Dutch adolescents’ narratives about democracy: ‘I know what democracy means, but not what it means to me’

Abstract

In the last decade, educational scholars have studied various aspects of adolescents’ citizenship narratives. This paper reports on a qualitative study into the narratives about democracy of 27 adolescents from an urban area in the Netherlands. The aim of the study was to gain an insight into the type of democratic engagement that Dutch adolescents develop. Fourteen vocational and 13 pre-university students were selected. Each student was interviewed twice. Narrative thematic data analysis revealed that only five students had developed a strong conception of democracy. Our findings suggest that few students had spent time developing and challenging their narratives about democracy, and that few students have developed a greater sense of democratic engagement. Our paper concludes with several suggestions for furthering the study and practice of democratic citizenship education.

Keywords:

• narratives about democracy
• democratic citizenship education
• ‘thick’ democracy
• adolescents
• democratic engagement

Notes

1. Twenty-two years ago, McLaughlin (1992) distinguished between thin and thick concepts of citizenship, and discussed the strengths and weaknesses of thin and thick concepts of citizenship on citizenship education and, therefore, on the quality of pluralist democratic societies. In this study, we distinguish between thin and thick concepts of democracy, and explore their prevalence among Dutch adolescents.