Students as Citizens: Conceptions of Citizenship in a Social Studies Curriculum

Authors

  • Jennifer K. Bergen Faculty of Education University of Ottawa
  • Lorna R. McLean Faculty of Education University of Ottawa

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14288/tci.v11i2.185932

Keywords:

Curriculum theory, citizenship, global citizenship, social studies

Abstract

This article investigates representations of citizenship in a provincial, Social Studies Grade 9 curriculum in Canada to better understand how the document conceptualizes global education and differing worldviews, and to determine how these conceptions are supported by two Ministry of Education resource documents that compliment Social Studies 9: the Broad Areas of Learning and Cross-curricular Competencies. All three documents were analyzed using a citizenship conception model and a global citizenship framework. Our analysis of the curriculum and supporting documents that draws upon a four-stage dialectical-relational model of critical discourse analysis revealed that the majority of curricular indicators espoused a deliberative or social justice conception of citizenship. Although a similar finding was supported by the types of citizenship taken up in the two Ministry resource documents, our study revealed that that the resource documents profiled a more participatory form of citizenship than in the curriculum.

Author Biography

Lorna R. McLean, Faculty of Education University of Ottawa

Faculty of Education Associate professor

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Published

2015-01-16

Issue

Section

Articles