Over the past few years, we have worked together in a citizen science project called "Diamonds on the Soles of our Feet" (see also Goldin et al. 2021, Goldin et al., 2023). In this project we engaged with 420 young learners in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. We came to see participating schools as collaborative ecosystems where…

Museums have a crucial role to play in building active citizens in their societies. In part, museums are well positioned to do this because developing new citizens is greatly strengthened by the study of the challenges and successes of the past. However, in looking for examples to learn from just as much can be gained by examining citizens working…

This article seeks to address what it means to be an 'engaged' university and, in so doing, to contribute to current discourses -- in a fast growing field -- about how to collaborate with communities for meaningful social transformation. As a group of researchers from the faculty of education in a South African university, we share our thinking…

The paper considers citizenship formation at universities, drawing on the example of a student leadership project at the University of the Free State, a formerly White South African university, in a higher education context and society where racialised difference continues to influence peer relationships. The paper proposes a multi-dimensional…

The transition from apartheid to democracy necessitated radical transformation within the South African political, socio-economic and education landscape. Black and coloured students were only fit for unskilled or semi-skilled occupations resulting in under-qualified and poorly trained professionals. Since the inception of democracy, there was a…

This article investigates the contribution of higher education to democratisation in Africa by studying the political attitudes of undergraduate students at four African flagship universities in Botswana, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania. It analyses students' attitudes against those of youths without higher education and mass publics in their…

Each issue of this annual newsletter focuses on a particular area of the Kettering Foundation's research. The 2014 issue focuses on taking stock of the civic arena, which includes organized projects in civic renewal, civic engagement, civic education, and civic capacity building in communities. This issue contains the following articles that…

The central feature of Athenian citizens' rights, that is, people's participation in government, is also enshrined in the South African Constitution. This article argues for the Athenian style of participatory democracy as a viable model of participation in governing South African schools. The author claims that "people's education",…

This article is about an investigation of eight-year-old children's life experiences as child citizens in democratic South Africa, their right to be listened to and to participate in the democracy. Research indicates that understanding children's life experiences can influence adults' understanding of what needs to be done to support their…

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child includes children's right to participation in processes that affect them. In this article we caution that in order to give real content to participation, it is necessary to understand what participation is and to acknowledge the problematic nature of the concept. We then demonstrate, by…

This paper presents an argument for the relevance of education for critical global citizenship, with reference to a graphic design module at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa as a case study. The first part of the paper argues that tolerance, cultural diversity, democratic participation and social cohesion are prerequisites for plural…

In South Africa, democratic consolidation involves not only building a new state, but also new interfaces between state and society. To strengthen the agency of citizens at these interfaces, recent approaches to development stress the notion of "participatory citizenship." The purpose of this article is to explore the links, rarely…

"The Engaged University" is a comprehensive empirical account of the global civic engagement movement in higher education. In universities around the world, something extraordinary is underway. Mobilizing their human and intellectual resources, institutions of higher education are directly tackling community problems--combating poverty,…

The decline in civic participation, dwindling support for social services and deficits in state budgets, has created a climate in which higher education, supported by several policies, has to make a commitment to contribute to the reconstruction and development of society by linking academic programmes to community-based priorities (Campbell…

This is an account of a programmer utilizing the application of action learning to the development of capacities of citizens. The Citizen Leadership for Democratic Governance is designed to equip citizens with the skills to get involved and handle the difficult tasks of governance in their communities in South Africa. After a history of apartheid…