Toch liever geen idioot?!: Beelden van de goede burger en de ideale samenleving in het burgerschapsonderwijs in het licht van de theorie van Normatieve Professionalisering

Abstract

Since 2006, educational institutes have been assigned with the task to provide citizenship education in accordance with their philosophical, religious, and educational outlook, and to explain this outlook in their school guide. This study discusses the results of research done into the current concepts about 'good citizenship' in education, and the ideological presuppositions contributing to these concepts. The concept of good citizenship has been researched at the institutional level (government, school organization) as well as at the individual level (the educational professional). The aim of this research is to 1) reconstruct the ideological presuppositions that are prevalent in education with regards to a view on good citizenship and 2) to show which of those ideological presuppositions are the main contributors to the view of good citizenship education, based on the theory of normative professionalization. The main question of this research is: 'What images of the good citizen and the ideal society prevalent in education contribute to good citizenship education in the perspective of the theory of normative professionalization? Based on the main question three research questions were formulated: 1. What are the images of a good citizen and the ideal society which are incorporated in the design of citizenship education at the levels of the government, the school organization, and the educational professional? 2. How can we interpret the images of the good citizen and the ideal society based on the theory of normative professionalization and good citizenship education? 3. Based on the theoretical framework and findings as described in chapter 2 and 3, what recommendations can be made to educational professionals? The data has been collected, analyzed and interpreted with use of a qualitative research method. At the level of the government, the resulting images of the good citizen and the ideal society broadly matched the view of adaptation-oriented citizenship education. At the level of the school organizations and educational professionals a range of views on good citizenship was found. From the above a conclusion can be made that schools and educational professionals have responded to the government's appeal to create good citizenship education based on their own worldview. The interpretation of the images was done on the aspects: 1) public domain – justice –, 2) relation to unknown others – principles – and 3) politics – subject/unicity – . None of the levels of education explicitly focused on the realization of a just society. The relationship to the unknown other is hardly mentioned, the focus being mainly on the relationship to the known other. Only a few educational professionals focus on promoting the unicity - freedom and responsibility - of students. In this research virtuosic citizenship has been advocated, because it is a form of personal development in citizenship education which aims to advance the unicity of each child, by developing their ability to judge justly on issues in the public domain. In this way virtuosic citizenship education lays a foundation for the existence of plurality in society, and helps maintain it in a just and fair way.