Abstract
There is evidence of dissatisfaction of millennials with democracy and rising populist support for non-democratic forms of governance and nationalism among them. This presents challenges for civic education implementation and calls for promotion of constructivist civic teachers. Motivated by the need to apply deep civic education in inhibiting non-democratic beliefs and promoting viable strong democracy through active citizens, the present study employed a descriptive survey to investigate the influence of teacher's gender and educational background on teacher's implementation of civic education using data collected from randomly selected 16 secondary school civic education teachers and 320 secondary school students comprising 20 students of each teacher participating in the study. Two instruments were used for data collection on teachers’ initial and continuous training in civic education, and teachers’ implementation of civic education. Two research questions answered using mean and standard deviation, and three null hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance using correlation, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis H Test guided the study. The findings showed that a high number of civic teachers did not receive prior training in civic education as well as do not engage in lifelong learning or continuous training in civic education and teaching practice. Civic teachers do not also actively engage students in civic instructions. A positive relationship exists between teacher’s training in civic education and teacher’s implementation of civic education. While civic teachers’ educational background did significantly influence implementation of civic education, gender did not. The findings were associated to a number of factors including lack of cognition of the power of civic education in constructing, reconstructing and transforming (dys)functional societal ideologies. Promotion of lifelong learning among teachers, training of teachers in civic contents and methods, and utilization of ICT for instructional purposes were recommended.
Highlights
Citizenship connotes membership in a given state, and corresponding rights and duties of citizens
Civic teachers reported low attendance of civic education conferences or private reading of civic education journal articles, scholarly books, etc. This indicates low engagement in lifelong learning. Their mean score on use of information and communication technology for accessing instructional materials and use of online sourced materials to enhance civic instruction is low while mean score of sole reliance on government prescribed civic education textbooks is high
The findings revealed civic teachers are not trained in civic education; civic education is poorly implemented as conventional methods dominate civic instructions as much as students are not actively engaged in civic instructions; and educational background significantly influenced civic teachers’ implementation of civic education while gender did not
Summary
Citizenship connotes membership in a given state, and corresponding rights and duties of citizens. Effective (good) citizens are classified into three namely personally responsible, participatory, and justice oriented citizens (see Westheimer & Kahne, 2004; Kılınc & Tarman, 2018) where personally responsible citizens religiously abide by the values of the land, participatory citizens move beyond abiding by the values to mobilizing for collective enforcement of the values, and justice oriented citizens critically assess institutional structures for social inequalities and take actions for social change and social justice. Be fostered and promoted through critical education, deep civic education
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