The authors examine two Southeast Asian democratic countries and discuss how culture influences democratic participation and citizenship education.

Contemporary literature reveals that many educators, especially those in elementary schools and in conflict-effected societies, are reluctant to engage in the teaching of current public issues, even more so social controversies. However, this qualitative study examined the successful experience and the perspectives of educators from two elementary…

Reducing education to pure technique is to anesthetize curiosity (Freire, 1997). Neo-liberal policies privilege private interests and promote a model of education based on competition and consumerism (Harvey, 2005). This model of education perpetuates and increases inequalities. It also affects education whose priority is not to deliver learners…

While 'national education' has regularly been invoked by post-1997 Hong Kong administrations, its pursuit has acquired new force and urgency since the introduction in 2020 of a National Security Law. Investigating the role of schooling in this reinvigorated project of thought reform, this article asks how far recent initiatives have merely…

A rear-view mirror approach indicates that citizenship education and adult learning and education (ALE) for lifelong learning have been prominent throughout history, dating back to the League of Nations and continuing through the United Nations and UNESCO. The League of Nations was founded in 1920 after World War I when humanity realized that…

Contemporary liberal democracies face complex and disruptive challenges, such as toxic populism, culture wars, political polarization, religious fundamentalism, the climate emergency, global conflicts, and the influence of powerful social media platforms. This is the disconcerting world that young people are growing up in and need support in…

This book turns to political theory as a framework for understanding the rise of political and religious extremism, and in particular the Christian Nationalist position, identifying solutions to civic challenges, and arguing for the vital role that public schools play in providing the civic education that prepares young people for participation in…

Encouraging children to become 'good citizens' who positively contribute towards society through charitable and philanthropic action as part of their civic participation has become a core focus of policy and practice. Yet the opportunities afforded to children for active civic learning within primary education remain under-researched. This article…

This paper is a theoretical contribution to discussions about the emancipatory potential of citizenship education across four sites (i.e. Catalonia, Colombia, England, and Pakistan). By reflecting on policy and empirical data from our four contexts of study, we discuss whether citizenship education manifests different conditions of emancipatory…

Political polarization is often argued to be a major threat to democracy. This article examines whether the two different forms of polarization, ideological and affective, may risk some of the core assumptions of democratic legitimacy. The paper argues that ideological polarization is linked with increasingly radical ideological positions being…

According to Douglas Challenger, American democracy just survived a near-death experience during the slow-motion coup that was the four years of Donald Trump's presidency. It culminated in his rejecting his electoral loss and pressuring officials and political allies to back his claims that the election was fraudulent and, at the end, inciting his…

Research on college student political engagement remains limited, often focused on classroom interventions and studied quantitatively (Bardwell, 2011; Beaumont et al., 2006; Mann et al., 2018). Students' lived experience of their political engagement, however, is "situational, emergent, and co-creative" (Hildreth, 2003, p8). During the…

This study aimed to determine the tendencies of social studies teacher candidates, whose primary purpose is to raise active and responsible citizens, towards the use of fundamental rights. The study adopted a survey methodology and reached a total of 356 students studying in the Social Studies Teacher Education undergraduate program at 7…

The present study aimed to allow pre-service social studies teachers to define the citizens of the future and to determine the characteristics of the citizens of the future according to pre-service social studies teachers. The study group included 19 pre-service social studies teachers attending Firat University, Faculty of Education and…

The aim of the research is to determine the secondary school students' perceptions of identity and citizenship concepts. The research is designed in a qualitative model. The study group consists of 30 5th, 6th and 7th grade students at a public secondary school in the province of Kastamonu. In the research, 5th, 6th and 7th graders were asked to…