Abstract
Ethics and Citizenship education has become the focus of considerable debate since the launch of the European Higher Education Area. That this is the case is interesting, as it is a type of education that forms part of the educational mission of universities, as its history plainly demonstrates. Ethics and Citizenship education cannot be analysed solely in terms of its pedagogical requirements, the skills and competencies that it seeks to develop, or the type of students and professionals that the world needs today. Its success also requires that we explore what university lecturers understand by this type of education, the context it currently finds itself in, and how students perceive such an education. This paper presents a case study conducted on university lecturers in Education, Philosophy and Humanities at several European institutions.
Highlights
The launch of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) can be regarded as the reconstruction of new European universities for the new century (European University Association, 2005, 2010)
The results presented further below correspond to the answers obtained for items 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7, that is to say: What role, if any, do lecturers give to the university’s educational mission from the viewpoint of Ethics and Citizenship? (2); How do you think your students conceive of universities in general and of this type of education in particular? (5); Do you think that the university you work for promotes such education and, if so, to what extent and how? (3); What difficulties do you come up against when fostering such education? (4); and How do you accomplish it? (7)
On the issue of what expectations the lecturers considered that their students had of a university education, it is worth noting that the vast majority of them felt that their students conceived of universities as places where they could get a professional qualification (92.1%) or where they could acquire high-level scientific and cultural knowledge (82.0%), rather than as institutions with a social dimension or commitment to the communities to which they belonged (42.7%) or as institutions that would educate them from the viewpoint of Ethics and Citizenship (34.8%)
Summary
The launch of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) can be regarded as the reconstruction of new European universities for the new century (European University Association, 2005, 2010). Universities are multi-faceted institutions, and one of the many aspects affected by the above is university education (European Council, 1996; European Commission, 2006). University education is conceived of in terms of competencies (European Council, 2007). Ethics and Citizenship education in universities has become a matter of concern, even in areas of politics and university management (European Commission, 1995; OECD, 1997). There are many ways to analyse this issue, but we are interested in approaching it from the angle of what university lecturers think about this kind of education. The aim of this work is to present some data in this respect, which illustrate what university lecturers in Education, Philosophy and Humanities at several European institutions think about some of the aspects of Ethics and Citizenship education in universities
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