How can the teaching of knowledge in schools contribute to the development of students as individual human beings, with the capacity not only for problem solving within the existing structures of society but also for developing ideas and solutions that go "beyond the existing structures?" The purpose of this article is to bring this…

The topic of citizenship education and the promotion of democratic citizenship in schools has risen to the top of educational policy agendas in Europe over the past three decades. This rise in attention, however, appears to be accompanied by an apparent lack of attention to the specific manner in which citizenship, education and the assumed…

This article discusses how Islamic religious education (IRE) can complement citizenship education by nurturing shared values and norms. The article first discusses the ideal of transformative citizenship in the context of Western liberal democracies as the dynamic interplay of four core dimensions: identity, legal status, participation, and…

The present report is the last output of the INNO4DIV project, which aimed at addressing the educational needs of teachers in the EU for inclusive education in a context of diversity. It builds on all the previous steps of the project (literature review and analysis of 21 good practices) and provides a set of Implementation Guidelines addressed to…

A socially engaged art project conducted in Malta in 2021 brought together a group of participants from different sub-Saharan African countries with artists and researchers to promote civic engagement and cultural inclusion and understand how participants' ideas could be promoted and discussed beyond the workshop. This article addresses one of the…

EU educational mobility programmes have long been geared towards not only the promotion of intercultural communicative competence but also the uptake of European civic values. While the linguistic and socio-cultural effects of European training mobilities have been extensively studied, their effectiveness in supporting active citizenship and the…

This paper aims to present research on measuring competences for democratic culture. It describes the development of a multiple-item scale that measures competences in teaching democratic citizenship and human rights through religious education. A principal component analysis based on the 135 items of the Council of Europe's Reference framework of…

This Open Access book presents an international group of scholars seeking to understand how youth from different cultures relate to modern multidimensional concepts of citizenship, and the roles that education and society have in shaping the views of the world's future citizens. The book also explores how different aspects of citizenship, such as…

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…

Purpose: To stress the existential crisis of European integration and the need to shape the European citizen, who forms the foundations of unification, which can no longer be based only on economic conditions. Methods: Analyse the contradictions in the integration method adopted so far by member states and the fallacious solutions proposed by…

Background: Promoting tolerance is an important goal of European education policies focused on education for democratic citizenship and human rights. In this article, we argue that cross-cultural comparability must be empirically assessed and ensured for the measurement of highly relevant indicators that serve to monitor inter-European and…

A whole-school approach to foster competences for democratic culture, described by the Council of Europe's Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture, implies the active involvement of all actors in three areas of school life: teaching and learning, school governance and culture, and co-operation with the community. The European…

This Eurydice brief presents the main findings of the Eurydice report Citizenship Education at School in Europe -- 2017, published in October 2017 and produced under the auspices of the European Commission. Data is based on existing regulations and recommendations gathered by the Eurydice Network in 42 education systems, complemented by findings…

As schools are increasingly expected to develop their students' political and social engagement in order to promote good citizenship, they are struggling to define what good citizenship is. In this article, we put forward a way of formulating perspectives on citizenship that specifies the normative aspects of good citizenship in a systematic…

Schools are expected to contribute to preparing students for engaged citizenship. Research shows that open classroom discussions on political issues have a positive effect on political attitudes and behaviour. However, a deeper understanding of why students perceive their classrooms as open for discussion is missing. The purpose of this study is…