![Sample our Education journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5932/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Education.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This study explores how globalization, migration, and citizenship education intersect in four northwest European democracies. In this study of secondary schools serving students from immigrant backgrounds in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (England and Scotland), I interviewed teachers and students and observed civic-related lessons. Using a socio-cultural, ecological theory of civic education in an era of transnationalism and attending to the historical and socio-cultural contexts in the four countries, I focused on transnational students and the content and teaching methods prevalent in their social studies classes, as well as whole school civic practices. I found transnational student identities were complex, fluid, and situational, and the students frequently communicated across national borders with relatives in their heritage countries and worldwide diasporic communities. Teachers and schools approached civic education in ways that reflected national pedagogical cultures; yet, across countries, teachers identified similar opportunities and challenges in preparing transnational youth for participatory democratic citizenship.
Acknowledgments
I am immensely grateful to the teachers and their students who welcomed me to their schools and answered my constant stream of questions over the years of this study—Thank you. Thank you also to David Kerr, Hugh Starkey, Jeroen Bron, Ingrid and Peter Ritzen, Tilmann Grammes, and Per Bregengaard who put me in contact with schools and explained policies, practices, and local meanings. They also provided helpful feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript and have for years been valuable “key informants” and friends. Thanks also to Theresa Alviar-Martin, Patricia Avery, Kristina Brezicha, Jillian Ford, and Diana Hess for their helpful feedback on early drafts of the manuscript.
Notes
1. “Civic-related subjects” is a term used in international studies to refer to subjects like social studies, civics, and history that prepare youth for democratic citizenship. Internationally, scholars use the term “civic education” to include both political and civic dimensions, which often overlap. “Political” dimensions include knowledge of government processes, skills to discuss political issues, and orientations toward voting and trying to influence political decisions. “Civic” dimensions include knowledge of civil society and skills and attitudes toward volunteering and participating in civil society. The first and third research questions refer to immigrant-background youth, whereas the second research question refers to both youth with and without immigrant backgrounds.
2. I asked colleagues in each country to recommend schools that fit my criteria of having a “substantial number” of students from immigrant backgrounds. Although most of the schools’ populations were more than 30% immigrants or children of immigrants living in large urban areas, in each country I selected one school with a smaller percentage (primarily in towns) to reflect some of the range schools experience. Initially, I purposefully selected five schools in each country, but after initial visits and interviews, I lost two schools. The social studies teacher at one Dutch school left teaching, and one school in England became non-responsive to my e-mail communications. I tried to select schools that were “typical” in each country. All of the schools were public (referred to as state schools in England). England has many single sex comprehensive high schools, so I included one English girls school. I visited a state-funded Muslim school in the Netherlands, which I decided not to include in the sample because there were only a few such schools. Sample schools in Germany were from Western states because that was where most of the immigrant population was located at the time. I began visiting most of the schools in 2009 or 2010, although a few were added in 2012. Most schools that I visited at the beginning of the study, I was still visiting during the final years of the study.
3. Exceptions were one city in Germany and one in Denmark where I was only able to visit once and a school in England (SGS) that I visited 10 times because it proved to be such an “information rich” case, which illustrated the possibilities for civic education in an era of globalization and transnationalism.
4. As an “outsider” to the sites and countries, I had the advantage of noticing what insiders might overlook in taken-for-granted practices. To overcome the disadvantages of my outsider position, I continually member checked my understanding with insiders. After class observations in various languages, I debriefed with teachers in English, and I constantly checked my evolving understandings with key informants in each country.
5. For example, after transcribing and reflecting on my field notes from one Danish school, I hypothesized that immigrant background and native born youth tended to be separated from one another by choice of subject (science vs music specialties) and socially by schools serving alcohol on Friday afternoons and at parties. The next day, and in subsequent visits to other schools, I observed the same phenomena and asked students, teachers, and colleagues directly about these trends, which they confirmed.
6. For example, by looking at all the “instructional practice” evidence from British schools, I found that all lessons required students to make, write, or do something—undertake a task individually, in pairs, or small groups. I did not find that practice in schools in any of the other four countries. The same occurred for the practice of “text analysis” in Germany, but nowhere else. In contrast, I found examples of the practice of “recitation” in all the schools, regardless of country.
7. My positionality reflects my having been a student, teacher, and teacher educator in the United States, where I learned and taught that the United States was “a nation of immigrants.” My ancestors were immigrant settlers who came from England, Scotland, and Germany between 1750 and 1850. Growing up and attending college in California, one of my friends had been held in a Japanese internment camp during World War II, and as a junior high school teacher in San Francisco, most of my students were Chinese-Americans. Later, as a high school teacher in Kentucky, I taught a unit on immigration in U.S. history, and my students wrote essays in which they explored the extent to which “the melting pot” was or was not a myth. Subsequently, as a university teacher educator I taught social studies teachers to teach from a multicultural and global perspective, and I encouraged my professional association to promote global citizenship education. Additionally, as a professor of comparative education, I had my students tutor in after-school programs for refugee youth. Since 1985, I have been studying civic education in the four countries that are the focus of this study. Recognizing that my perspectives and experiences differ from those of participants in this study, I constantly checked my understandings and interpretations with key informants in each country in hopes of capturing interactions and meanings as accurately as possible.
8. The teachers and administrators who accepted my invitation to participate in a study related to immigrant youth may have had more positive attitudes toward immigrants than others. Additionally, they tended to be quite cosmopolitan. They spoke English fluently, were well-traveled, and had positive attitudes toward diversity.
9. School and teacher names are pseudonyms.
10. I saw history lessons on Hitler and National Socialism at several schools, and I accompanied students from Nordwesten Stadtteilschule on a field trip to one of the Nazi work camps. Guides and museum exhibits emphasized resistance and agency in the camp. A teacher said she wanted students to realize that “normal people were in the SS,” and a colleague said it is especially important for students from migrant backgrounds to realize this was not merely a German problem, but a human problem that could happen again anywhere.
11. At this school, like most of the schools in the study, there was a mix of girls who wore a hijab and those who did not.
12. Despite my skepticism, I found no evidence to contradict that claim in teacher or student interviews or my classroom observations. Perhaps if I could have spent more intense time at the school, some tensions might have emerged—or not.
13. The 800 year-old Danish flag holds a special place in Danish culture. A common narrative is that the flag was transferred from the state to the people during a revolutionary period in the 1800s. Christmas trees are festooned with strings of flags, and flags are a part of birthday parties.
14. In Denmark and the Netherlands, respectively, flags are flown to celebrate birthdays and the completion of school exams, but not in school classrooms. In the United Kingdom, many contemporary citizens cringe at displaying the Union Jack, which they associate with “Great” Britain’s days of Empire.