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
A/Political Education: A Survey of Quebec Students’ Perceptions of Their Citizenship Education
This survey of 370 recent high school graduates reveals that history and citizenship courses in Quebec focus on cultural and religious viewpoints, favour a transmission approach to learning, and fail to connect the political process to students’ concerns and interests. Without a clear conception of citizenship as a reference point, this curriculum appears to neglect the development of agency around civic engagement and social change. Recommendations on how to improve the program are guided by students’ answers to open-ended questions and current scholarship on the need for a more critical analysis of national and global diversity and inequality in school curriculums.
Same Same But Different - also in Europe! A New Methodological Approach in Cross-Country Analysis of Communication Structuresapplied to five EU member states
The EU still lacks a truly European public sphere. On this level, there is still a clear lack of integration between individual member states. This means that national public spheres and cultures are still of great importance for European communication and media professionals. Comparative research into the similarities and differences between different nations is therefore valuable for cross-border PR communication activities. This paper lays out the methodological foundation for such research, discussing possible approaches and difficulties associated with comparative research. The author then introduces a potential heuristic framework for comparative analysis: the International Corporate Communication Compass. This framework is applied to five case-study EU countries (Denmark, Germany, France, Poland and the UK), showing the differences and similarities in a range of different contexts that affect public communication in all its forms. The conclusion examines how the results of such studies could be used in order to compare communication identities of different countries. This can potentially help in the development of a European public identity on the long run and in a first step can led towards a better, more adapted communication structure about European citizenship. Ultimately, communication structures within the EU might become more Europeanized than they