Discourses of citizenship [Elektronische Ressource] : civic awareness among young people / von Johan Nordensvärd

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• Social work

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• Publié par: carl_von_ossietzky_universitat_oldenburg
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 7
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Discourses of Citizenship:
Civic Awareness among Young People













Von der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg –
Fakultät I Bildungs- und Sozialwissenschaften–
Zur Erlangung des Grades eines Doktor der Wirtschafts-
und Sozialwissenschaften (Dr. rer. pol.)
genehmigte Dissertation von Herrn Johan Nordensvärd.
geboren am 22.06. 1979 in Falsterbo, Schweden.

Erster Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Dirk Lange
Zweiter Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Paul Stenner.
Tag der Disputation: 4. November 2009




1 ABSTRACT

Introducing standards and an output-oriented educational system have been in fashion
since the PISA Test conquered the educational debate. This study suggests that such testing
of outputs presented in the PISA and IEA Civic Education Study can be contested. The
problem is that this kind of testing never goes beyond what the experts set as interesting,
consequently there is no real interest how pupils really think. The interesting aspect is that
knowledge and theory have to be agreed by experts. These aspects of knowledge construction
tend to become centralized in the hands of international organizations. This study intends to
assess whether experts could or should have the same role in constructing and reconstructing
knowledge that people should learn. This study will go into the opposite direction of the here
described trends and will begin with the life worlds of the pupils. The aim is to reconstruct
theory according to the life worlds of pupils.
The overarching goal of this thesis is therefore to turn the table, by letting the pupils
tell their public narratives and to connect these narratives to both social practices (education)
and discursive practices (city, citizen of society.) The overarching purpose of this study is to
construct a different approach and to reconstruct citizenship theory for education. Instead of
beginning with experts this study aims to give voice to pupils‘ public narratives and their
sense-making of social reality It is inspired by Dirk Lange‘s Political Consciousness (Lange,
2006), Douglas Kellner‘s Critical Pedagogy (2003), Henri Giroux‘s Critical Pedagogy
(2006a; 2006b) and Didactic Reconstruction (Kattmann and Gropengießer, 1996). The theory
and method used are based on narrative discourse with a focus on public narratives
(Somers,1996; Linde, 1986) and scenario making. The empirical material comes from my
research of written assignments of three school classes and qualitative interviews in the city
of Oldenburg in Lower Saxony, Germany.
By collecting pupils´ written assignments and qualitative interviews, different public
narratives are reconstructed. The main scope of this research is to assess whether the different
public narratives of the pupils can be fitted within a larger shared public narrative. The
method to obtain the public narratives is an assignment of scenario-making; the pupils
describe the future and the changes it will bring. The study aims to go beyond staying at the
meso-level and also includes the micro-level (the life world of the pupils) and connects these
perceptions to education (social practice) and citizenship (discursive practice). The study
presents six different groups that have been reconstructed in the study: 1 Liberalization, 2
Progress 3 Natural Resources, 4 Composition of Society, 5 Political Decisions and the 6 The
State. All of these narratives present a new way of looking at citizenship. Albeit being
different they all share the perspective that the economy is challenging politics and threatens
to become the dominant force in society. This belief is connected to larger meta-narratives in
society. The citizen and the city seem to be no longer mainly defined through the social;
instead the economy seems to have become the root metaphor for society. Society seems to
has moved from government and self-government to management and self-management. This
creates a new framework for citizenship struggle, namely the struggle for economic
citizenship.
This study presents a number of alternatives of how to consider a more balanced
citizenship that does not only focus on the economy on one side and people on the other side.
The six different metaphors from the above mentioned six different groups are useful tools to
create a diverse understanding of the city: the City is a market, the City is a university, the
City is a parasite, the City is an organism, the City is a pride and the City is a controller.
Key words: Citizenship, Citizenship Education, Discourse, Narratives, Metaphors
2 Abbreviations:
BBC = British Broadcasting Corporation
BPSE = Background, Problem, Solution and Evaluation
CDU = Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschland
CNN = Cable News Network
CSE = Certificate of Secondary Education
CSO = Civil Society Organizations
CSR = Corporate Social Responsibility
EQ = Equilibrium
EU = European Union
IMF = International Monetary Fund
IEA = The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement
LDW-state = Liberal Democratic / Westphalia state
NGO = Non-Governmental Organizations
MTV = Music Television
OECD = The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OPEC = The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
PISA = Programme for International Student Assessment
SPD = Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands
UK = The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
US = The United States of America



3 Table of content

1 Background 6
1.1 Lack of bottom-up policy tools 6
1.2 Purpose of the study 7
1.3 Research questions 9
1.4 Design of this study 10
1.5 Limitations of the study 13
2 Normative framework 14
2.1 Purpose of education 16
2.2 Critical emancipation 18
2.3 Implications for this study 20
3 Theoretical framework 21
3.1 Study of Discourses 21
3.2 Metaphors 23
3.3 Narratives 25
3.4 Narrative as a political concept 27
3.5 Theoretical approach of this study 28
4 Concept narrative citizenship 31
4.1 Meaning of citizenship 31
4.2 Dominant form of citizenship 33
4.3 Citizenship and ideologies 36
4.3.1 Liberalism 36
4.3.2 Communitarianism 39
4.3.4 Republicanism 43
4.3.5 Radical Democratic Theory 45
4.4 German citizenship and citizenship education 48
4.5 Citizenship according to the IEA study 52
4.6 Critique of the dominant citizenship theory 57
4.7 Citizenship defined for this study 60
5 Method 62
5.1 Narrative of this study 62
5.2 Method of this study 63
5.3 Outline of the study 67
5.4 Public narratives of the pupils 73
6 Public narratives around future scenarios 75
6.1 Group Liberalization 78
6.1.1 Written Assignments 78
6.1.2 Julius Interview 83
6.1.3 Julius Public Narrative 95
6.2 Group Progress 95
6.2.1 Written Assignments 95
6.2.2 Franz Interview 100
6.2.3 Franz Public Narrative 113
6.3 Group Natural Resources 115
6.3.1 Written Assignment 115
6.3.2 Anna Interview 119
6.3.3 Annas Public Narrative 131
6.4 Group Composition of population 132
6.4.1 Written Assignments 132
6.4.2 Christian Interview 137
6.4.3 Christians Public Narrative 150
6.5 Group Political Decisions 151
6.5.1 Written assignments 151
6.5.2 Cecilia Interview 156
6.5.3 Cecilia’s Public Narrative 168
6.6 Group The State 170
4 6.6.1 Written assignments 170
6.6.2 Robin Interview 176
6.6.3 Robins Public Narrative 187
7 Social and Discursive Practices 189
7.1 Description of the Public narratives 189
7.2 Shared assumptions 196
7.3 Tearing down the modern wall 197
7.4 Economization of the citizenship 213
7.4.1 The corporation is a citizen 214
7.4.2 The corporation is a government 217
7.4.3 Corporation citizenship and corporate governance 220
7.4.4 The state is a corporation 226
7.4.5 The state as a commodity 231
7.4.6 The global market as a political arena 232
7.4.7 The citizen as a consumer 236
7.4.8 The citizen as an entrepreneur / manager 239
7.4.9 The citizen as a commodity 240
8 Conclusions, Discussion and Implications 241
8.1 Conclusions 241
8.2 Discussion 246
8.3 Implications 251

Bibliography
Appendix















5 1 Background
1.1 Bottom-up approach to theory
Measuring educational outcome has become one of the most enduring features of
educational discourse today. Creating diagnosis of how the schools are performing is part of
the contemporary educational