Effective civic and citizenship education: A cross-cultural perspective

Reinforcing citizenship and social integration are important goals of schools worldwide. In most educational systems, school are free to design their civic and citizenship education curricula and pedagogical objectives and practices may vary. Understanding the possible influence of school factors on civic and citizenship competences remains a difficult task. This dissertation aims to shed some light on the contribution of schools and the wider learning environment to the acquisition of civic and citizenship competences in lower secondary education. We use a theoretical framework based on educational effectiveness research and present empirical findings estimated across several educational systems and democratic contexts. The results show that citizenship learning depends strongly on students’ background, their motivation, the opportunities they have to learn, discuss and practice democracy outside school, as well as on aspects of the school quality. Although the school appears to play a modest role, we find that school experiences are promoting the acquisition of cognitive outcomes (civic knowledge and skills) and to a less extent the acquisition of non-cognitive outcomes (attitudes, values, behavioral dispositions). The findings tend to suggest the possibility that different school characteristics may be linked to different civic competences and that curricular approaches that foster simultaneously all outcomes are difficult to develop. Nevertheless, we find that stimulating a democratic classroom climate in which free dialogue and critical debate on controversial political and social issues are encouraged is highly important in promoting effectively all types of civic competences.