Contemporary liberal democracies face complex and disruptive challenges, such as toxic populism, culture wars, political polarization, religious fundamentalism, the climate emergency, global conflicts, and the influence of powerful social media platforms. This is the disconcerting world that young people are growing up in and need support in…

Civics courses have a great significance -- they are supposed to train new cohorts of citizens to engage in multiple public roles in (democratic) society. How it is done depends on a multitude of factors, and teachers' performance and program contents are among the most important. In post-authoritarian order like Poland, civic contents of…

This important book offers an inclusive approach to preparing students to be responsible participants in a democratic society. Civic education generally operates through the lens of citizenship, where students learn what good citizenship is and what good citizens do. Yet the citizenship lens fails to identify the wide range of schoolchildren and…

This report, intended primarily for civics reformers considering how best to defend and improve traditional American civics education, surveys a selection of different civics offerings, both the traditional and the radical. Surveyed providers include organizations such as the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, We the People, and Hillsdale…

There is increasing urgency to broaden access to inclusive and culturally sustaining K-12 civic education. Civic education can foster young people's development of their civic identity, which can support a functioning American democracy. Civic education often includes opportunities for learners to develop civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions,…

The blows of the financial recession of 2007-09 and now the COVID-19 crisis have emboldened populist political leaders across the globe. Their platforms typically involve a mixture of nativist or nationalist tropes, often infused with hostility to refugees and immigrants and built upon foundations of racism and intolerance. The internet provides…

This article reports a quasi-experimental study that assessed whether purposeful political engagement efforts in the general education classroom, coupled with co-curricular programming, enhances student interest in politics and political efficacy. The subjects of the study were students in political science general education courses at a…

Purpose: This article aims at elaboration of a relevant framework for European identity and citizenship. On this basis, comparative studies like ICSS, Estonian curricula, civic syllabuses and textbooks will be critically reviewed. Methods: The framework relies on former studies on democracy and education. The work also draws on normative materials…

The ambitious project to nationalise the Australian Curriculum has prompted great interest among policymakers, academics and civics teachers in Australian schools. The government-led citizenship education initiative "Discovering Democracy" (1997-2007) comprehensively failed to meet its objectives, most prominently the stated goal of…

Recent critiques of citizenship education have identified the need for curricula that cover not only civil, political, social and cultural aspects of political belonging and responsibility, but that orient students to the realities of global engagement and responsibility. Rather than focussing on national values, histories and political…

Contemporary discussion of the "crisis in democracy" displays a tendency to see young people as the problem because they are "apolitical" "apathetic" and "disengaged" or point to deficiencies in institutions deemed responsible for civic education. This discussion normally comes as a prelude to calls for more…

Drawing on ethnographic data collected in Azerbaijan, this article examines the civics education program that existed in Azerbaijan in the 1990s and the early 2000s, prior to its incorporation into a newly created "life skills" ("h[schwa]yat bilgisi" in Azerbaijani) course. It is argued that a disconnect between curriculum…

Purpose: The aim of the research is to determine to what extent one can talk about "cosmopolitan citizenship" not only programmatically, but also as an already functioning entity. And what role can and should civic education play in the development of such a citizenship? Methods: A working definition of citizenship at the national,…

One central aspect of a healthy democracy is the practice of democratic dissent. For the first time in many years, dissent is being widely practiced in town hall meetings and on street corners across the United States. Despite this presence, dissent is often suppressed or omitted in the prescribed, tested, hidden, and external curriculum of US…

With contributions from leading experts across disciplinary fields, this book explores best practices from the field's most notable researchers, as well as important historically based and politically focused challenges to a field whose impact has reached an important crossroads. The comprehensive and powerfully critical analysis considers the…