Purpose: This study explores debate seeking and conflict avoidance as dimensions of disagreement orientation, and how factors such as citizenship education and individual background may impact how young people engage in situations with conflicting political perspectives. The aim is to study whether how we facilitate citizenship education may…

Purpose: The aim of this research is to investigate youth understandings of citizenship against the dual backgrounds of inclusive citizenship education and exclusionary discourse in the public sphere. Design / methodology / approach: The topic was explored through group interviews with 10th grade students, while the emergent theme of material or…

The purpose of this study is to examine profiles of students' attitudes toward citizenship norms and inclusiveness in the political process, focusing on changes in the frequency of particular profiles and in the strength of predictors across a decade. Using data from 16 countries participating in the 1999 and 2009 International Association for the…

How are religiously based eating regulations navigated in kindergarten, and how does the pedagogical context influence the children's understandings of religion and nationality? This article builds on a qualitative case study involving observations and group interviews with children in a Norwegian kindergarten. At mealtimes, some children ate…

This paper will discuss the concepts of Bildung, subalternity, and physics- and engineering education and where these topics intersect and interact with one another. A central part of the concept of Bildung is educating citizens--active participators in society. At the same time, a central characteristic of subaltern groups is that their voices…

This paper is a case study of student discussions of rights and responsibilities, which contributes to filling the existing knowledge gap on the topic. Tenth grade majority students who participated in three group discussions on inclusive citizenship spoke of rights as belonging to the majority or to the minoritised Other. In line with earlier…

Background: Civic participation is a fundamental element of democracy; therefore, upholding and supporting civic participation, especially among the upcoming generation, is important. Political efficacy -- an individual's understanding of their capacity to participate in civic life -- has been found to exert an important influence on the expected…

The national imaginary of Norway as a global champion of democracy and social welfare has served well to market its image as exceptional both nationally and internationally. Norwegian national exceptionalism is also deeply embedded within the educational system, and manifests in the production of knowledge and social identities. Despite the…

Citizenship education played a crucial role in the 19th century transition from royal sovereignty to democracy in the Nordic region, with folk high schools (FHS) playing an important role. While established to empower the people ("folk") for active participation in society, the contemporary folk high schools have reoriented from their…

Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to explore how 16- to 17-year-old students' experiences within the social studies classroom and their online political communication are related to their perceptions of citizenship preparation in social studies. Design/methodology/approach: To meet the purpose of this study, regression analyses were…

There is growing attention to student assessments designed to reach beyond the classroom, including assessments with an immediate or future audience. The impact of audience, however, has not been examined in multimodal assessments across continents, institutions, disciplines, and teaching contexts. Using qualitative data, this article examines the…

Using William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" as a stimulus, researchers from Norway, Pakistan and the United Kingdom explored the potential of a literary text to encourage intercultural dialogue. The innovative research method used was to combine Literature Circles and Google Documents to provide a platform for asynchronous online…

Based on interviews with teachers and students in Norwegian high schools, this article explores discussions of controversial issues in the classroom. Building on practice theory, it examines what enables "good" classroom discussions. The main finding is that good discussions are made possible by a productive learning environment that is…

While there is a wealth of literature on young people and politics, most studies have examined their interest, trust and participation in politics as well as their attitudes toward and knowledge about formal politics. Little is known, however, about young people and the concept of politics. This article investigates 16-year-old students'…

We report on the development of an instrument to measure attitudes to children's human rights and diversity in schools. It was developed to investigate perceptions of human rights and diversity among students and then teachers in two contrasting areas of Norway. The instrument draws on human rights standards articulated in the United Nations…