Abstract
This paper analyses how young people’s citizenship knowledge is related to the different domains of citizenship in their daily lives. Based on a representative sample of some 5300 students in the third year of 80 Dutch secondary schools, our study relates citizenship knowledge to student background and school characteristics. The knowledge test developed for this study situates citizenship knowledge in the literature and the societal and political context defining the social structure students live in. The contribution of our study lies in this broad conceptualisation of citizenship, which is reflected in fine-grained, more specific results than the outcomes of earlier research. Gender differences are particularly pronounced in the social aspects of citizenship and are small in the political domain. As far as ethnic background is concerned, we see knowledge differences in the domain of “acting democratically”. This is also the domain where most of the differences in citizenship knowledge between students of the various schools and tracks occur. School size, public/private school, urbanisation and a more heterogeneous student population cannot explain these differences. To mitigate inequalities in citizenship knowledge between and within schools, which are relatively large in the Netherlands, further research is necessary to investigate micro-level mechanisms within schools.
Highlights
A strong and resilient democracy needs citizens who have the competences to participate in various forms of social and political life (Barber 1984)
We approach citizenship knowledge from a broader perspective than we find in the scientific literature to date
To answer the question of how young people’s citizenship knowledge is related to, on one hand, individual background characteristics and, on the other hand, school characteristics, we estimated multivariate multilevel models with citizenship knowledge related to the four social tasks as the dependent variables, at the level of students and schools
Summary
A strong and resilient democracy needs citizens who have the competences to participate in various forms of social and political life (Barber 1984). In this respect, adolescence is an important phase as young people are relatively open to changes in their views on a democratic way of living that have a lasting impact (e.g., Russo and Stattin 2017; Shehata and Amnå 2017). Citizenship and the promotion of citizenship competences through education have long been an important issue in politics, the public debate and science. Empirical research shows that schools especially seem to
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