The Political Literacy Tree from Crick and Porter
Key stage 3 • Politics, Parliament and Government
In the book, ‘Political Education and Political Literacy’ (1978) edited by Bernard Crick and Alex Porter, the Political Literacy Tree is presented by Robert Stradling as a way to help teachers and educators consider the development of political thinking for children. Political literacy, he defines as ‘political awareness and competence’, a link still made in the Citizenship National Curriculum between knowledge, understanding, skills and action.
Stradling describes how basic political concepts (such as ‘decision-making’) are ideas that often relate to the politics of everyday life and generalised terms. He suggests such concepts need to be made concrete in familiar contexts for students to understand, before building towards more abstract and applied knowledge and understanding of complex ideas. The Political Literacy Tree remains useful to help teachers consider how political problems and issues can be explored as a developmental thinking approach that links questions and key concepts.
Read our blog on why political literacy is at the heart of Citizenship education
