Scales of active citizenship: New Zealand teachers‟ diverse perceptions and practices

Abstract

The heightened focus on ‗active‘ citizenship in New Zealand‘s current curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) mirrors a pattern observed in many nation‘s curricula in the past decade. The scale of active citizenship in this curriculum includes an expectation that students will participate in local and national communities but also extends to participation in ‗global communities‘. Recognising that citizenship is a hotly contested concept, how do teaching departments, as collective curriculum ‗gatekeepers‘, understand, interpret and enact such curriculum requirements? This paper describes the perceptions and practices toward active citizenship of New Zealand social studies teachers (n=27) from four differing geographic and socio-economic secondary school communities. This study reveals significant differences in the scale of teachers‘citizenship orientations with lower socio-economic school communities prioritising locally-focused citizenship and higher socio-economic communities favouring national and global orientations. Applying a Bourdieusian analysis, the author posits that these diverse perceptions and practices are socially and culturally constituted and reinforced by the shared doxa within school communities. Understanding these differing perceptions of ‗active‘ citizenship is essential to gain more nuanced perspectives on how citizenship education is enacted and practised in classrooms

Keywords

• Active citizenship, curriculum, citizenship education, Bourdieu, doxa, scales of citizenship