Citizenship formation through curriculum and pedagogical practices: Evidence from two Zimbabwean teachers’ colleges

Tendayi Marovah

doi:10.15700/saje.v39ns2a1411

Abstract

The need to include citizenship education in the school curriculum has been considered as significant for advancing democratic values, social justice, and human development. Debates on citizenship formation focus on various dimensions, such as human rights and global citizenship with limited focus on how “curriculum transposition” of citizenship education in teacher education has been undertaken. This paper argues that there is a need for citizenship education that advances democratic values, human capabilities, and social justice. It draws on 5 lecturer participants’ voices in a case study on the operationalisation of National and Strategic Studies, a variant of citizenship education, in two Zimbabwean teachers’ colleges. The paper investigates the form of citizenship cultivated by National and Strategic Studies, how this is achieved, and the challenges and opportunities to advancing critical citizenship among future teachers. The findings suggest that, despite aspirational moments of teaching and learning for critical thinking, curriculum and pedagogical practices represent an imperfect realisation of advancing critical citizenship. The paper proposes the need for curriculum and pedagogical practices in citizenship education to be more critical and democratic to form a robust form of citizenship that is democratic and critical.Keywords: capability approach; citizenship education; critical democratic citizen; curriculum and pedagogical practices; human development

Highlights

Given the limited focus of curriculum operationalisation in citizenship education (CE), the capability approach (CA) is applied as an evaluative framework to curriculum and pedagogical practices in National and Strategic Studies (NASS), a variant of CE, taught in Zimbabwean teachers’ colleges
Given the curriculum and pedagogical practices evident in the two colleges, the form of citizenship cultivated by NASS seems less able to produce an active and critical democratic citizen
The lecturers seemed to have some knowledge on values which must be promoted in order to teach for critical citizenship; they did not necessarily transform this knowledge into practical transformative activities in the teaching and learning of NASS

Summary

Introduction

Given the limited focus of curriculum operationalisation in citizenship education (CE), the capability approach (CA) is applied as an evaluative framework to curriculum and pedagogical practices in National and Strategic Studies (NASS), a variant of CE, taught in Zimbabwean teachers’ colleges. Human capabilities include student teachers’ freedom, choices and opportunities to participate as critical democratic citizens in decision-making that affects their own lives, and those of future citizens (Marovah, 2013). In this case, the student teachers are students who have already undertaken their teaching practice and are completing their final year at the college. The CA offers an alternative theoretical lens, providing “a general normative framework for the assessment of human development,” but is applied in the area of CE in this paper (Unterhalter, Vaughan & Walker, 2007). Critical democratic citizens are society members who do not take things at face value but are informed by democratic values such as tolerance, participation, and public deliberation

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion