Untitled Document

Citizenship

I'm going to start of this piece by copping out and refusing to produce my own potted definition of citizenship for you. Instead I'm going to suggest the following links as they contain information about citizenship and being a citizen that I broadly agree with

After reading the Biesta and Lawy paper "From teaching citizenship to learning democracy: overcoming individualism in research, policy and practice" I started to take a look at citizenship curricula within the English and Scottish primary and secondary education systems. The Biesta and Lawy paper concentrated on the development in citizenship education within England, and so I had a brief look at the English National Curriculum information, and also, as I have a friend who works there, I took a look at the Citizenship Foundation's website. I had a lot of sympathy already for the Biesta and Lawy view, especially that "...democratic citizenship should not be understood as an attribute of the individual, but invariably has to do with individuals-in-context." (Biesta & Lawy, p65) given all the thinking I'd been doing around my own experiences with Second Life; the notion of teaching you how to play an MMORPG outside the RPG environment seems so alien and ridiculous that it's laughable.

Excuse me? Up until this point I had sort of assumed that the English and Scottish curricula would be broadly aligned, both in content and delivery. After reading this I decided to go take a look at the Scottish situation, out of a vague sense of patriotic curiosity and in the hope that it wouldn't be the same; thankfully it's not. Perhaps I'm being a little unfair, but something about the formalisation of citizenship education as expressed above in phrases like "entitlement to citizenship learning" chimes with Biesta and Lawy's analysis of the effect New Right politics and policies. In the Scottish model, whilst a number of Biesta and Lawy's concerns regarding the individual-centric nature of citizenship education would probably still hold true, the notion that a citizen is something you become is gone.

"Young people should be regarded as citizens of today rather than citizens in waiting. Children are born with rights that are well described in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. As young people grow into adulthood, new rights and responsibilities are acquired.

Everyone belongs to various types of community, both communities of place, from local to global, and communities of interest, rooted in a common concern or purpose. Citizenship involves enjoying rights and exercising responsibilities in these various types of community. This way of seeing citizenship encompasses the specific idea of political participation by members of a democratic state. It also includes the more general notion that citizenship embraces a range of participatory activities, not all overtly political, that affect the welfare of communities."

(Learning and Teaching Scotland)

Likewise the idea that citizenship is a subject to be taught and assessed like Maths and English is also gone. Rather citizenship is a cross curricular theme, taught across all subject areas.

Citizenship I'm going to start of this piece by copping out and refusing to produce my own potted definition of citizenship for you. Instead I'm going to suggest the following links as they contain information about citizenship and being a citizen that I broadly agree with Citizenship (mandatory Wikipedia link) Annex A: Areas of knowledge relevant to citizenship (Learnng and Teaching Scotland) Annex B: Generic skills relevant to citizenship (Learnng and Teaching Scotland) After reading the Biesta and Lawy paper "From teaching citizenship to learning democracy: overcoming individualism in research, policy and practice" I started to take a look at citizenship curricula within the English and Scottish primary and secondary education systems. The Biesta and Lawy paper concentrated on the development in citizenship education within England, and so I had a brief look at the English National Curriculum information, and also, as I have a friend who works there, I took a look at the Citizenship Foundation's website. I had a lot of sympathy already for the Biesta and Lawy view, especially that "...democratic citizenship should not be understood as an attribute of the individual, but invariably has to do with individuals-in-context." (Biesta & Lawy, p65) given all the thinking I'd been doing around my own experiences with Second Life; the notion of teaching you how to play an MMORPG outside the RPG environment seems so alien and ridiculous that it's laughable.	"Sit down boys and girls. Today we're going to learn about World of Warcraft and how the Forsaken Undead defend themselves against the Scourge."
I found the information on the Citizenship Foundation website looked broady okay until we got down to the section "Where does citizenship overlap with other subjects?". Why is it important to distinguish between them? It is important to be aware that just because a certain theme or form of learning occurs elsewhere doesn’t necessarily make that activity a citizenship activity. Unless you are able to distinguish between citizenship education and other subjects: there is a danger that citizenship will be subsumed in other activities and young people won’t receive their entitlement to citizenship learning; you will be unable to make citizenship learning explicit, which is essential if young people are to develop a broad and balanced view of what being a citizen involves and a pre-requisite for inspection; you will make little progress in your understanding of citizenship issues or how they may be made accessible to young people. (Citizenship Foundation)	Ooh - did you see that in there? "you will be unable to make citizenship learning explicit...a pre-requisite for inspection" It's that good old assessment tail again, wagging the dog.
Excuse me? Up until this point I had sort of assumed that the English and Scottish curricula would be broadly aligned, both in content and delivery. After reading this I decided to go take a look at the Scottish situation, out of a vague sense of patriotic curiosity and in the hope that it wouldn't be the same; thankfully it's not. Perhaps I'm being a little unfair, but something about the formalisation of citizenship education as expressed above in phrases like "entitlement to citizenship learning" chimes with Biesta and Lawy's analysis of the effect New Right politics and policies. In the Scottish model, whilst a number of Biesta and Lawy's concerns regarding the individual-centric nature of citizenship education would probably still hold true, the notion that a citizen is something you become is gone. "Young people should be regarded as citizens of today rather than citizens in waiting. Children are born with rights that are well described in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. As young people grow into adulthood, new rights and responsibilities are acquired. Everyone belongs to various types of community, both communities of place, from local to global, and communities of interest, rooted in a common concern or purpose. Citizenship involves enjoying rights and exercising responsibilities in these various types of community. This way of seeing citizenship encompasses the specific idea of political participation by members of a democratic state. It also includes the more general notion that citizenship embraces a range of participatory activities, not all overtly political, that affect the welfare of communities." (Learning and Teaching Scotland) Likewise the idea that citizenship is a subject to be taught and assessed like Maths and English is also gone. Rather citizenship is a cross curricular theme, taught across all subject areas.	What happens if you fail your citizenship GCSE? Are you a bad citizen? Do they take your passport away?
"The Scottish approach to education for citizenship differs from others areas of the United Kingdom, because it has not introduced a new subject or curricular area called ‘Citizenship'. Instead, it is expected that all subjects will make their relevance to education for citizenship explicit, and that the purposes and issues associated with citizenship will be developed through whole-school and cross-curricular activities." (Learning and Teaching Scotland) Where am I going with this though? I though we were supposed to be talking about avatar worlds, not the differences in UK secondary school education. I've played any number of computer games in my time and nearly every single one of them has contained some form of in-game tutorial / help information. Help bots inside MUDs, verbose messaging, practice levels, interactive tours, the list goes on. Until I started to think about 'good digital citizenship' I didn't give much thought to this approach; in fact in terms of game play it's all I've ever known. Looking at the differences in the English and Scottish curricula however has made me think about the situated learning approach in general, and my gut feel is that both for citizenship at large, and citizenship in a specific digital world, the situated learning approach is likely to be the most effective and productive model.