Recently, the National Academy of Education released a report, edited by Lee, White and Dong, entitled Educating for Civic Reasoning and Discourse. Naturally, it falls within my areas of interest, although the phrasing of civic reasoning and discourse, as opposed to something like active citizenship education, is a term that I don’t personally use, for…
Category: Citizenship
Civic and Media Literacy
I recently came across this article by Gianfranco Polizzi and Marina Cino Pagliarello which beings by describing the current state of media literacy and citizenship education in the United Kingdom, before calling for the inclusion of more media literacy content and material within the compulsory citizenship syllabus. It’s a good article, and, while the UK…
Review of the Australian Curriculum
So, the next version of the Australian Curriculum is currently out for public review. I will be contributing to a variety of submissions in a number of guises, but I also wanted to document my thoughts here, specifically as they related to Civics and Citizenship. I’ll start by beating my usual drum about the place…
Is Citizenship the wrong term?
Careful readers of educational policy, and especially those with an interest in Civics and Citizenship Education will have noted that the recent version of the Australian Goals for Schooling – the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Declaration – has a number of significant changes from its predecessor, the Melbourne Declaration. One of the most overlooked, as far…
Citizenship and Power
I was recently asked to provide some feedback about a program that had been developed to encourage active citizenship amongst young people in one of Australia’s state. It was an interesting experience, and afforded me the chance to reflect just how far I have come as an expert – and an opinionated one, too –…
Activist Citizenship Education is here!
If you’re like me, you’ve been watching the events in the US with a fair amount of anxiety. I want to know how this could happen – and who could let it happen, or even worse, encourage it. What is the role of social media and mobile technology in this? And what responsibility do extremists…
Research Agenda for 2021: Part One (Civics and Citizenship)
So for 2021, now that I am starting to find myself more comfortable at UTS, I think that it’s time to really start applying myself with some dedication to my research agenda. This is going to be complicated by the increased amount of teaching that I am required to do, but I think that I…
Franken-citizens, Washington and Domestic Terrorism
As with many other people, I’ve been watching the events unfolding in Washington with a mixture of anxiety and concern. While the situation remains confused, I thought it would be worthwhile noting some initial thoughts and observations about what took place, and also making some suggestions as to what that means for civic educators like…
The Public Sphere, Twitter, and Trump
One of the most interesting moments (and there have been a great many) over the last couple of weeks to arise out of the mess in the US has been the action by Twitter, and then other social media companies, to ban actors like the President from their sites. Predictably, such actions aroused the ire…
Some thoughts on The New Despotism by John Keane
This will be a series of blog posts that I am writing to assist me in the work of developing my understanding of civics and citizenship education. Basically, I want to engage in a critical analysis, as it pertains to my interest in civics and citizenship education, of some of the key scholars in a…