Policy review & analysis

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 13^th, 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 28^th, 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 29^th, 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.