CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland
Conversations about Citizenship and
Citizenship education
Organiser: Eva Dobozy
Dobozy, Eva (Murdoch University,
Australia) DECONSTRUCTING THE CONSTRUCTION OF DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP, HUMAN
RIGHTS AND EDUCATION IN AND FOR DEMOCRACY
This presentation will be examining the salience of education in and for
democratic citizenship and human rights. In particular, I will be offering my
definitional constructs of the two related concepts: democratic citizenship and
human rights. A central aim of this presentation is the connection between human
rights education (HRE), civics and citizenship education (CCE) and multicultural
education (MCE) and it will make explicit why a HRE approach may be preferable.
To illustrate this point and make explicit some of the potential problems and
deficiencies of recent government initiatives, I will critically analyse
Australia's recent attempts to effectively educate for democratic citizenship
and human rights through the introduction of a comprehensive and costly civics
and citizenship education package.
Pinho, Edia Cristina (University of
Lisbon, Portugal) REINVENTIG CURRICULA AS A PEDAGOGY OF CULTURAL
(DIS)EMPOWERMENT: A PORTUGUESE EXAMPLE
Responding to the challenge of inclusive education requires an understanding of
teaching as a participatory process which provides multiple, alternative and
non-hegemonic perspectives and practices that make visible those marginal
cultures that traditionally have been ignored in the official school curriculum.
Informed by the values of cultural democracy and participatory citizenship,
schools must recognise the importance of creating and expanding new
possibilities for a common space of cultural and political exchange. It is in
this regard that a specific pedagogical project which has recently been created
in some Portuguese schools - the Alternative Curricula - can make an important
contribution. By incorporating difference and diversity and by analysing the
social problems and the pedagogical conditions that affect those students who
see themselves as existing on the margins of schooling and society, this project
provides an approach to educational change that allow students to become
actively engaged in the production and reproduction of their own experience of
culture.
Mietola, Reetta and Lappalainen, Sirpa
(University of Helsinki, Finland) DICIPLINE OF MIND AND BODY - EDUCATING
NATIONAL CITIZEN
At the turn of the millennium, two kinds of fears can be read in the educational
discussion in Finland. Firstly, the survival of the Finnish nation in the global
market, and secondly, the survival of particular children have been widely
discussed. These fears have also been present in the debate concerning current
changes in the education system: obligations of communes to arrange pre-school
education for 6 year olds' and the introduction of 'health education' as a
compulsory subject into a comprehensive curriculum. In this paper we ask how
difference and normality are constructed in teachers' conceptions, daily
practices, as well as in documents and school texts. We suggest that there are
two key features which construct a competent citizen in educational discourses:
firstly, the individual's ability to take care of her/his body and secondly,
her/his ability to make correct choices defined by images of institutionalised
life courses.
|