A ‘seamless enactment’ of citizenship education

Educational undertakings are subject to disjunctures at three separate stages: in the creation of curricular programmes, in the implementation of these curricula in practice and in their effects on students. These disjunctures are the result of complex `leaps' between ends and means, and between ideal and real. This article proposes a response in the form of `seamless enactment', applied here to citizenship education. Seamless enactment involves, first, the harmonisation of the principles underlying the different stages in the passage of the curriculum, avoiding problematic tensions between, for example, democratic aims and undemocratic teaching practices. Second, it requires the involvement of teachers and students in the design and development of the educational initiative, as well as in its implementation. Taken to its fullest extent, seamless enactment involves a unification of the separate stages, leading to the collapsing of the curricular transposition framework onto a single point. Finally, some possible justifications for and potential objections to the notion are considered. The outcomes of educational undertakings are hard to predict for a number of reasons. First, having in view a particular set of aims or aspirations, the task of choosing educational means to achieve them is far from straightforward, particularly when these aims entail understanding and attitudes as well as skills. Second, on implementation in practice, these educational means – in the form of a curriculum – are transformed in a number of ways due to the specificities of local contexts and teacher practice. Lastly, the influence of the undertaking on students is dependent on the ways in which they absorb, recast or reject its messages. Each of these three stages requires of the initiative some form of ‘leap’. The leap is between ends and means in the first and third cases, and between ideal and real in the second. This process of change – here referred to as ‘curricular transposition’ – presents a significant challenge to the realisation of any aim through education. This article proposes ‘seamless enactment’ as a response to the potential disjunctures that can occur in the processes outlined above. Seamless enactment is an approach to the curriculum in which there is a harmonious movement between ends and means, and between the ideal and the real, both in terms of the underlying principles and the human agents involved. These ideas can be applicable to any form of curriculum, but here will be dealt with specifically in relation to citizenship education, an area in which these problematic disjunctures can easily be seen. While there has been extensive philosophical writing on the aims of citizenship education and on justifications for its presence in schools (e.g. Callan, 1997; Galston, 1989; Kymlicka, 2003; McLaughlin, 1992), less attention has been paid to the educational processes involved. This article aims to respond to this lack by addressing the difficult relationship between the ends of citizenship and the educational means designed to achieve them. Conceptions of citizenship are multiple and complex, differing in the emphasis given to rights and duties, and to local, national and global levels, as well as in the extent to which difference and criticality are tolerated or perhaps encouraged. McLaughlin’s well-known (1992) analysis identified four key components (identity, virtues, political involvement and social prerequisites), each of which may be interpreted in a wide range of ways, and exist in ‘maximal’ or ‘minimal’ forms. This article will not focus primarily on the conception of citizenship that should orient schools’ practice (a question that has received ample attention elsewhere), but on the educational processes intended to support it. The argument here is based on an assumption that the aim is for democratic citizenship, one which entails individuals and groups being able to play an informed and critical role in decision-making that affects them, as well as respecting and facilitating the participation of others. At a later stage of the article, the implications of seamless enactment for non-democratic citizenship are also drawn out. The article has three sections. First, there is an outline of ‘curricular transposition’, a theoretical framework developed in previous studies (McCowan, 2008; 2009). The framework was initially derived from empirical research, but will here be discussed in general conceptual terms. Following this, the notion of seamless enactment is proposed. Lastly, there is a discussion of some justifications and possible objections to seamless enactment. Curricular transposition Since the 1980s, considerable attention in the French-speaking world has been paid to the notion of ‘didactic transposition’ (e.g. Chevallard, 1985; Conne, 1992; Perrenoud, 1998, 1992; Tochon, 1991). This theory attempts to show how items of knowledge (and in some cases social practices) are transformed when they move from society into school. Scientific theories, for example, adopt forms in the official school curriculum that are distinct from those in the scientific community, and are transformed once again through the work of individual teachers (there are clear parallels with Bernstein’s [1996] notions of recontextualisation and reproduction here). Didactic transposition, however, focuses on specific items of knowledge or practices, and does not aim to capture the entirety of the curriculum. Curricular programmes as a whole are based on a set of ideals, aims or aspirations – whether explicit and conscious or not – which guide the choice of content. The notion of ‘curricular transposition’ proposed here extends didactic transposition by addressing these underlying orientations. The movement between the four stages of curricular transposition can be seen in the following graphic: