Education-related responses to our current democratic crisis have largely been focused on schooling children and youth. This narrow focus has foreclosed or diverted our attention from other possibilities for democratic education, especially as it relates to adult citizens and the ways in which such education can -- and must -- extend beyond…

Contemporary scholars have called for more diverse conceptions and practices of alternative 'democratic' education to contest the increasingly neoliberal and neoconservative educational systems. The current study responds to this call by exploring how the notion of 'democratic' education can be enriched using the contextual practices of education…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore and describe the perceptions of participants of PeaceJam towards personal and collective power, service learning, social justice and democratic education as examined through participant observations, interviews, focus groups, artifacts, and documents of individuals engaging with the non-profit…

The author discusses what it means to be a "good" citizen in a democracy, whether schools are teaching children to be good citizens, and ways to implement citizenship education in schools.

This paper shares a participatory action research study conducted by a team of researchers at a university laboratory school in collaboration with three classroom teachers and 60 preschoolers. The team engaged in this research in order to examine the ways in which school personnel could generate more authentic community service experiences with,…

The article adds to a growing conversation that recognizes and supports young children's civic capabilities, positioning them as citizens-now and not simply citizens in the future. They detail how three different classrooms sought to work with children to engage in social action on behalf of their broader community. This response wonders alongside…

Both education for democratic citizenship and human rights education tend to emphasise political and legal learning. In both human rights education and moral education in Japan, however, there has been a tendency to give particular attention to interpersonal elements of learning such as kindness and sympathy. This article draws on feminist…

In light of socio-political dynamics at play in contemporary Thailand, higher education (HE) is becoming an important site for citizenship learning. This article interrogates priorities and practices of civic/citizenship education in Thai universities. Data was collected through in-depth interviews with leadership in five public universities…

This article analyses whether Brazilian graduates feel that their higher education programmes have contributed to the development of civic competences (ethics, critical thinking and respect for diversity), necessary to become active citizens in a democratic and fair society. The analysis considers disciplines and students' socioeconomic and…

A primary aim of any comprehensive democratic education is to prepare citizens for full and active participation in the public sphere. Crucial to meeting this aim is the development of key cognitive-emotional skills, such as perspective-taking. At the same time, many of the social institutions in which cognitive-emotional skill training might be…

Social studies education research lauds the importance of schools as spaces to practice democratic values while also largely ignoring the agency youth exercise to shape their lives in the present. This article explores how young people organize and enact democratic practices within youth-mediated contexts in schools by examining the pedagogy of…

There is no how-to recipe for implementing pedagogical approaches, as each school, learner and teacher has a unique perception of the nature of critical mathematics education. It is therefore the duty of educators and school administrators to cultivate critical teaching and learning experiences that can connect the standardised school curriculum…

Best practices in civic education emphasize deliberative pedagogies as one of the most powerful ways to educate enlightened democratic citizens. Yet deliberative pedagogies are rooted in a white normative ideal of discursive democracy that, in the service of "civility" and "reasoned discourse," fails to account for the social…

This study examined social studies teachers' conceptions of human rights education (HRE), with a focus on the connection between HRE and global citizenship education (GCE). These conceptions were studied through a Critical Race Theory framework. This study took place in a small city in North Dakota and utilized a collective case study approach.…

This article reflects on how participatory processes inspired by action research hold a genuine potential for developing social educational work in a more democratic way. We present our concept of 'Upturned Participation', which is built upon the methodological framework of Critical Utopian Action Research. First Critical Utopian Action Research…