Creating Citizenship Communities: Final Report

Abstract

The project ‘Creating Citizenship Communities’ was funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation during the period 2011–2013. The project team was based at the Department of Education at the University of York and the National Foundation for Educational Research. The project investigated the thinking and actions of professionals in schools and young people about forms of citizenship that relate to strong communities and developed educational materials designed to enhance understanding and skill development. The key stages of the project were a literature review, secondary data analysis, a national survey of schools (completed by relevant professionals) and focus groups of young people. There is widespread agreement about the importance of community but there are different perspectives about its meaning. A great deal of work is undertaken by schools to support the development of citizenship communities. However: (a) schools could do more to create a sense of community within schools themselves and (b) schools could do more to help young people engage with their local communities. The teaching and learning about citizenship and communities in schools does not have the same status as other areas of the curriculum. Young people suggest that schools should take citizenship education more seriously and that the content of citizenship education could be more directly relevant to their lives. The co-ordination of curricular and whole-school approaches to citizenship and community is not always strongly developed. There is at times relatively little attention paid to young people’s existing knowledge and experience in the development of education to explore and support citizenship communities.