Young citizens and civic learning: two paradigms of citizenship in the digital age

TLDR

Civic education must adapt to shifting political identities and practices of newer generations, yet current programs largely reflect traditional dutiful citizenship models that emphasize party‑based voting and news‑following. The study aims to derive core learning categories that guide responses to evolving citizen identity styles and learning opportunities across online and offline settings. To achieve this, the authors analyze school‑based civic education research from various post‑industrial democracies. The result is an expanded set of learning categories that recognize the value of different citizenship styles and emerging online environments that may supplement or supplant school civics.

Abstract

How can civic education keep pace with changing political identifications and practices of new generations of citizens? This paper examines research on school-based civic education in different post-industrial democracies with the aim of deriving a set of core learning categories that offer a starting point for thinking about how to address changing citizen identity styles and learning opportunities in various online and offline environments. The preponderance of school-based civic education programs reflects traditional paradigms of dutiful citizenship (DC) oriented to government through parties and voting, with citizens forming attentive publics who follow events in the news. The authors expand upon these conventional learning categories by identifying additional civic learning opportunities that reflect more self-actualizing (AC) styles of civic participation common among recent generations of youth who have been termed digital natives. Their AC learning styles favor interactive, networked activities often communicated through participatory media such as videos shared across online networks. The result is an expanded set of learning categories that recognize the value of different citizenship styles and emerging online environments that may supplement or supplant school civics.