A recent report from the Democracy Project found that "confidence in our governing institutions has been weakening over many years, and key pillars of our democracy, including the rule of law and freedom of the press, are under strain." In the recently published book "The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to…

This essay draws from a study conducted as part of graduate thesis work at George Mason University. The thesis examined the purpose of human rights education and critical media literacy, and the international inducements to include these subjects in the national education systems of United Nations (UN) member states. It compared the United States…

Democracy is not only a system of government, but also an overarching way of living together. It is through the social structures we live in and the resulting social relations, behaviors, and norms emanating from those structures, that we learn how to live together, democratically or otherwise. Adult education can promote the learning of democracy…

This article explores how John Dewey's concept of democracy can contribute to our understanding of what is required from education amid growing nationalism and populism, even in what are usually perceived as established democracies. The purpose of the study is to explore how standards-based curricula for citizenship education can be problematised…

The paper "American democracy is distress: The failure of social education" presents several "symptoms of democracy's dysfunction in the United States". These include the extreme reliance on campaign contributions, giving the donors--economic elites and groups representing business, frequently operating at a transnational…

Multiculturalism burst in Asia with the winds of globalisation. Fuelled by immigration, cultural hybridity and normative regimes from multilateral and bilateral organisations, multiculturalism is a new challenge for Asian economies, their politics of culture and their higher education institutions. Moreover, although heavily implemented from the…

The centrality of engagement is critical to the success of higher education in the future. Engagement is essential to most effectively achieving the overall purpose of the university, which is focused on the knowledge enterprise. Today's engagement is scholarly, is an aspect of learning and discovery, and enhances society and higher education.…

John Dewey's masterpiece "Democracy and Education", from 1916, is clearly far removed from the dominant tendencies of current education policy in the western world, with their emphasis on the narrow accountability of the New Public Management. Nevertheless, his book still challenges those tendencies and sets forth criteria for…

As a postsecondary educator with most of my experience teaching in colleges, but with some also in undergraduate and postgraduate studies both in Canada and the United States, I have been teaching politics and government for close to fifty years. That time has been spent not only undertaking empirical analyses of political behaviour and the…

Throughout U.S. history, Americans have pivoted between whether the central priority of public education should be to create skilled workers for the economy, or to educate young people for responsible citizenship. Both goals are important, of course, but with the recent rise of a global economy, the emphasis has shifted away from preparing…

This paper looks at continuity and discontinuity of teachers' perception and enactment of civic values such as equality, democracy, freedom, cohesion and globalization in China and the U.S. Applying qualitative methodologies, this paper finds that, beyond the myth of citizenship education toward China and United States, there are common ideals and…

This paper engages with a selection of scholarly writing in English that was published in the last decade and written from particular liberal democratic contexts (predominantly the UK, the USA, and Canada). The literature diagnoses the need for a more complex theory of citizenship education and theorises schooling for citizenship in a global…

American identity is a little understood aspect of youth development, and one that is important to youth civic development and engagement. This article introduces the problem of American identity as a multidisciplinary issue, provides a historical analysis of the philosophical foundation of the nation, and integrates the different disciplinary…

The authors, one from China and one from the United States, present a theoretical framework for understanding the discursive fields of citizenship education as composed, in large part, of the discourses of nationalism, globalization, and cosmopolitanism. The framework is illustrated by examples from citizenship education in China and the United…

Postsecondary teacher, Howard Doughty, has been teaching politics and government for close to fifty years. That time has been spent not only working with the empirical analysis of political behaviour and the normative analysis of political theory, but also in the practical activity of promoting understanding of what is frequently called civic…