The contested place of religion in the Australian Civics and Citizenship curriculum: exploring the secular in a multi-faith society

In the absence of a dedicated subject for teaching general religious education, the inclusion of Civics and Citizenship education as a new subject within the first Federal Australian Curriculum provides an important opportunity for teaching the religious within Australian schools. The curriculum for Civics and Citizenship requires students to learn that Australia is both a secular nation and a multi-faith society, and to understand religions practiced in contemporary Australia. The term "secular" and the need for students to learn about Australia’s contemporary multi-faith society raise some significant issues for schools and teachers looking to implement Civics and Citizenship. Focusing on public (state-controlled) schools, the argument here draws on recent analysis within the Australian context (Byrne, 2014; Maddox, 2014) to suggest that religion remains an important factor in understanding and shaping democratic citizenship in Australia, that this should be acknowledged within public schools, and that a constructivist, dialogical-based pedagogy provides possibilities for recognising the religious within Civics and Citizenship education

Education for citizenship in South Australian public schools: a pilot study of senior leader and teacher perceptions

Preparing students for informed and active citizenship is a core goal of education and schooling in Australia. The ways schools educate and prepare young Australians for citizenship involves a range of processes and initiatives central to the work of schools, including school ethos, mission, extra-curricular activities and community-based participation. With regard to the formal curriculum, the recent introduction and implementation of the first ever Federal Australian curriculum includes provision for a new subject – Civics and Citizenship. Research evidence from other nations suggests that schools understand, approach and enact education for citizenship in a multitude of ways, yet how Australian schools construct this aspect of their work is currently under-researched. In this context, and drawing on data from interviews with school leaders and teachers of year six-eight (11-14 year olds) students in a small sample of South Australian primary and secondary schools, we explore perceptions and current approaches to education for citizenship. Our findings suggest (i) that while school leaders and teachers value education for citizenship, they do so for different reasons; (ii) that schools place values as central to education for citizenship; and, (iii) that community involvement is typically understood as occurring within rather than beyond the school

Synthesizing participatory human rights education and critical consciousness in Australian schools

Human rights education is currently a popular topic amongst educators and academics. The emphasis on education reflects a departure from a strictly legal understanding of human rights and a move towards an emphasis on pedagogy and social justice. However, the history of human rights education in Australia is a limited and fragmentary one; in the past, civics and citizenship educational programs have generally been seen as more important. These programs ostensibly seek to develop informed and active citizens through formal schooling curricula

Citizenship and the thinking university : toward the citizen scholar

The present chapter considers what constitutes a thinking university of the future. We argue that universities as centres of thought need to consider the relationship between knowledge and citizenship. How knowledge is produced and transmitted matters as this is truly what is transformational to both the students encountered and the communities engaged. But the role of the contemporary university is not only to produce and transmit knowledge but also to foster individual and community empowerment. In this sense a thinking university also promotes active citizenship. Combining the philosophical postulation of Martin Heidegger’s (Heidegger M (1927) Being and time, (Trans: Macquarrie J and Robinson E 1967), Harper & Row, New York) ‘threshold’ and Paolo Friere’s (1972) liberation pedagogy, our position is that universities can create an environment where students can be empowered through knowledge and the development of a set of tools to employ that knowledge. To do this, we propose that a thinking university actively embodies and promotes the idea of the citizen scholar (Arvanitakis J (2014) Massification and the large lecture theatre: from panic to excitement. High Educ 67:735–745)