Cogan and Derricott (1998, p. 155) construct a model of ‘multidimensional
citizenship’ with four dimensions ‘of thought, belief and action’ (Cogan 2000, p. 22): the
personal, the social, the spatial and the temporal. The foundational elements of this model
(drawing from Marshall’s (1983) classic work) describe a balance of desirable attributes
for the ideal citizen, including: a sense of identity; the enjoyment of certain rights; the
fulfilment of corresponding obligations; a degree of interest in public affairs; and an
acceptance of basic societal values (Cogan and Derricott 1998, pp. 2-3). While these
attributes are milder than those needed for truly critical citizenship, they illustrate the kinds
of goals available for an ideal citizenship education, which we explore below.
Models of Ideal Citizenship Education
The IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational
Achievement) Civic Education Study (Amadeo et al. 1999) suggests that citizenship (or
‘civics’) education should be:
.. .cross-disciplinary, participative, interactive, related to life, conducted in a non-authoritarian
environment, cognizant of the challenges of societal diversity and co-constructed with parents
and the community.as well as the school. (Amadeo et al. 1999, p. 30)
Although this description mirrors some aspects of the writings of critical
pedagogues, it focuses mainly on the process of constructing the curriculum rather than on
the content itself and therefore can only go part-way towards helping the construction of
the framework in the next section.
The term “citizenship education” is often characterised as the ideal out of the
various terminologies used to describe social or political education. Kerr (2000, p. 209),
for example, followed by Morris, Cogan and Liu (2002, p. 182) uses McLaughlin’s (1992)
‘minimal/maximal’ model to distinguish between ‘civic education’ (education towards the
minimal citizen) and ‘citizenship education’ (education towards the maximal citizen).
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