In Search of Self by Chad Hanson

Author:Chad Hanson [Hanson, Chad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118915097
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2014-05-28T00:00:00+00:00

Consequently, they argue that civic education must work to “overcome the individualistic conception of citizenship that underpins much recent thinking in the area of civic education” (p. 65).

Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kahne (2004) identify three different “visions of citizenship” found in various civic education programs, each of which suggests a different civic education approach. The “personally responsible citizen” should have individual character traits that make them “honest, responsible, and law-abiding” and are best developed through character education and volunteering programs. The “participatory citizen” understands how government works and how to organize and be involved in the process in order to accomplish things with other citizens. Here civic education focuses on helping students figure out how the system operates and how to negotiate it to get things done. Finally, the “justice-oriented citizen” is one who has been taught to think critically about the existing system and learns to “question, debate, and change established systems and structures” (p. 240). It is some combination of the “participatory citizen” and the “justice-oriented citizen” that democratic theorists like Dewey (1921) and Pateman (1970) argue is necessary for democracy to thrive. To develop democratic dispositions that incline citizens toward working with others to address problems and injustice, a different kind of civic education is necessary.

This is not to argue that knowledge and cognitive skills are irrelevant to civic education, but only that alone they are not enough to ensure that citizens are democratically engaged. The ability to apply and put to use that knowledge in the community requires a further level of development of what John J. Patrick (2000) calls “participatory skills and civic dispositions” (p. 4). These civic dispositions include a willingness to promote “the common good of the community,” to recognize “the common humanity and dignity of each person,” to participate “responsibly and effectively in political and civic life,” and to support and maintain “democratic principles and practices” (p. 5). Richard Battistoni (1997) has argued that education for democracy requires programs that develop “an other-regarding ethic appropriate to democratic citizenship” (p. 150).

Research on the construction of civic identities mirrors, and in some cases expands upon, the development of democratic dispositions. Both concepts take a developmental approach, but we might think of civic identity as providing the broader structure within which democratic dispositions are housed. Civic identity is defined as a “sense of connection to and participation in a civic community” (Rubin, 2007, p. 450) and “entails the establishment of individual and collective senses of social agency, responsibility for society, and political-moral awareness” (Youniss, McLellan, & Yates, 1997, p. 620). The research in this area shows that the development of civic identity occurs through practice and engagement with others and “requires active reflection, experimentation, and what Dewey called ‘moral rehearsal’” (Knefelkamp, 2008, pp. 2–3).

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