Institutional and contextual factors of quality in civic and citizenship education: Exploring possibilities of qualitative comparative analysis

Abstract

This article analyses quality assurance (QA) policies of 30 countries in civic and citizenship education (CCE) by using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The main aim is to find combinations of institutional and contextual factors that are systematically associated with a high achievement in citizenship education. Based on fsQCA, the assumption is that several pathways to a successful education may exist. Theoretically, two model paths were constructed – the accountability and the participatory paths with distinguished contextual conditions and institutional characteristics of QA systems. Empirical analysis revealed six configurations of contextual and institutional factors, belonging to the accountability or to the participatory paths. The strongest configuration in terms of consistency and coverage is the absence of strict regulations on teaching CCE embedded by a participatory path. The result of the accountability path is more diverse, indicating that both, a more regulative New Public Management-related and an internal assessment-oriented QA might be enabled by this context.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Anu Toots is a Professor of Comparative Public Policy at Tallinn University, Estonia. Her research interests include governance of the welfare state, citizenship and education policy. She is engaged in comparative educational research including large-scale surveys by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievements (IEA).

Triin Lauri is a Ph.D. candidate in the Institute of Politics and Governance, Tallinn University. Her research focuses on school choice and educational governance. In her comparative studies she is advancing the set theoretic approach of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). One of her latest publications on QCA was awarded the Best Paper Award of European Educational Research Association (EERA).