The 2011 civic competence composite indicator(CCCI-2): measuring young people’s civic competence across Europe based on the IEA international citizenship and civic education study

Abstract

Education is a key policy area for achieving democracy-related goals. In this respect the European Commission have developed indicators to monitor the levels of active citizenship across Europe (Hoskins et al 2006 and Hoskins and Mascherini 2009) and levels of civic competence across Europe (Hoskins et al 2008). The 2020 Education and Training policy agenda (ET 2020) continues to identify Active Citizenship as one of the four major policy goals and continues to support national governments in developing key competences, including civic competences, of its citizens. Active Citizenship was a priority of the 2011 Hungarian Presidency, and Education Ministers were invited to debate this issue at a March 2011 meeting. An outcome of this meeting was the ministers’ support of the Centre for Research on Education and Lifelong Learning’s (CRELL) development of a new composite indicator on civic competence. The Commission, represented by Commissioner Vassiliou, called for a ‘coherent and comprehensive strategy which covers all aspects of citizenship education in a lifelong learning perspective’. Based on these needs, CRELL has created a new composite indicator on civic competence, the Civic Competence Composite Indicator 2 (CCCI-2). It comprises four dimensions: ‘Participatory Attitudes’, ‘Citizenship Values’, ‘Social Justice Values’, and ‘Knowledge and Skills for Democracy’. The data was obtained from young people between 13 and 14 years old as part of the IEA International Citizenship and Civic Education Study 2009 conducted in 38 countries. The findings of this new indicator show that wealth and democratic stability in a country do not guarantee democratically engaged youth. In addition, young people’s positive attitudes towards participation and their citizenship values are often enhanced in relatively poorer countries with recent breaks in democracy. We might perceive that this will be beneficial for the future of democracies in these countries, however, the limited evidence available does not point towards the fact that these youthful aspirations actually make it into engaged adult citizens. Western democracies appear to be fostering a non-participatory culture in their youth. However, social justice attitudes and knowledge and skills for democracy, appear to be more prevalent in these wealthier and democratically more stable countries. These trends are consistent with the results of the original CRELL indicator research, using data from 10 years ago, which suggests a consistency of civic cultures amongst the younger generations. The findings also suggest that measuring the wealth of a nation only through its GDP does not capture the health of the future of democracy. The more wealthy countries need to do more to enhance and maintain the citizenship norms and participatory attitudes of their young people. In contrast, it is social justice that remains the issue for the newer democracies in Europe.