The genesis of active citizenship in the learning society

Abstract

This paper, building on definitions of citizenship from the literature, develops a list of attributes that promotes active citizenship. It then reports on the results of a survey of adult education participants, which aimed to identify, where, if anywhere, these abilities had been acquired. It concludes that the workplace is the main site of learning of citizenship skills with the school setting doing particularly badly. There are messages for adult educators. Citizenship has to be learned like any other skill. However, most effective learning will not take place through the formal curriculum but through positive experiences of participation. Participatory democracy is learned through practice and therefore the adult education experience should itself be an experience of participatory democracy. The skills of citizenship can be learned in any adult classroom. Providers might do well to consider their own list of citizenship skills, perhaps using the ones given here as a starting point. The curriculum, pedagogy and approach to the programme could then be constructed with the aim of developing these skills.