Abstract
How can the teaching of knowledge in schools contribute to the development of students as individual human beings, with the capacity not only for problem solving within the existing structures of society but also for developing ideas and solutions that go beyond the existing structures? The purpose of this article is to bring this question to the forefront within the context of citizenship education (CE) through a theoretical analysis of the epistemology underpinning two dominant conceptualisations of teaching CE. The analysis shows that both the model of teaching about, through and for democracy that underpins the understanding of CE in competence frameworks and the conceptualisation of CE as teaching directed towards qualification, socialisation and subjectification that is used to criticise citizenship-as-competence fall short in accounting for how knowledge can play a part in taking us beyond the existing. Turning to Bildung-centred Didaktik, which has dealt extensively with questions of knowledge in relation to the formation of the individual subject, the article explores how a renewed focus on knowledge can contribute to answering the question that Joris et al. pose in the title of their article ‘Citizenship -as-competence, what else?’
Highlights
Since the end of the 1990s, a renewed interest in the field of citizenship education (CE) has developed, spurring a process of comprehensive policy development in Europe, both nationally and on European Educational Research Journal 00(0)the supranational level
While the critical analysis of Joris et al (2021) points to the shortcomings of the language of competence in relation to CE, their reliance on Biesta’s (2009) typology of educational purposes means that important epistemological issues are not accentuated, which means that the possibilities of subjectification/emancipation that a different account of knowledge could facilitate cannot be elaborated on
While the concepts of Biesta (2009) are very useful in showing how a competence-based approach is not compatible with a progressive vision of CE, they are not as helpful in providing an alternative notion when applied in a critical analysis of existing competence frameworks (Joris et al, 2021)
Summary
Since the end of the 1990s, a renewed interest in the field of citizenship education (CE) has developed, spurring a process of comprehensive policy development in Europe, both nationally and on European Educational Research Journal 00(0)the supranational level. Questions continue to be asked about the degree to which CE can contribute to the strengthening of democracy in the context of increasing inequality, pressures on the welfare state and the persistence of neo-liberal policies (Biesta and Lawy, 2006; Pais and Costa, 2020). Regardless of the current state of affairs, the deeper question seems to be whether CE has the potential to take the students beyond the existing (Joris et al, 2021) or, put differently, whether the teaching of citizenship can achieve more than qualifying students to take part in the existing order and socialising them into this order (Biesta, 2009). If CE is to contribute to increased levels of engagement, participation and social cohesion, it must attend to the way the students can appear as individuals in relation to society, which Biesta (2009) refers to as subjectification
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