Abstract
Since 2006, schools in the Netherlands are required to include active citizenship and social integration in their curriculum. Six years later in 2012 the Inspectorate of Education notes that since then little progress has been made in the development of citizenship education, and speaks of stagnation. This stagnating development raises
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a number of questions, such as: What do we mean by citizenship? What should citizenship education look like? Is the school able to influence the behaviour and attitudes of children in this area? In Chapter 2 of this thesis we look into the arguments – for and against – for considering the school as the right place for citizenship education. On the basis of an assessment of these arguments, we endorse the opinion that the school (in addition to other actors) can play an important role in the personal and social development of young people. To extend the base of knowledge concerning citizenship education, the programme of De Vreedzame School (The Peaceable School) is the subject of an evaluation study. The Peaceable School is a whole-school approach for elementary schools. It aims at the school becoming a democratic community, in which children and teachers learn to solve conflicts in a constructive way, and in which children learn to carry responsibility for the social climate in the community. A ‘realistic evaluation’ was chosen, in which the emphasis was on understanding the mechanisms as a result of which, and on the context in which, a programme works. The research questions were: 1. What are the potential effective mechanisms in the programme: why and in what way could the programme of The Peaceable School cause the desired outcome? 2. What contextual factors could influence the success of the implementation of The Peaceable School? 3. Is there a difference in the classroom and school climate in the perception of the teachers and principals before and after implementing The Peaceable School? 4. Does the programme last: is it still used after a number of years, and used as meant? 5. What are the stimulating or restricting factors for an implementation of the programme that is successful in the perception of the schools? The first two research questions were answered using literature research. For the answers to the remaining research questions a mixed-methods design was chosen. The first phase of the study was formed by a research involving 131 elementary schools who had worked for three years or longer with the programme. The second phase aimed especially at answering research question 5. We used a ‘case control’ design. A group of four schools with little experienced success in the implementation of The Peaceable School (the cases) were compared to a group of four schools (the controls) who saw themselves as very successful in implementing The Peaceable School. In the third phase of the study we did a research involving 37 schools who started in September 2009 with the implementation of the programme.
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