How to teach a knowledge-rich Citizenship curriculum without boring your students

A knowledge-rich Citizenship curriculum helps students develop a deep understanding of key democratic concepts, but how can teachers make this engaging and interactive? Through our latest ACT research, Ryan Mason, Curriculum Leader for Humanities at Addey and Stanhope School, shares his approach to delivering a high-challenge, knowledge-rich Citizenship curriculum using active learning techniques. From hands-on simulations to creative problem-solving tasks, Ryan’s strategies ensure students stay motivated while mastering complex ideas.

The benefits of teaching a knowledge-rich Citizenship curriculum are widely accepted but how do you do so while keeping your students engaged and interested in the subject? Ryan Mason is the curriculum leader for the Humanities at Addey and Stanhope School in Lewisham and has been teaching the subject of Citizenship for many years. In this role, he has developed a pedagogical approach that provides students with the knowledge and conceptual tools needed to engage with complex Citizenship terms and concepts, and which also broadens their appreciation for the subject.

Teaching a knowledge-rich Citizenship curriculum, according to Ryan, doesn’t have to mean dry or boring textbook learning. On the contrary, if done well, it can be extremely effective, engaging and fun. 

Ryan’s approach to Citizenship draws inspiration from the science classroom. The science curriculum, he argues, more explicitly sets out to introduce students to key ideas and vocabulary and is designed to repeat and develop these over the course of their education. Citizenship, by contrast, especially in the early days of the subject, tended simply to cover different topics, without a clear rationale for the sequence of these and the development of certain foundational knowledge. Citizenship teachers, according to Ryan, need to embrace a developmental method of teaching rather than assuming that content needs to be simplified so that students grasp everything first time around.

This means designing the Citizenship curriculum around key concepts—such as, democracy, civil liberties, human rights, rule of law and so on—which can be expanded upon in subsequent academic years. The next step is to develop a range of interactive teaching strategies including simulations, games and creative tasks as well as more traditional questions and essay writing, that keep students engaged and interested in the subject.

One strategy that Ryan uses in his classroom involves students deciding how to share a bag of sweets. Sharing a bag of sweets in different ways, Ryan explains, is an easy way to illustrate different decision-making approaches. It’s a short step from there to talking about democracy and dictatorship. Rather than starting with abstract definitions and concepts, therefore, the activity presents students with an immediate problem and asks them to solve it.

Another strategy that Ryan uses to help students master the curriculum content involves simulation activities. When teaching “Law and the justice system” to his year 10 class, for example, Ryan gets his class to simulate a real court hearing. This involves students enacting the roles of judge, jury, prosecutor and defendant, and reaching their own verdict on the case presented. Active learning approaches like these not only deepen students’ understanding of complex concepts but also develop critical thinking, communication, and participatory skills essential for engaged citizenship. The full case study includes some more detail on this and is intended to help Citizenship teachers develop their own simulation activities and to ensure that their students get the most out of them.