The Transformation of Civic and Citizenship Education: Challenges to Educational Governance, Agency and Research – An Introduction

Reinhold Hedtke, Claude Proeschel, Andrea Szukala (2017)

Journal of Social Science Education, Volume 16, Number 4, p. 2-15

Introduction. The current issue of the Journal of Social Science Education wants to start a conceptual debate about the impact of recent challenges for the making, regulating and the practical performing of civic education in differ-rent educational contexts and settings. As is well known, educational politics today comprise almost always multi-level settings from local to international or from micro to macro levels. This suggests, in the first place, to make use of a broad basic concept, the approach of educational governance. We want, however, to go beyond and ad-vocate a widening of empirical and theoretical perspec-tives on civic and citizenship education. Therefore, we propose neo-pragmatistic approaches from sociology for an elaborate and productive analysis of multi-level dynamics in civic education. By doing so, alternative the-oretical foci can be set on domains of critical trans-formative impact and significance, without, however, losing sight of the broader context of civic education in the political field. […]

Link to the issue (PDF files are downloadable)