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.