Creating a Democratic Culture through high quality curriculum and teaching
The Council of Europe Competency Framework for Democratic Culture
The Council of Europe recently supported the Association for Citizenship Teaching (ACT) to lead a small project to consult with teachers in England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales about a competency framework developed to support education for democratic citizenship, human rights and intercultural understanding.
The Council of Europe has identified four key purposes of education:
Nick Hills, Head of Citizenship, led work on The ACT Building Resilience Project at the Anglo European School in Essex.
This project focused on critical thinking, problem solving and enquiry skills, and taking informed and responsible actions through five Citizenship lessons with Year 7 pupils. Pupils developed understanding of the concept of community, explored diverse viewpoints and learned why some people hold extreme opinions and undertake terrorist acts.
Members may find the paper resulting from a conference held in February this year in Birmingham and interesting read. Much of it resonates with citizenship education. Entitled Mending Broken Britain? Educations response the paper reflects the thinking at the conference held to consider the riots of 2011 and their impact on communities. The paper can be read HERE
