The State and Potential of Civic Learning in Canada Charting the Course for Youth Civic and Political Participation
...................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ................................................................................... iv Introduction .................................................................................................1 Methodology ...............................................................................................................3 What Kind of Citizen? ................................................................................5 A Brief History of Citizenship in Canada ...................................................6 The Canadian Citizen, 1867-1918 .............................................................................7 The Canadian Citizen, 1919-1990 .............................................................................8 Trends in Youth Civic Participation ...........................................................9 Explaining Levels of Engagement and Redefining Civic Literacy .........14 Political Knowledge and Young Canadians ............................................19 Does It Matter?......................................................................................................... 22 Capacities and Skills for Youth Civic Participation ................................24 What Skills Should School Teach? ......................................................................... 25 Civic Literacy and Schools .......................................................................27 Provincial/Territorial Curriculum Guidelines ............................................................ 28 Provincial “Behavioural” Codes of Conduct ........................................................... 30 Opportunities for Civic Learning .............................................................31 Future Research ..................................................................................................... 34 References .................................................................................................36 Provincial/Territorial Educational Curriculum and Behavioural Documents ........... 44 Appendix A: Student Questionnaire .......................................................47 Appendix B: Student Interview Guide ....................................................48 Appendix C: Teacher Interview Guide ....................................................50 Authors ......................................................................................................52
Examining the role of ideological and political education on university students’ civic perceptions and civic participation in Mainland China: Some hints from contemporary citizenship theory
A long existing compulsive curriculum of ideological and political education is employed by the Chinese government to promote citizenship education among Chinese university students. This article builds on the findings of a mixed-methods research that examined the role of ideological and political education on university students’ civic perceptions and civic participation. The results showed little evidence of this curriculum having a clear effect on students’ political participation such as voting, as well as their idealized broad civic participation, but did reveal relatively positive effects on students’ civic intention and civic expression. In addition, it also identified its significant role in organizing students towards attending party-related activities. It shows that ideological and political education is insufficient to achieve specified aims of citizenship education among Chinese university students. We then argue that it results from a mechanistic understanding of citizenship and participation in educational policies and structural barriers to young people’s formal participation. Hence, this article argues that the forms and contents of citizenship education in China need to be reconsidered beyond the limits of the current ideological and political education and that the analyses contributed to an argument for a broader approach to citizenship education to be developed and adopted.
History, criminology and the ‘use’ of the past
This article considers why, despite an apparent congruence of subject matter and methodologies, the disciplines of sociological criminology and criminal justice history are not more closely aligned. It contends that intellectual traffic between the two fields is not usually limited by institutional barriers, nor is it a legacy of the disciplinary antipathy which existed between history and sociology in Britain during the mid-twentieth century. Rather, it is due to the different ‘purposes’ with which sociological criminologists and criminal justice historians imbue their work and to the differing disciplinary perceptions of the relationship between the past, present and future which result from this. These different ‘purposes’ are traced via a consideration of the paths of development of the two disciplines from the 1940s. The article concludes by proposing an arena for future collaboration between criminal justice historians and sociological criminologists.