Facilitators: Stella Micheong Cheong, Adam Lang & Yaobin Tong | Five two-hour sessions | Spring: 13:00 - 15:00  Tuesday January 14, 28 + February 11, 25 + March 10 | Access via Blackboard Collaborate on the reading group Moodle page

NB: This is registration for the ONLINE version of this reading group.

The role of education in shaping the desired citizen has been emphasising through all educational systems across the world. Many theories regarding citizenship education stress that it should be developed to nurture participatory disposition, to instill civic virtues, habits, and identities, to value the diversity and equality, and to acknowledge how to respect others with human rights and democracy. In practice, however, violent conflicts very often occur from high profile cases (e.g. Syria War, Mindanao, Rohingya genocide) to the invisible violence of everyday life (e.g. bullying, social exclusion, prejudice). Moreover, people from different nations are struggling with many challenges. For instance, a high level of diversity causes a wide range of economic, political and social pressure in the era of globalisation and economic populism. Furthermore, as technology has developed, it still has problems that can cause significant harm to civic identities.

In short, we are going to discuss some controversial issues regarding citizenship education in the reading group. That is, we are trying to find answers to the following critical questions: ‘what should we prepare theoretically and practically for this new era?’, ‘how can we respond to some of the challenges created by this new era of economic populism?’, ‘how to be active and global citizens?’, ‘how can we establish the democratic ethos?’