Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to shed light upon and come to a fuller understanding of the different concepts of citizenship that can be found within the key phrase ‘Active and informed citizens’. Although coming to prominence in the second educational goal of the Melbourne Declaration, these words can be traced back within Australian curriculum documents and governmental reports for over 30 years. Over this period, they have been connected to and advocated by policy actors with very different understandings and agendas in how citizenship is conceived. In this paper, I trace some of the historical lineage of this phrase, with a focus on the scope of what is imaginable as Active and Informed Citizenship and how it has been framed in different ways in order to fulfill different political purposes. In doing so, I am also considering how these different interpretations of Active and Informed Citizenship define concepts such as agency, participation, and critical awareness. This paper is intended to be a politicizing act that attempts to make visible the inherent contestable nature of Civics and Citizenship Education (CCE) as a spectrum of contested political and social understandings of citizenship, and how this contestability is deeply embedded in the curriculum formation process.
In order to conduct my examination, I draw upon the theories and concepts of a socio-material approach to research. In particular, I use terms from Actor-Network Theory (ANT), a field of sociology that has produced well over three decades of research into complex networks of influence. To further support this research approach, I discuss key theoretical models for understanding CCE as existing on a political spectrum; at one end progressive and critically orientated, and at the other end, conservatively orientated transmission models. As my title alludes to, I draw upon the seminal work of Westheimer and Kahne and their concept of three ‘kinds of citizen’: the personally responsible citizen, the participatory citizen, and the justice-oriented citizen. These models are used as tools for analysis and comparison in my discussion of the competing ways civics and citizenship has historically presented by the phrase “Active and Informed citizen” within Australian education.
In order to conduct my examination, I draw upon the theories and concepts of a socio-material approach to research. In particular, I use terms from Actor-Network Theory (ANT), a field of sociology that has produced well over three decades of research into complex networks of influence. To further support this research approach, I discuss key theoretical models for understanding CCE as existing on a political spectrum; at one end progressive and critically orientated, and at the other end, conservatively orientated transmission models. As my title alludes to, I draw upon the seminal work of Westheimer and Kahne and their concept of three ‘kinds of citizen’: the personally responsible citizen, the participatory citizen, and the justice-oriented citizen. These models are used as tools for analysis and comparison in my discussion of the competing ways civics and citizenship has historically presented by the phrase “Active and Informed citizen” within Australian education.