The intention of this article is to contribute to the debate about whether the voting age should be lowered to the age of 16, by examining quantitative and qualitative data collected in a local participation project with young people in Portugal: questionnaires (N = 961), interviews (N = 3), and focus group discussions (N = 15). Considering the…

In bringing together the literature on post-democracy and theoretical work on the politics of affective societies, this article explores how democratic education might benefit from a sustained examination of negative emotions and affects associated with democratic disenchantment. In particular, the analysis highlights what is gained by introducing…

Even though religion plays a central role in many people's lives, it is often omitted from citizenship education in secularized societies. Educational scholars have increasingly demanded that teaching about religion should be included in citizenship curricula to foster effective participation for "all" citizens. However, this is an…

Digital Citizenship is an emerging field of research but there is still a lack of knowledge into what works and how to implement educational practices to develop digital citizenship. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the relationship between young people's participatory profile and their perceptions of the development of digital and…

Our main goal is to provide a preliminary, descriptive, and thematic overview of civic education courses in Serbia until 2020 from the perspectives of international political sociology, critical pedagogy and critical curriculum studies. After clarifying pertinent conceptual assumptions of curriculum analysis, we review the methodology employed to…

Civic education is often touted as a counterweight to the contentiousness of American politics. Yet, civic education's relationship to dislike and distrust of opposing partisans (affective polarization) remains largely untested. Simultaneously, there are calls for educators to promote more civic informed action, taking civic education beyond the…

Youth from every continent used online tools to exchange ideas, debate alternatives, and create a document that represents their voice on the relationship education should have with global citizenship: the International Youth White Paper on Global Citizenship. This paper applies de Sousa Santos' sociology of absences and emergences to trace the…

In this interpretative case study, the researchers examined the democratic and multicultural beliefs and related practices of 11 preservice social studies teachers in the northeastern United States. They collected interview, observation, and classroom artifact data throughout the participants' teacher preparation experience. Using Banks's typology…

Within plural democracies, the concept of 'religious literacy' is commonly understood as denoting the knowledge, skills and understanding "vis-à-vis" religious diversity required of the citizen. In schools across Europe such learning is traditionally housed within Religious Education (RE), the aims of which are increasingly framed in…

Twenty years ago, Northern Ireland's previously prominent presence in the headlines of the yellow press dwindled to virtual non-existence. As the region's three-decade long conflict went into abeyance and the daily death tally dropped, the vagaries of the region's little-understood, political tensions were assigned to little-read columns hidden…

In many democratic societies, schools are expected to prepare their students for participation in democratic societies. (Self)assessment frameworks, designed by scholars and curriculum developers, support the development of school initiated democratic experiences. Existing frameworks, however, are not designed to capture the interplay between the…

What is the obligation of schools in fostering compassion for others and a commitment to the greater good? In a year-long qualitative study, this research explores how one Northeastern private schooling environment aimed to cultivate social responsibility in adolescents through an egalitarian, discussion-oriented pedagogy. Guided by Westheimer and…

We propose the Critical Diversity Literacy (CDL) framework for citizenship education in contemporary heterogeneous societies. It encourages an anti-essentialist, power-conscious awareness of difference beyond notions of citizenship that have been constitutive of the nation and tend to normalise masculinity, patriarchy, heterosexuality,…

This study explores the ways that youth make sense of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and how context informs the scope and nature of youth-led local civic action. Using an embedded case study approach, this study focuses on the Cultivating Pathways to Sustainability project, which engages scores of young people in the state of…

This study examines differences based on school gender in the teaching of Civic, Social and Political Education (CSPE), a mandatory subject in the Irish post-primary curriculum. These differences are considered in relation to Westheimer and Kahne's three types of citizens -- personally responsible, participatory and justice-oriented. The article…