CITIZED ‘s first phase – Policy Review, Analysis and Classification – started in December 2020 and ended in May 2021. During this phase, each partner (1) conducted desk research covering a specific country/organisation; (2) deepened the research by focusing on a specific case study. The analysis led to the identification of some first key issues to be taken in consideration in relation to citizenship education:
- Definitions/meaning of citizenship education (in relation to CITIZED).
- Relation between citizenship education and youth participation
- Political dynamics and civic education
- Relation between national identity and citizenship education
- Relation between citizenship education and Covid-19
At the same time, 5 main policy challenges to citizenship education were identified by CITIZED partners and addressed by partners and stakeholders during an Integration Workshop in April 2021:
The first three challenges are more related to a political dimension:
- Bring citizenship education into the agenda (agenda of policy makers, general public, teachers, parents and students)
- From good purposes to good implementation: although they often come from good ideas, they may lack resources, cooperation, capacity building, monitoring, evaluation.
- National/European frameworks vs bottom-up initiatives (informal and non-formal learning); For example, although the Council of Europe created a reference framework of competence for citizenship education, it is very difficult to bring it into the practice of school education. The last three challenges are related to the implementation of policies.
- Teachers’ training: from citizenship education contents to citizenship education skills, attitudes and values. It is often done on the basis of content and knowledge. However, the most effective citizenship education needs less knowledge and more cooperation and dialogical activities.
- Assessing students’ learning outcomes. Citizenship education is often not assessed. In the cases in which there is an evaluation, it is often promoted in a traditional way, without taking in consideration different forms of assessment, which are not based on the acquisition of knowledge.
The results of the first phase were analysed and collected in the report “Recent Policies for Democratic Citizenship Education: a Comparative Analysis and Classification”
During 2021, the following workshops/conferences took place (online and in-presence):
- April 13th, 2021: Integration workshop on the integration of the results of the different case studies and of the points of view of citizenship education experts who were not involved in the research
- July 28th, 2021: CITIZED validation workshop at the NECE CAMPUS covering the topic: “Citizenship Education: Everybody talks … but has the Situation changed? Open Challenges for Citizenship Education”
- October 21st, 2021: International conference “The challenges of Citizenship Education in Europe” in Sanremo
- October 29th, 2021: At the NECE CAMPUS, a CITIZED workshop took place covering the question: “Teaching Citizenship Education? The Challenges of Competences, Assessment Renewal and Policy Implementation”
All reports are downloadable below.
Download the Analysis on CE policies here Download the Integration Workshop Report here Download the Report of NECE Workshop here (July 2021) Download the Report of NECE Workshop here (October 2021) Download the Report of the Conference “The challenges of Citizenship Education in Europe'' (October 2021) Download the case study "Rete Sicurascuola - Safe School network" - Italy Download the case study "Citizenship Passport (Passeport citoyen)" - France Download the case study "THEATRE-IN-EDUCATION: ‘KREXX’" - Malta Download the case study "Afev Mentorship programme" - France Download the case study "Law 92/2019 – Introduction to civic education teaching" - Italy Download the case study "voXmi - Voneinander und miteinander Sprachen lernen und erleben" - Austria Download the case study on citizenship education - France Download the case study on citizenship education - Spain Download the case study on citizenship education - Belgium Download the case study on citizenship education - France Download the case study on citizenship education - EU Download the case study on citizenship education - Austria Download the case study on citizenship education - CoE Download the case study on citizenship education - Germany Download the case study on citizenship education - Italy Download the case study on citizenship education - Malta