Citizenship Education Research Journal/Revue de recherche sur l'éducation à la citoyenneté

Navigating Citizenship Education by Employing Critical Race Theory and Social Constructivism

2021-12-20T09:52:57-08:00

This perspective piece aims to explicate definitions of citizenship and citizenship education in a multicultural society like Canada. In doing so, this paper tries to navigate citizenship education by employing Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Social Constructivism. Understanding the connections between both theories and citizenship education would provide additional perspectives for citizenship education scholars to enunciate the meaning of citizenship education. Critical Race Theory highlights the position of race and racism to understand the structure of our society. Such an understanding would delineate citizenship education with the experiential knowledge of people of diverse social and ethnic backgrounds. Social Constructivism emphasizes the role of social interactions in shaping our understanding of the world. As such, understanding individuals’ experiences and their interactions with others would help citizenship education researchers to supplement and refine our current understanding of citizenship education. This paper presents a critical definition of citizenship in the end.

Keywords: citizenship education, Critical Race Theory, Social Constructivism

CERJ Preface

2021-12-15T18:19:54-08:00

A brief editorial to this year's journal edition, titled Challenging Canadian Citizenship and Identity: Re-Imagining New Narratives of Belonging. This editorial discusses general themes and introduces each of the papers in this edition.

Denying Racism in Canada’s Residential School System

2021-07-22T07:11:12-07:00

Denials of racism are one of the most salient features of racist discourse. This paper examines the online comments following six news articles posted on Facebook.. The articles, from three major Canadian daily newspapers, announce the findings of graves at former residential schools. This article sorts the different denials of racism in the comments using the typology of denial proposed by Van Dijk (1992) and used by Wodak (2015). It then examines the other ‘denial-adjacent’ strategies that appear in the comments, including delegitimizations, temporal distancing, individualization and displacement, excessive doubt, distractions, and outright dismissals.

A Call for Change in Times of Globalization. A Comparative Analysis of the Ontario Secondary L2 Curricula Through a Citizenship Lens

2020-08-17T16:48:16-07:00

This paper shares the finding of a comparative analysis of the ESL/ELD curriculum Grades 9 -12 (OME, 2007a) ( ESL/ELD) and the FSL curriculum Grades 9 -12 (OME, 2014) (FSL) focused on the Ontario Ministry of Education’s (OME) global citizenship goal for second language students. Global citizenship has become a curricular goal in many educational systems around the world, including in Canada – Ontario. Additionally, learning global citizenship in tandem with second language (L2) is advantageous (Cates, 2005 and 2013; Nussbaum, 1994 and 1996; Starkey, 2007) because globalization has increased racial, cultural, and ethnic interactions (Hansen, 2008) and the language classroom has become a place where the different cultures meet. Therefore, it is important to understand how the OME integrates global citizenship principles in the education of English and French L2 learners. Results suggest the ESL/ELD curriculum does not promote global citizenship; instead, it aims to prepare students for the job market and for becoming passive citizens. Additionally, the FSL curriculum’s goal to prepare students for global citizenship, through intercultural understanding, is superficial and inefficient. Findings have shown the OME needs to review the ESL/ELD and FSL curricula to promote global citizenship education and prepare learners to become caring and connected citizens of the world.

Unsellable: Toward (re)construction of global citizenship education outside of neoliberal discourses

2022-01-22T16:53:49-08:00

Global Citizenship Education (GCE) is a form of curricular learning that aims to create a way of thinking about people and the planet in terms of betterment and equality. This study examines selected bodies of GCE research and situates emerging themes around national conversations which appear as public comments on a major media source. The study finds themes of inconsistent conceptualizations, neoliberalism, power, voices, transformation, and valuation and argues that GCE should focus on identity formation centred around Indigenous understandings of interconnectedness and responsibility, knowledge co-production and larger loyalties.

Place-based education: The key to active global citizens

2021-09-25T08:32:22-07:00

Goals and methods of education need to be adapted to accommodate the changing demands of a globalized and constantly evolving world. The skillsets required for navigating the 21^st century are not being supplied by traditional schooling systems and curricula. Place-based learning is proffered as a suitable approach which will equip children with the attitudes, propensities, and mindsets necessary to negotiate their changing world.