The European Youth Strategy and its tools are pivotal instruments within the European Union policies framework to meet the varied needs of young citizens while fostering a sense of European citizenship. However, the extent of those tools' impact lacks empirical evidence in the existing literature. To address this gap, we employed a…

The importance of preparation for citizenship has been recognized for millennia, while education for democracy has been central to pedagogical thinking in Europe and in Hungary for more than a quarter of a century (Crick Report, European Year of Citizenship through Education, EU key competences, modified version of the NCC). Educating a citizenry…

In this paper, we discuss core ideas arising from research undertaken in a Leverhulme Trust (IN2016-002) funded international network project. The project examined youth activism, engagement and the development of new civic learning spaces within and across six countries (Australia, Canada, England, Hungary, Lebanon and Singapore). Arising from…

In this paper, I discuss participatory action research (PAR) as a way to support social and political engagement and develop civil society. After a short overview of my personal journey to participatory action research, I describe a general structure that I have developed for organizing PAR projects and a short introduction to the state of civil…

There are about 3 million Hungarians living as minority abroad in seven countries of Central Europe. Our research covered higher education with Hungarian medium of instruction in four countries where Hungarians still live in homogeneous blocks. The main points of our analysis were how the progressive assimilation effects on their perception of…

Purpose: We intent to provide a comprehensive picture of Hungarian social science education, to review the constituents of social science literacy, a systematic analysis of the curriculum and its changes since 1989 and of the available research in this field. Design/methodology/approach: The findings are based on the analysis of educational…

Economic and political crises, increasing poverty, new migration flows, political populism gaining strength, and technological changes (ICT and web2), in addition to the intensifying European youth vulnerabilities specified at the beginning of the century (Furlong, Stalder, & Azzopardi, 2000; Znidarec Cuckovic, 2014), create new…

Since ERASMUS (European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students) was launched there has been a constant debate about the civic significance of this mobility programme. The purpose of this article is to analyse the understanding of "active citizenship" by Erasmus students. In order to discover Erasmus students'…

This study aims to understand ways in which Hungarian high school students describe and articulate their civic identity, as members of varied civic communities. We conducted our study in Romania, an emerging democracy with an Hungarian national minority, as it provides a unique opportunity to examine the development of a democratic civic identity…

Through organizational case studies conducted at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in China and Central European University in Hungary, this paper examines academic culture and citizenship in societies transitioning from communist to market-driven social and economic structures. The article presents a new model of citizenship, representing…

Research on Eastern Europe stresses the weakness of its civil society and the lack of political and social involvement, neglecting the question: What do people themselves think it means to be a good citizen? This study looks at citizens' definitions of good citizenship in Poland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary, using 2002 European Social…

Educators from Europe, Latin America, and the United States convened to explore issues inherent in democratic citizenship. Media literacy, a central component of democratic citizenship, was studied in depth. Data from the camp were examined for evidence of the participants' understandings of media literacy and how it might be taught. Results…

In this paper we argue that the socialist kindergarten in Hungary (1948-1989) was set up to aid the modernizing of a nation in a particular way and in a historical and political context in which the only way forward was to leave behind aspects of the past and start a new chapter in Hungarian history. Comparing this project to the…

The Civitas Democracy Camp for Teachers provides professional development for educators to collaboratively explore ideals of citizenship and citizenship education in democratic societies. Reported herein are the findings of a study of the camp experience of a cross-cultural group of educators who examined the concept of social justice and ways to…

Picture an undocumented student, and for most college counselors, it will be the image of a Latino student. However, the reality is that students from many other ethnic groups lack documentation as well. These students hail from everywhere. According to DreamActivist.org, an online resource network for undocumented students, they come from places…