Vocabularies of citizenship: a survey of British Columbian secondary students' experiences and understandings in the field of citizenship education
Date
2018-01-03
Authors
Elbert, Jamie
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Abstract
Beginning in earnest in the 1990s, research and political communities have taken a strong
interest in citizenship education both in Canada and worldwide, but in the context of
secondary schools this has resulted in primarily theoretical papers rather than empirical
analyses of student experiences. The student voice is particularly important to the study
of citizenship education given the complexity of constructed civic subjectivities and the
rapidly changing definitions of community, including the relationships between local,
national and global. Canada has been characterized as post-national or even without
identity, and its young people are caught up in the persisting narrative of young apathy
when it comes to politics and civic duty. Drawing on theories of national and global
citizenship, this exploratory mixed methods study of 104 British Columbian secondary
students investigates student vocabularies of citizenship in order to map current youth
understandings of citizenship and experiences in their secondary education. In discussing
the results, I challenge the narratives of Canada as a meaningless signifier and youth as
apathetic, and investigate scholarly concerns regarding the depoliticization of citizenship,
and the potential conflict inherent to the globalization of youth identities. Finally, I
discuss best practices in citizenship education with reference to established scholarly
research and the student-based findings of the present study.
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Keywords
citizenship, citizenship education, secondary students, mixed methods, Canada, Canadian, civic subjectivity