Assessing Citizenship Education

Should we Assess Citizenship Education at All?

Several authors have expressed concerns about the role of assessment in citizenship education (Turnbull, 2002; Breslin, 2006; Halstead and Pike, 2006). Turnbull argues that the contested nature of key concepts such as citizenship and democracy makes it difficult to ensure assessment can be objective. Breslin observes that assessing citizenship ‘seems to go against the grain of what active, effective citizenship is’ (Breslin, 2006: 321). Kerr has countered these concerns [Page 546]by stressing that teachers are ‘not assessing the development of a young person as a “citizen” per se, but rather the quality of their learning related to citizenship education’ (Kerr, 2002). Nevertheless the question for some remains, are we trying to measure the unmeasurable (Inman et al., 1998)?

This latter area is the major concern of Halstead and Pike (2006: 151), who wonder about the state's right to promote and assess certain values, especially if these are different from those held by a child's family. This echoes the earlier warning from Arthur and Wright (2001) who pointed out the possible risks of teachers engaging in superficial and misguided assessment tasks which might indirectly focus on beliefs and attitudes (which may stem from the family or cultural group) as opposed to an individual's learning and progress.

Halstead and Pike (2006: 152) make a separate point when they argue that ‘summative, external government-controlled assessment of citizenship, used to wield power over children and teachers, may not be entirely congruent with many of the aims and principles of the citizenship curriculum.’ Following Foucault, they argue that examinations operate as examples of disciplinary power, which sort young people into hierarchies, organised around the concept of the norm (Schrag, 1999 quoted in Halstead and Pike, 2006: 154). They go on to urge us to

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