Towards a framework for critical citizenship education

terminology enables the framework (Table 2) to be applied by curriculum developers and
teachers and to facilitate the analysis of existing curricular materials.

Insert Table 1 about here

Using Table 1 we have derived the ‘framework for critical citizenship education’
shown in Table 2, below. This has been achieved by distilling and simplifying the
descriptions from Table 1, and by choosing those which align most closely with the tenets
of critical pedagogy as analysed above, whilst retaining the four key elements
distinguished in Figure 1: ‘politics/ideology’, ‘social/collective’, ‘self/subjectivity’ and
‘praxis/engagement’. As Westheimer and Kahne (2004, p. 237) note, ‘conceptions of
democracy and citizenship have been and will likely always be debated - no single
formulation will triumph’. The framework developed below is therefore intended to be a
working, flexible model of critical citizenship, open to reinterpretation and adaptation.

Some elements that stand out as incompatible are discarded in the final cut (Table
2): for example, under the intersection between Praxis and Skills, the concept of
‘participating actively and sensibly in roles and responsibilities one encounters in one’s
adult life’ (Kerr 2000; McLaughlin 1992) contrasted with the other, more idealistic,
elements of that section such as ‘learning how to act collectively to build political
structures that challenge the status quo’ (Giroux 1980; Osler and Starkey 1999). The use
of the word ‘roles’ could be interpreted as a symbol of social order or oppression, and the
word ‘sensibly’ as a call to discipline and order, somewhat antithetical to the actively
critical being (Veugelers 2007).

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