Education for Citizenship and democratic participation: im/possibilities of articulation between Civil Society Organizations and Schools

Ana Isabel Teixeira¹, Mariana Fonseca¹, Moisés Cruz¹ and Pedro Daniel Ferreira^1,

¹Centre for Research and Intervention in Education (CIIE), Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences (FPCEUP), University of Porto, Portugal

Cite this paper:
Ana Isabel Teixeira, Mariana Fonseca, Moisés Cruz and Pedro Daniel Ferreira. Education for Citizenship and democratic participation: im/possibilities of articulation between Civil Society Organizations and Schools. American Journal of Educational Research. 2023; 11(8):509-515. doi: 10.12691/education-11-8-5

Abstract

Engaging Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and schools in implementing Citizenship Education (CE) are one of the guidelines included in the Portuguese National Strategy for Citizenship Education (NSCE), launched in 2017. It calls for building partnerships between schools and external institutions, considered strategic because of their ability to generate training and communication opportunities and optimize access to local resources necessary for learning and exercising citizenship. We studied a set of projects promoted by CSOs regarding school contexts. These projects share the common goal of strengthening civil society and active citizenship. We systematize some of the dimensions associated with the effects of the projects, in terms of strengthening civic awareness and democratic participation and reflect on the potential and difficulties inherent to the articulation between CSOs and Schools. The study was conducted through interviews with CSO technicians and teachers from partner schools, and focus group discussions with the students involved. These data, collected between January and July 2022, were subjected to content analysis. There is a common belief amongst the various participants in the positive results of the interventions in terms of strengthening civic awareness and empowering the educational community for greater involvement and participation. Still, participants struggle to articulate the effects of the projects concerning the domains of values, attitudes, and behaviors of the beneficiaries. And it's also difficult to identify the contributions of these interventions to the transformation of Schools into more participatory, collaborative, and democratic organizations. This dimension leads us to discuss the importance of building intervention and evaluation models for social and school partnerships that take into account the effects on the individual level, but also focus on the institutional level, i.e. on the structures that ensure the production of change.

Keywords:
Citizenship Education Civil Society Organizations Participation Education Democracy

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