Memorandum submitted by Professor Audrey
Osler
SUMMARY
This evidence addresses the following terms
of reference issued by the Education and Skills Committee: citizenship
education's potential to contribute to community cohesion; the
relationship between citizenship education and current debates
about identity and Britishness; and initial and in-service training.
Discussion of practice in other countries is also included. I
draw on my recent research in England and internationally, my
experience in initial and in-service teacher training and on work
with local authorities and schools. I argue that the citizenship
education curriculum needs to be underpinned by human rights and
cite evidence which suggests that a well-conceived human rights
based citizenship curriculum has the potential to contribute to
community cohesion, civic courage and greater solidarity with
others, within and beyond our national borders. To do this we
need to move away from the deficit model of young people currently
popular with certain policy-makers and support young people in
contributing to the project of democracy. There are resource implications
both for the training of teachers and for training the trainers.
The evidence concludes with a set of recommendations for the DfES,
the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and the Teacher Development
Agency.
Citizenship education's potential to contribute
to community cohesion
1. Cohesive communities require a common
set of shared principles. Britain, which has been characterised
as "a community of communities"1 also needs to be clear
about the basis from which we can derive principles to which all
in our multicultural nation can sign up. The citizenship curriculum,
which is a statutory part of the National Curriculum for England
and is thus part of every child's entitlement, provides us with
an opportunity to promote and foster shared principles among young
people. Human rights provide us with the broad principles to which
we all can adhere.
2. Across Europe, there is a strong consensus
that human rights provide the principles values which underpin
the nation-state and the education of democratic citizens.2 There
is also a growing international consensus that human rights need
to underpin citizenship education in multicultural democracies.3
Britain is perhaps unique in Europe in hesitating to acknowledge
the human rights principles which underpin society and which need
to underpin education for citizenship, despite the introduction
of the Human Rights Act which has incorporated the European Convention
on Human Rights (ECHR) into domestic law.
3. Britain has also signed up to various
commitments to promote education for democratic citizenship and
human rights as a Member State of the Council of Europe, but these
highly practical recommendations do not appear to influence policy-making
at the DfES and are not disseminated to local authorities or schools.4
It is perhaps a failure to provide human rights education which
has led to a situation where the public often associate human
rights with distant countries or with high profile court cases,
rather than understand the links between the ECHR and the Universal
Declaration on Human Rights. Human rights education should be
made available to all students within the citizenship curriculum.
4. Human rights provide a framework for
debate and discussion, skills centrally required by young citizens
who are learning to participate democratically. This experience
is supported by those local authorities, like Hampshire, who have
undertaken an extensive human rights programme with teachers and
schools. A number of individual schools have adopted human rights
as the basis of their citizenship education programmes. Research
and evaluation of these programmes at school level has demonstrated
that they are able to promote student participation and student
voice, support achievement and reduce conflict and violence.5
Relationship between citizenship education and
current debates about identity and Britishness
5. A number of the current debates about
identity, multiculturalism and Britishness present diversity as
a problem we have to overcome. In a democracy we need diversity
in order for democracy to work. Diversity needs to be recognised
as an asset, as a public good, in our democracy. Just as there
is now a widely-recognised business case for diversity, we need
to recognise the benefits of diversity to our democracy and to
acknowledge how diversity contributes towards the strengthening
of democracy. Students need opportunities to explore how diversity
can enrich and support democracy and to recognise diversity as
a public good.
6. Through our research, we have defined
citizenship as a feeling, a status and a practice.6 The feeling
is a sense of belonging to a community and citizenship education
can, as suggested above, support students' sense of belonging
to a range of communities (local, ethnic, national, diasporic,
global) and thereby support their multiple identities. Status
is normally understood as national status. An undue focus on national
status risks an approach which is potentially nationalistic and
assimilationist. An approach which encourages what is sometimes
referred to in the United States as "critical patriotism"
is more constructive. This is more about the fostering of collective
solidarity and civic courage. Rather than the irrational "my
country right or wrong", it is important to foster critical
discourse and a desire to challenge injustice and the wrongs in
society. Not all students in the citizenship classroom will necessarily
hold British citizenship but all are holders of human rights.
An inclusive approach which encourages solidarity, beyond as well
as within the community of those categorised as British, is helpful
and indeed essential.
7. Many young people are gaining experience
of citizenship skills in their local communities, in families
and in faith groups.7 Citizenship education in schools has too
readily been conceived as something which assumes a deficit model
of young people (eg violent, unlikely to vote, disaffected). This
deficit model needs to be challenged and many young people's positive
citizenship experiences beyond the school need to be recognised.
8. As a result of our research, we also
advocate an approach to citizenship education which is cosmopolitan,
and which fosters an "allegiance to the worldwide community
of human beings".8 Education policy often focuses on the
need of the nation to be internationally competitive. There is
a compelling need to stress international cooperation.
9. Education for democratic citizenship
needs to examine the barriers to democratic participation. Too
often the project of democracy is assumed to be complete. Students
need to explore barriers to participation, and in a multicultural
democracy need to understand issues like racism, homophobia, Islamophobia
not merely as moral or human rights issues but as barriers to
democracy itself. This is, for example, the approach in Sweden.9
Following the publication of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry the
Government suggested that citizenship education should be a key
means of promoting race equality and challenging institutional
racism. Although some schools do examine racism as a means of
undermining democracy, there has been little guidance on this
issue, other than to encourage young people to examine interpersonal
racism. Some guidance from QCA attempts to deals with racism,
encouraging students to think about racial discrimination. 10
This guidance does not conform to Home Office guidance, enshrined
in law: "A racist incident is any incident which is perceived
to be racist by the victim or any other persons".11
Initial and in-service training
10. A large proportion of the trainee and
experienced teachers seeking to deepen their professional knowledge
in citizenship education lack specific academic experience in
the subject disciplines most likely to support them, namely political
science, sociology and human rights law. They do, however, often
bring additional skills and experience to their teaching. A significant
proportion of the trainee teachers recruited at Leicester (2002-04)
were mature entrants into the profession. They bring professional
experience in a wide range of community and professional settings,
including legal and advice work. Citizenship education has the
potential to help extend the diversity of experience, professional
and ethnic backgrounds of the teaching profession, something which
is greatly needed.
11. In 2005 the DfES funded four pilot short
Certificate courses in Citizenship Education, run by a range of
providers across the country. This project will be extended over
a period of three years, and the pilot was evaluated by Ofsted.
Informal feedback suggests that Ofsted is concerned about the
issue of subject knowledge. While these Certificate courses provide
a number of teachers with basic support in the pedagogy and content
of citizenship education, short courses cannot, by their very
nature, provide the in-depth subject knowledge required. The DfES
should allocate some resources so that a limited number of experienced
and expert teachers can develop an in-depth understanding of citizenship
education and democratic practice through longer certified courses,
at Masters' level. Such teachers could then support Ofsted and
other agencies, such as the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority
(QCA) in ensuring that the project of developing citizenship education
as a National Curriculum subject can be made sustainable and can
be evaluated by specialist teams with in-depth subject-appropriate
knowledge. I am currently developing an interdisciplinary Masters'
level course MA Education and Democracy (one year full-time/two
years part-time) which seeks to extend subject knowledge for teachers
of citizenship education by offering modules in political and
sociological theory and practice, and human rights law as well
as pedagogic practice in citizenship education.
12. My experience working in a number of
local authorities and in three universities, suggests that teachers
engaged in teaching sensitive issues, with an implicit or explicit
political content, are often concerned about establishing principles
and values to underpin both content selection and pedagogy. This
concern is felt particularly acutely in a society which is both
secular and multi-faith. Both trainees and experienced teachers
have found that a basic understanding of human rights principles
helpful in thinking how they might support young people in learning
for democratic citizenship and living together justly. All teachers
need education in human rights as part of their initial training.
There is an obligation on government to ensure that all teachers
are informed about and understand the implications of the UN Convention
on the Rights of the Child. This is not yet an explicit part of
the initial teacher training entitlement and needs to be built
into this.
Training the trainers
13. Although the Teacher Development Agency
(TDA) has invested in two websites to support teacher trainers
on diversity and citizenship education, there is currently little
support for teacher trainers in human rights education or in addressing
diversity as an asset within our democracy, or indeed, in examining
racism as a barrier to democratic participation. If citizenship
education is to fulfil its potential of contributing to social
cohesion within our multicultural democracy, teacher trainers
need urgent support in these areas.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Human rights principles should underpin
the citizenship curriculum in our multicultural democracy.
2. Human rights education should be every
student's entitlement within the citizenship curriculum. DfES
and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority should take a
lead in mainstreaming human rights into the citizenship curriculum
and support efforts to do this at the Department of Constitutional
Affairs.
3. The recommendations and commitments to
education for democratic citizenship and human rights to which
Britain has signed up as a Member State of the Council of Europe
should centrally inform DfES policy-making and be disseminated
to local authorities and schools.
3. Students need opportunities to explore
how diversity can enrich and support democracy and to recognise
diversity as a public good.
4. "Critical patriotism" rather
than an uncritical or complacent "Britishness" or "Englishness"
should be fostered within the citizenship curriculum.
5. Guidance on how citizenship education
can foster civic courage and a sense of solidarity among all,
regardless of their formal citizenship status, should be provided
by the DfES and Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.
5. We need to abandon the deficit model
of young people, common to much of the current citizenship education
policy discourse. Instead citizenship education should build upon
young people's citizenship skills which are acquired in the family,
community and faith groups.
6. Cosmopolitanism and a sense of allegiance
to others at local, national and international levels should be
fostered within the citizenship curriculum.
7. Democracy needs to be presented as a
project in progress, rather than one which is achieved and young
people need to be given opportunities within the school curriculum
to examine issues like racism and homophobia as barriers to democracy
and opportunities to contribute to the project of fostering democracy
by working to dismantle these barriers.
8. There needs to be further DfES investment
in teacher training for citizenship, including support for a small
number of expert teachers to acquire in-depth subject knowledge
and expertise so that they can support the next stage of embedding
this new subject into the National Curriculum.
9. The Teacher Development Agency (TDA)
should take a lead in ensuring that all trainees are introduced
to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and that they
understand the implications of this set of standards relating
to children's human rights for their professional practice.
10. The TDA should allocate resources to
support teacher trainers in the field of human rights education;
addressing diversity as a public good, essential to the functioning
of effective democracy; and recognising racism as a barrier to
democracy. Support for human rights education is not an optional
extra but is required if Britain is to fulfil its obligations
under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international
human rights agreements.
REFERENCES 1 Commission
on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain (2000) The Future of
Multi-Ethnic Britain. The Parekh Report. London: Profile Books.
2 Council of Europe (2002) Recommendation
Rec (2002) 12 of the Committee of Ministers to Member States on
Education for Democratic Citizenship. Strasbourg.
3 See for example: Banks et al. (2005)
Democracy and Diversity: principles and concepts for educating
citizens in a global age. Washington, Seattle: Centre for
Multicultural, University of Washington
http://depts.washington.edu/centerme/DemDiv.pdf
Osler, A and Starkey, H (2005) Changing Citizenship:
democracy and inclusion in education. Maidenhead: Open University
Press.
4 See for example, Council of Europe
(2002) op. cit.
5 Hudson, A (2005) Citizenship education
and students' identities: a school-based action research project,
in A Osler (Ed) Teachers, Human Rights and Diversity: educating
citizens in multicultural societies. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham.
Carter, C, & Osler, A (2000) Human rights, identities
and conflict management: a study of school culture as experienced
through classroom relationships. Cambridge Journal of Education,
30 (3) 335-356.
6 Osler, A and Starkey, H (2005) op.
cit.
7 Osler, A & Starkey, H (2003)
Learning for Cosmopolitan Citizenship: theoretical debates and
young people's experiences, Educational Review, 55/3, pp
243-254.
8 Nussbaum, M (2002) Patriotism and
cosmopolitanism. In J Cohen (Ed.) For Love of Country. Boston:
Beacon Press.
9 Osler, A, & Starkey, H (2002)
Education for Citizenship: mainstreaming the fight against racism?
European Journal of Education, 37 (2) 143-159.
10 Qualifications and Curriculum Authority
(2003) Respect for All: PSHE and Citizenship. Qualifications
and Curriculum Authority (2003) Respect for All: racial discrimination.
11 Home Office (2000) Code of Practice
on Reporting and Recording Racist incidents in response to recommendation
15 of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. London: Home Office.
March 2006
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