Citizenship education and social studies

Citizenship education and social studies

Barth (1983) defines social studies as the integration of social sciences and humanities for the purpose of instruction in citizenship education. Martorella (1985) adds that the purpose of social studies is to develop reflective, competent and concerned citizens. He explains that reflective individuals are critical thinkers who make decisions and solve problems on the basis of best evidence available. Competent citizens, he says, possess a repertoire of skills to aid them in decision making and problem solving. Thus, the reflective, concerned and competent citizen is prepared to function effectively in today’s world and that of the future. This view is further supported by Michael et al. (2003) who state that social studies is more related to the promotion of citizenship education in school .

Banks (1985) argues that social studies is that part of the elementary and high school curriculum that has a primary responsibility of helping students to develop knowledge, skills, attitudes and values needed for participating in the civic life of their local community, the nation and the world at large. Aggarwal (2001), stressing the purpose of social studies points out that social studies which deals directly with man and the society in which he lives, carries special responsibility of preparing young children to become well informed, constructive participants in society and capable of developing healthy social relationships. Michalls cited in Aggarwal (2001: 15) states “… the central function of the social studies education is identical with the central purpose of education – development of democratic citizenship”.

According to Martorella (1985: 12) the basic purpose of the social studies education is to develop reflective, competent and concerned citizens. He adds that the focus of social studies is to develop the head, the hand and the heart. He stresses that “the head represents reflexion, the hand represents competencies, and the heart concern” (12 - 13). This means that the main concern of social studies is to help learners to develop the abilities and skills to meet challenges that confront them. It is against this background that the Ghana Education service (GES) (1988), cited in Kankam (2001), states that the objectives of the then Junior Secondary School (JSS) social studies was based upon Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy of education, which stresses affective, cognitive and psychomotor domains.

In a similar vein, the 3-year post-secondary teacher training colleges in Ghana social studies syllabus (1993: 1), in an attempt to equip teacher trainees with the subject content, the professional knowledge and skills to handle the social studies programme at the basic level of education stresses:

Our goal in teaching school studies in the teacher training college should be to help students to acquire knowledge and to effect a change in their attitudes and values and the environment. It is also to equip them with the values and attitudes of pupils (quoted in Kankam, 2002: 28).

It is evident from the discussion that the main focus of social studies is citizenship education. What is not clear however, is how social studies teachers and students in the area of study perceive social studies and citizenship education. Hence, the following section aims to investigate into the practices regarding teaching citizenship education.

EMPIRICAL REVIEW OF LITERATURE

A number of empirical studies have been conducted on citizenship education across countries, including United States, England, Israel and Hong Kong, and have employed different methodological techniques, basically on how teachers perceive the introduction of citizenship education in schools and colleges. In their study of teachers’ perspectives on citizenship education, Anderson et al. (1997), sought to explore the way social studies teachers conceptualized citizenship education and the models with which they are associated. Different qualitative and quantitative research methodologies were implemented in this project in four stages. The results of the study showed that teachers were not committed to one model of citizenship education. Rather, they expressed interest in a set of elements belonging to various citizenship models. In the national sample, teachers held elements of four perspectives: critical thinking, legalism, cultural pluralism and assimilation.

A qualitative study to explore how English secondary schools are approaching the introduction of citizenship education was conducted by Leighton (2004) in England. He selected four schools varying in their implementation of social studies curriculum and students’ background, interviewing senior staff responsible for monitoring the citizenship curriculum. Findings revealed that not all English schools had yet implemented the introduction of citizenship education, and generally most of the teachers in these schools had no previous training in the field of citizenship education, which was reflected in their evaluation of the importance of the subject. Teachers’ attitudes toward social studies varied greatly; those working in schools that had a long tradition of teaching social science subjects expressed more confidence and support for the implementation of civics, while others perceived this as a threat to their own subject because they lacked confidence in delivering this new subject without training and previous experience in relative subjects.

A study by Leung and Print (2002) was conducted in Hong Kong. Its main thrust was to explore teachers’ perception of nationalistic education and the possible differentiation between pro-China school teachers and non-pro-China school teachers. The study was guided by a framework that considered nationalistic education in Asian countries broken down into five types: cosmopolitan nationalism, civic nationalism, cultural nationalism, anti-colonial nationalism and totalitarian nationalism. The study found strong teacher support for cosmopolitan (91.3%), civic (89.8%) and cultural (90.4%) nationalism, while anti-colonial nationalism was moderate (69%), and very low for totalitarian nationalism (6.3%). In addition, it showed strong correlations between the first three models (.644) and (.420). These results are compatible with the pluralistic nature of Hong Kong society. Nevertheless, it would be argued that the theoretical framework in this study shows some kind of replication and overlapping between different models of nationalistic education.

A research study was also completed in Israeli context by Ichilov (2003) that purposed to investigate the differences between civics teachers’ qualifications, perceptions on citizenship education, and on school climate in different school systems in Israel. Her investigation was guided by the perception that teachers’ performance was influenced greatly and dependent on both their qualifications and their perceptions of central social issues. In conducting this research, the author analyzed the data collected for the IEA study of civic education in 28 countries. The independent variable in analyzing the data was the type of school.

The results, however, did not show great differences between teachers’ professional qualifications in the different schools. Overall, teachers seemed highly qualified in their fields. In addition, there was no particular difference in terms of perceptions of their school climate and classroom activities. They expressed their support for “open” classrooms and encouragement of student participation and contribution to the learning process. Nevertheless, great differences existed regarding perception of citizenship education and political issues between teachers in Arab schools and their counterparts in Hebrew schools. Arab teachers showed little support for patriotism and national symbols. In addition, they attached less importance to issues related to conduct of army, immigration, global anti-Semitism and Zionist historical narratives.

In contrast, teachers in Hebrew schools, both religious and public, showed greater support in the opposite direction. As regards their perception of the ability of students to make decisions about school life and to express their opinions about political issues without teacher supervision, teachers in both Arab and religious Hebrew schools were more conservative than their colleagues in public state schools. From all these findings, Ichilov expressed concern about the applicability of having national civics curriculum that aimed to contribute to shaping a uniform national identity, with these considerable differences among teachers in Arab and Hebrew schools.

In the European context, Arnot, Araujo, Deliyanni-Kouimtzis, Ivinson, and Tome (2000), conducted a comparative qualitative study in four countries: Greece, Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. The purpose of the study was to assess the possible impact of national-cultural traditions on teachers’ values on citizenship, gender relation, and the goals of education. Participants were a selective sample of student teachers (14 Greek, 40 British, 9 Spanish, and 10 Portuguese). The main finding of this study was that there were great differences in the focus of citizenship in the different contexts due to the political agenda of the state and the political experience of its people. For example, the discourse of critical citizenship appeared much clearer in countries that had experienced dictatorship and totalitarian regimes, while in stable democratic nations, like the United Kingdom, student teachers seemed more skeptical than critical. The authors related these two distinct cultural, political and historical experiences among nations, as well as to differentiated execution of civic curriculum.

The relevance of teachers’ theories of action is noted in a study by Dunkin and Welch (1996) that stresses four case studies of teacher knowledge in citizenship education. Through interviews, using stimulated recall, the researchers investigated key ideas of pedagogical knowledge, emphasizing the teachers’ pedagogical background and their knowledge of teaching and learning strategies.

The study by Dunkin and Welch (1996) suggests a set of anticipated propositions with relevant segments for teachers of citizenship education. They reported that:

When experienced teachers are asked to teach material with which they are unfamiliar, they are asked to implement new syllabuses involving content with which they are unfamiliar; they tend to interpret the syllabus as being more prescriptive than they are intended to be. Thirdly, when teachers lack confidence in their knowledge of subject matter, they tend to adopt teacher-centred methods (Dunkin & Welch, 1996).

All these findings have obvious implications for professional development courses in citizenship education (Ahmad, 2006). Research suggests that perception and beliefs about subject matter influence teacher selection of content and pedagogy. Dinkelman and Hoge (2004) for example, found that a course in politics, government or citizenship produced gains in civic content knowledge and confidence to teach selected topics among preparatory teachers. In their study, Torney-Purta et al. (2005) explored how teachers’ (measured by a degree in a civic related subject and participation in relevant in-service training) and teachers beliefs (measured by self reported confidence in teaching civic related topics) relate to students ‘civic knowledge and they found that having confidence about a topic may be related to the ability to convey information to students. They further concluded that increasing the extent of teachers’ preparation in civic related subject matter could be a viable strategy to improve civic knowledge.

Oulton et al. (2004) investigated teachers’ readiness to use controversial issues in the context of citizenship in the classroom. The research included focus groups and questionnaires which were applied to a sample of 205 teachers. The researchers found that many teachers were unprepared and felt constrained in their ability to handle controversial issues concerning citizenship in the classroom.

In a study conducted by Doppen, Feinberg, Lucas, Bohan, and Ogawa (2011) on the social studies preservice teachers’ knowledge and perceptions of the U.S. naturalization test, it was found that the preservice teachers had a limited conceptions on citizenship education issues. The authors discussed the implication of the results and suggested ways to broaden citizenship education in the development teacher preparation programmes.

If, as the literature suggests, perception about a subject matter in teaching is a concern of teachers in their pedagogy about and for citizenship education , then research that has as its aim the exploration of how tutors and teacher trainees perceive citizenship education in the colleges of education has critical implications for education and development .

Students’ perceptions of citizenship education

An ESRC-funded questionnaire survey in one LEA likewise reported low levels of political knowledge, interest, trust and efficacy among young people, but the authors note that the findings do not confirm a lack of engagement with the wider social world (Halpern, et al., 2002; Morris et al., 2003). However, these findings were challenged by a Home Office survey (Farmer & Trikha, 2005), that found wide variations in levels of political engagement among young people.

Farmer and Trikha (2005) analysed the results from a sample of nearly 1,700 young people and concluded that levels of trust in institutions such as the police broadly match that of the adult population. Although a substantial minority of young people (41 per cent) was dismissive of politicians, the vast majority (81 per cent) wanted involvement in decision-making. This study found that young people played an active role in their communities, with half engaging in civic activity. Young people from minority ethnic groups were particularly likely to make contributions within their homes, families and communities, the highest rates of participation in civic activities being recorded by black Caribbean and mixed race respondents. This confirms evidence from the DfES survey, which found that students from visible minorities tended to have more positive views about volunteering (Cleaver, et al., 2005). Abstract and decontextualised questions can only go so far in reaching evidence of the significant and often sophisticated understanding that young people do have of their roles in the world and their relationships to society, local, national and global. These have been captured through qualitative studies such as Osler and Starkey (2003) and Hudson (2005) which confirmed young people’s willingness to engage in political issues at all levels from the local community to the global world.

Adeyemi, Boikhutso and Moffat (2003) explored the extent to which the objectives of citizenship education have been realized in Botswana. The authors drew on interviews and observations of thirty –two social studies teachers from eighteen junior schools. The majority of the teachers felt that the objective of working to produce good citizens had been minimally or satisfactorily achieved. About half of the social studies teachers thought they had undergone sufficient training on the concepts involved in citizenship education but they highlighted the challenges of irrelevant instructional materials, job dissatisfaction and large class size.

In mixed-methods study, Martin and Ohiodo (2007) examined attitudes about citizenship by surveying 333 eighth grades and 362 eleventh grades from five rural school districts in a Southwestern state. They also conducted 54 interviews. The responses indicated that helping others was perceived to be the most important aspect of good citizenship, followed by obeying rules and laws.

Martin (2008) conducted a comparative analysis of teacher education students’ views about citizenship education in Denmark. Seventy-seven teacher education students consisting of 28 men and 49 women were interviewed on citizenship education. Whereas some participants opposed citizenship education and emphasized a need to focus on only the content, the majority discussed how citizenship preparation and mastery of content were congruent with their area organizations’ national goals.

In Ghana, Kwenin (2010) conducted a quantitative research on secondary school students’ perceptions on citizenship education in the Ashanti region. The study revealed that majority of the students’ demonstrated positive perception about citizenship education. The major problem they faced with the learning of citizenship education was inadequate teaching/learning resources for better illustrations.

Research explicitly exploring the perception of teacher trainees and tutors in the colleges of education in Ghana has thus far been rare and isolated in literature. What seems to exist is foreign discourse on citizenship education.There is the need to add to the literature the perceptions and commitment of both tutors and teacher trainers on citizenship education in the colleges of education in Ghana. At least, the contested nature of citizenship education within the literature leads the researcher to explore the manner in which tutors and teacher trainees perceive the conceptual and methodological issues to strengthen the fragile democracy of Ghana.

The tutors and the teacher trainees perceptions at the colleges of education are shaped by their knowledge, attitudes and values, both inside and outside the colleges’ environment. In Kennedy and Fairbrother’s (2004) discussions of some key findings of citizenship education across the Asia-Pacific region, they noted teacher education teachers and students should not be regarded as passive recipients of citizenship education. Teachers are not unaware of the aims of citizenship education, but their responses are not as predictable as presumed. This resonates with the intention and goals of this study, which aim at exploring tutors and teacher trainees’ perceptions on citizenship education.

In the multi-nation study conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), the research team proposed a model to analyse the situation of civic education in various national settings (Torney-Purta, Schwille & Amedo, 1999). The complex model illustrated the various dimensions of civic education/citizenship education. It placed the individual student in the middle of a multitude of environmental forces that influence the understanding and development of civic /citizenship education. The model illustrates how civic/citizenship education is the likely result of the many environmental forces , including: community youth organizations and work places; formal community influence by political leaders; the influence of family, parents and siblings; peer group influence in and out of class, and the influence of school through the curriculum taught by teachers.

In order to better understand the school dimension of this model, how tutors and teacher trainees understand citizenship education and how it might be offered in the classroom, the current study was undertaken.The current study was inspired by contemporary psychological and sociological theories, namely Bronfenbrenner’s (1988) ecological approach to studying development and cognition formation and the views and perception of other scholars, such as Lave and Wagner (1991) and Conover and Searing (2000).

However, as school students aged 10 to 14years old were the subject of the study in the IEA project, this current study adopted some elements of this model has proposed a new one in the current study to show the position of tutors and teacher trainees as recipients of citizenship education in an institutional setting to understand their perception on citizenship education (See Figure 1). Martin (2005) also used of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological approach (1988) to studying development and cognition formation, based on the cognitive strategy use model applied to civic activity. This model emerged from a study on a high schools students’ use of cognitive strategies in the social studies classroom, and it suggests that behaviour relates to understanding how to do a task, seeing the task as being relevant, and being motivated to do the task. The cognitive strategy use model has also been used to understand civic participation by university students (Martin, 2008). In 2008, Martin explored 39 elementary versus 36 middle and secondary education students’ perceptions on citizenship through a case study methodology at a Southeastern university. The study explored what the teacher education students considered to be a good citizen.

The framework of this study has four contextual elements such as tutors, teacher trainees, citizenship education and national development. It suggests that tutors and teacher trainees’ perceptions are influenced by the relationships and interrelationships of knowledge, skills and values on citizenship education through formal and informal instructions. The framework in this study is unique in that it is based on actual experience with the development of teachers who are shaping and will continue to shape educational practice in the field of citizenship. In addition the framework provides a structured way of integrating perceptual issues for citizenship education into colleges of education. Additionally, it reveals how citizenship education goals can be actctualised to enhance national development through social studies .The contextual issues of the framework are based on the social studies tutors, and teacher trainees, on citizenship education for national development.

Values

Delivery

Delivery

CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION

FOR

NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Several scholars and authors support the crucial role of social studies in developing citizenship education (Dean, 2005, Print, 2000). The social studies curriculum element is the policy documentation, where much of the teaching and learning of citizenship-related information, skills, values and disposition is planned (Torney-Purta, 2002). This view contends that students can acquire civic knowledge, skills and values through studying social studies in much the same way they would learn literacy through subjects such as English. For example, in programmes such as social studies and other related subject areas such as history, issues relating to citizenship education are taught. In the same way knowledge, values, skills and attitudes on citizenship education that tutors impart are derived from the social studies curriculum.

If tutors’ and teacher trainees’ appreciate the knowledge of citizenship education, then it will likely influence their knowledge of relevant values and skills taught in citizenship education. Similarly, this will enhance their perceptions of the characteristics of good citizens which invariably translate into effective principles and practices of citizenship education through effective instructional delivery in the classroom.

By way of direction for the study, this schema or framework shows a relationship of how social studies tutors’ knowledge, values and skills, perception, principles and practice, instructional delivery of citizenship education could possibly influence instructional outcomes in citizenship education at the classroom level leading possibly to national development. Effective national development is predicated on the level of patriotism, national consciousness and the feelings of integrity expressed by citizens who have been exposed to the content and instructional delivery system of citizen education by the social studies teacher trainees and tutors in colleges of education.

In the same vein, the framework also indicates how the teacher trainees’ knowledge, values, skills and practices of citizenship education concepts will also affect instructional outcomes in citizenship education at the classroom level, leading ultimately to national development.

The other context of the framework is where both teacher trainees and tutors are found. The tutors implement the school curriculum and act as the “attacking troops” who know the dynamics of the classroom situation. Tutors are therefore better placed to give their candid perception of the college’s curriculum. The authority relationships and friendly atmosphere for the expression of opinion within the school, as well as opportunities for both tutors and teacher trainees to participate in decisions about school policy, also influence citizenship education. Obeying college regulations, keeping the environment clean, respecting school authority, and voting during college elections are all features of citizenship education. Research has shown the powerful way in which fairness in the administration of school rules and students’ expectations about their power in school decision making influence attitudes and behaviour in citizenship education (McLaughlin, 2004). In the school community, once the teacher trainees have been taught on the issues relating to citizenship education, they can also give their views about citizenship education relating to the approaches being used to introduce citizenship education, the teaching learning processes, the subject matter, the evaluation strategies as well as the focus or objectives of the social studies curriculum.

The framework indicates that the closer the colleges are able to position themselves to the middle of the diagram, the more likely they are to draw clear and transparent links among the main contexts within which citizenship education can develop. By so doing, they are creating a climate for the active development of “active citizenship” within colleges and providing teacher trainees with opportunities for participation within their colleges and wider communities whilst ensuring a sound knowledge, understanding and skills through the social studies curriculum. The more both tutors and students understand the links between and among these contextual issues; the more likely they are to become knowledgeable, empowered, and responsible and “active” citizens now and in the future.

It must be pointed out that citizenship education aims at raising the consciousness of learners for the purposes of development. One expects that tutors’ and teacher trainees’ knowledge, skills, and perception they have acquired should lead to national development. Knowledge is not acquired for its own sake, but must be utilised to the betterment of one’s society. Citizenship education should therefore translate to national development. That is why the arrow points down to national development.