Staffing, status and subject knowledge: what does the construction of citizenship as a new curriculum subject in England tell us about the nature of school subjects?

Abstract

Almost a decade ago, the new subject of citizenship was created in the English National Curriculum and several universities were funded to train teachers in this new subject. This presented a rare challenge, namely how to train people to teach a subject that did not exist in schools, and in which they were unlikely to have a specialist degree. In this article we have taken the opportunity afforded by the tenth birthday of the report in which Crick recommended this curriculum reform to reflect on that experience from the perspective of teacher educators. Through reflecting on the case study of citizenship education in England we highlight several themes that are of more general interest to teacher educators. The key issues that have emerged in this case study relate to the general problems of translating central policy into classroom practice; the nature and aims of subjects in the curriculum; and the identities of teachers in secondary schools. The article illustrates how teacher educators responded to the formidable challenge of creating (or at least contributing to) a new subject and a subject community.

Keywords:

• curriculum
• school subject
• citizenship
• curriculum reform

Notes

1. The first degrees of the last 100 students starting their citizenship PGCE at the IoE are as follows: 15 law, 15 sociology, 13 politics, seven history and politics, six philosophy, six sociology and politics, four international politics/relations, four education, four public policy/administration, three criminology, three economics, three European studies, three anthropology, three media, two classics, two politics, philosophy and economics (PPE), two humanities, one development studies, one African studies, one osteopathy, one sport, one youth and community studies. Many of these degrees also contain other elements (e.g. philosophy and theology) but the major element in these cases has been categorised. The average age of students was 28 and 67% were female.