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THE DEMOCRATIC SCHOOL CLIMATE: ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP AT SCHOOL

Boek - Dissertatie

In this dissertation, I examine the relation between the democratic school climate and students' engagement. Hence, I inspect the relation between the school context and students' political knowledge, their political attitudes and their willingness to participate. On the one hand, the results of this dissertation provide evidence of the democratic school climate and the teachers' role within the socialization process. On the other hand, this dissertation points out how risks can be related to citizenship education. It shows how citizenship education at school can accelerate social inequality and how teachers can stimulate conventional citizenship instead of real participation. This dissertation connects both the political socialization literature and the school effectiveness literature. Within the first field of literature both John Dewey and Constance Flanagan describe how students can learn civics at school. They perceive the school as a kind of mini-polity. The second strand of literature describes the school's contextual influences related to general student outcomes. This school effectiveness field uses a practical framework to describe the social school context in four dimensions (the school's order, social relationships at school, teaching and learning practices and the school structures). In this dissertation, I apply this framework to examine the democratic school climate and its influence on civic outcomes in specific. An advantage of this approach is that it focusses on the broader school influences related to the school in general, instead of the influence of specific actions such as civic courses or projects. This democratic school climate framework enables me to describe the democratic school climate as a specific, social and experiential school context, existing of social conventions, relationships and teaching and learning practices that commonly contribute to students' civic outcomes. Next, this framework also enables me to point out the central position of teachers in the socialization process. The data used in the dissertation comes from the two recent cycles of the International Civic and Citizenship Survey (ICCS) 2009 and 2016. I was part of the team responsible for the fieldwork of the ICCS 2016 cycle. These surveys are organized by the IEA (Institute for Educational Achievement). The ICCS 2009 cycle contains data of 38 countries. The recent cycle provides results of citizenship education in 24 countries. Both teachers, school principals and students (grade 8) are involved in these studies. The survey contains a broad range of citizenship information describing students' political knowledge, democratic attitudes and their engagement in the community. Hence this survey is the ideal starting point to examine the democratic school climate. There are three main results. First, this dissertation is able to describe the democratic school climate as a intercultural and comparable concept that can be related to students' citizenship outcomes. Next, it is clear that the teacher plays a central role in the democratic school climate. Results provide evidence that teachers can both stimulate equality and improve democratic attitudes. Hence, the teacher can be seen as a role model within the political socialization process. Third, this dissertation point out how citizenship education can contribute to more equality (between boys and girls or between students in the general track or the vocational track). This dissertation points out that a careful reflection is needed to stimulate these opportunities for more social equality. Different views about citizenship among teachers can jeopardize a common citizenship education approach within the school and structural differences can accelerate a citizenship gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students. To conclude, this dissertation points out the need for more support for each teacher to better implement citizenship education at school. Teacher professionalization rarely focusses on citizenship education, nevertheless, this dissertation shows how citizenship education is the responsibility of every teacher at school.
Jaar van publicatie:2019
Toegankelijkheid:Open