Expanding Civic Worldviews: Teaching for Citizenship in an Alternative School Setting

What kind of global citizen? A framework for best practices in world history civic education

“…Civic experiences can take many forms, including using instructional strategies that promote democratic discourse, providing opportunities for critical source analysis, and out-of-classroom applications (Hess and McAvoy, 2015; Levine, 2012). Many scholars’ assessments of civic engagement in the United States, or being a citizen , draw upon Westheimer and Kahne’s (2004) taxonomy, which reflects a spectrum of civic experiences, from the smaller acts of responsible behavior (‘personally responsible’) and active participator (‘participatory’) to transformative behavior (‘justice-oriented’) (see Castro and Knowles, 2017; Castro and Muente, 2016; Knight Abowitz and Harnish, 2006). Collectively, these four components provide a means to analyze best practices in curriculum and instruction through a specifically ‘civic education’ lens.…”

“…Correspondingly, the needed world history content for civic education within this stance reflects knowledge maintaining current structures of inequity, including the historical paradigm heralding Western ideals (Segal, 2016). Skills for neoliberal global citizenship reflect those that contribute to competitive advantage, rather than ones that may challenge structural inequity (Castro and Muente, 2016). There is not critical analysis as 'neoliberals contend that democracies are fundamentally in agreement about the rules of civic and social life' (Gaudelli, 2009: 71).…”