Changing the world : social, cultural and political pedagogies in civic education

Abstract

This multilingual book is the result of an international collaboration of many hands and authors from diverse continents and countries. The papers that are collected here represent a significant as well as an uncommon interconnectedness. Through collective research across time, disciplines, and spaces of interaction, essential questions about citizenship in relationship to educational practices and culture are investigated and their answered challenged. Educators and leaders alike involved in civic initiatives can benefit from this particular set of international perspectives and an integrative, interdisciplinary approach to civic education. Civic education in EU-27 member states faces the ironic situation that in many democratic societies today, there are public institutions that still remain closed systems, and schools themselves can be slow to transform from authoritarian and hierarchical structures that remain exclusionary and conformist, narrowing learning into the transmission of industrialized forms of knowledge functioning under archaic disciplinary norms. Under ideological conditions, educational systems can even devolve, especially in situations operating without due, civil society rule of law. Far from achieving democratic practices in education, civic education’s mandate leaves unanswered questions as to why it does not yet function in even many democratic societies today. This collection of highly diverse and energetic professionals and their texts from Brazil, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Czech Republic attempt to answer those questions from diverse, sometimes challenging perspectives. I suggest that in studying their positions, it is possible to activate and catalyze new configurations of educational design, aimed at developing communitarian approaches from which participatory civil societies can be nurtured.