Citizenship Education

Citizenship typically refers to the relationship between the individual and the community, state, or nation. Encompassing aspects of membership, identity, civic knowledge, civic values, dispositions, and civic skills, citizenship education is often narrowly defined as taking place in civics, government, and history classes. But citizenship education is far broader than civics; [Page 129]here, it is defined as any educational experience that promotes the growth of individuals in regard to their civic capacities. The civic realm, the world of political and community work, requires particular kinds of knowledge, skills, and dispositions. This is particularly true in a democracy, where the role of the citizen takes on special importance in governance.

This entry looks at citizenship education from the perspective of the social foundations discipline, which has conceptualized itself from the beginning as a field concerned with promoting schools relevant for a democratic society. Education for democratic citizenship, therefore, is both a key commitment for many in the field and source of inquiry across the range of disciplinary perspectives in the foundations of education. Whereas researchers in social studies education and political science do much work in the area of citizenship education, particularly in regard to the formal curriculum taught in schools, social foundations scholars have contributed to the inquiry and knowledge of citizenship education by pursing questions that are broader. Foundations scholars have been concerned with social contexts beyond the school, and they are more explicitly critical in their inquiry than are other kinds of education scholars. The contributions of social foundations scholars to citizenship education theory and practice are described in this entry by focusing on four overarching questions that have been central throughout the field's history.