Citizenship education: building for the future

This chapter deals with many of the issues that are discussed in greater detail elsewhere in this book. It approaches them from the practical perspective of the Association for Citizenship Teaching (ACT)1 in the UK, which is a membership organisation promoting high quality citizenship education for all. At the time this book was produced Citizenship had been a national curriculum subject in England for twenty years. This period generated a wealth of school-based experiments and saw the development of a cadre of experienced subject specialist teachers, which led to some principles that inform the work of ACT and which underpin its planning for the future. Our starting point is that good Citizenship teachers address the emotional dimension, the role of knowledge and rational argument, and the need for citizenship to be enacted. This approach continues to inform how teachers are responding to significant on-going and emergent challenges. In considering five of these challenges this chapter reflects on what the next twenty years might hold, and what Citizenship in schools might look like in the near future.

This author's post-acceptance version is not to be cited.
This is a post-peer-review, pre-copy edited version of a chapter published in Who’s Afraid of Political Education?
The Challenge to Teach Civic Competence and Democratic Participation. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Jerome, L., & Moorse, L. (2023). "11: Citizenship education: building for the future". In Who’s Afraid of Political Education?. Bristol, UK: Policy Press is available online at: https://doi.org/10.51952/9781447366997.ch011