This text provides guidance for teachers and schools seeking to encourage their pupils to see themselves as part of a European community. The contributors, who come from all over Europe, examine the values needed for teaching in pluralist societies and developing global responsibility in schools.

This book examines the evolving relationship between the nation-state, citizenship and the education of citizens, exploring the impact European integration had on national policies towards educating its citizens and citizenship.

Citizenship can be defined simply as being a member of political institutions. Citizenship, the first evidence of which is encountered in ancient Greek city-states in history, is found in the Roman state constitutionally for the first time. National citizenship, which became more important with the importance of nation-states, was supported by the concept of human rights after the French Revolution. Events and phenomena such as Reform, Industrialization, Democracy, Globalization, Digitalization, International Trade and Migration have given different dimensions to the concept of citizenship. Today, all states have determined the rights and duties of individuals as their citizens in their constitutions and convey the rights and responsibilities of citizenship to the students in school education. Societies with good citizens who know their rights and responsibilities are thought to develop and advance more in any area.

Citizenship through Secondary History reveals the potential of history to engage with citizenship education and includes: a review of the links between citizenship education and the teaching and learning of history an analysis of how citizenship education is characterised, raising key issues about what could and should be achieved a critique of the discipline and the pitfalls to avoid in teaching citizenship through history case studies offering practical teaching suggestions. History teaching is at the vanguard of citizenship education - the past is the springboard from which citizens learn to think and act. This book offers positive and direct ways to get involved in the thinking that must underpin any worthwhile citizenship education, for all professional teachers, student teachers in history, policy-makers, heads of department and principals.

This book uses international collaboration between nine European countries to explore how teacher education systems across Europe perceive and act upon devolving democracy and democratic citizenship. Understanding these countries’ cultural approaches to individual and national priorities in education is essential in perceiving similarities and differences in the meaning of ‘democracy’. The book offers debate on the prospects for teacher education and the development of democratic citizenship in Europe based on historical, political, economic and cultural contexts and the Council of Europe’s (CoE) competences for democratic citizenship. With critical analysis and evaluation around the common theme of teacher education and its role in developing democratic citizenship, the book provides awareness and understanding of how teacher education responds to the Council of Europe’s (CoE) conceptual model of competences for democratic culture. 20 competences categorized as Values, Attitudes, Skills, and Knowledge and Critical Understanding are defined so they can be taught to enable learners to practice them in their daily lives as democratic citizens. This book will be of key interest to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of teacher education, educational policy and politics, and citizenship education.

In the framework of the EU-funded project TEESAEC, an instructional research project was conducted in six European countries (Austria, Estonia, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom). In the quasi-experimental study, an innovative series of lessons on the European Union was introduced into politics lessons in the form of a WebQuest. The intervention study aimed to determine whether the problem-based learning environment WebQuest leads to greater cognitive outcomes as compared with traditional lessons in politics. Knowledge increase was assessed in 14 to 16 year-old students by means of a knowledge test applied before and after the intervention. The test items employed in TEESAEC cover basic (literacy) competences which are of use in situations in which concrete political knowledge is to be applied. The reports from the six countries involved present the gains associated with lessons in politics, revealing not only strengths but also weaknesses of politics lessons. The current volume presents the main results of the study.

On cover: Modern languages