outcomes can be impacted along different lines and that explanatory variables can be situated at different interdependent levels, including individual background characteristics (e.g. gender and socio-economic status) and school environments (e.g. opportunities to learn about democracy and European political and social issues at school; classroom climates that foster appreciation of different points of view and participatory dialogue).

In terms of the research methodology, we take a quantitative approach involving two steps: 1) the first set of analyses will be conducted in a factor-analytic framework with the aim of identifying interrelated items that describe the constructs of interest (latent variables) based on theory and 2) in a subsequent step, we will estimating a set of multilevel structural equation models across all countries where outcome variables are related to factors at individual and school levels. All analyses will assess the cross-cultural comparability of scales and models and take into account the multilevel character of the data.

Results are expected to add to the current state-of-the-art in several ways: 1) providing a conceptual and measurement framework for comparing national and European citizenship; 2) measuring a range of individual characteristics and school approaches and testing their impact on young people’s conceptions of national and European citizenship in a comparative (European) fashion; 3) qualitative analyses of recent policies in this field will be used to contextualise empirical results and discuss the implications of these findings against current discourses on sustainable development in the context of globalisation.

References:

Isac, M. M., Maslowski, R., Creemers, B & van der Werf, G. (2014) The contribution of schooling to secondary-school students’ citizenship outcomes across countries, School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 25 (1), 29-63.

Keating, A. (2016) Are cosmopolitan dispositions learned at home, at school, or through contact with others? Evidence from young people in Europe, Journal of Youth Studies, 19 (3), 338-357.

Osler, A. & Starkey, H. (2009) Changing Citizenship. Democracy and Inclusion in Education. New York: Open University Press.

Savvides, N. and Faas, N. (2016) Does Europe Matter? A Comparative Study of Young People’s Identifications with Europe at a State School and a European School in England, European Journal of Education, 51 (3), 374-390.

Sherrod, L.R., Torney-Purta, J. & Flanagan, C.A. (ed.) (2010) Handbook of Research on Civic Engagement in Youth. Hoboken: Wiley.

Authors

• Nicola Savvides, University of Bath

• Andres Sandoval-Hernandez, University of Bath

• Maria Magdalena Isac, University of Groningen

• Ellen Claes, KU Leuven University