Exploring English and Japanese teachers’ views on citizenship, civic education, and citizenship experience

This thesis compares Japanese and English civic education teachers’ views on citizenship and their pedagogical approaches to explore cross-national
differences in their visions and challenges they face as civic educators. Previous research on teachers’ perceptions of citizenship indicate that teachers predominantly support personally responsible citizenship, rather than justice-oriented citizenship. This means that the civic education which young people receive at schools tends to put emphasis on being a responsible law-abiding citizen, rather than making changes to address structural inequality. Previously, the majority of research in this area has concerned pre-service teachers or in-service teachers, regardless of whether they have expertise in citizenship. Therefore, further research could be beneficial through expert teachers’ views, which are suggested to support civic education to empower young people to become active agents of social change. In addition to teachers’ views on citizenship and civic education pedagogy, I also explore how teachers’ life experience informs their views and pedagogical approaches to civic education. I interviewed twenty expert teachers of civic education in total, nine English teachers and eleven Japanese teachers. The rationale to focus on expert teachers is that they are more able to discuss their visions and challenges to bring about transformative civic education aimed at fostering justice-oriented citizenship. In addition, the comparison between England and Japan (which have distinct socio-political contexts but a shared concern about young people’s political disengagement)is insightful in order to explore different meanings of citizenship and approaches to civic education. Findings illustrate that participating teachers supported justice-oriented citizenship, and in facing their challenges when delivering civic education they hoped to enable young people to make positive changes in society. This study highlights benefits that have the potential to inform education practitioners and policy makers about transformative civic education.