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LEARNING CITIZENSHIP COMPETENCES -THE PROJECT ECLIPSE
O. Bombardelli
The development of the contemporary societies, organized in democratic form, needs the contribution of all citizens, who should be active, responsible, and competent. Democracy is a new government form in the history, and citizens need to learn how to live and contribute in it. Very often people are superficially informed on current affairs, not always there is awareness of the own responsibilities to improve democracy; it is easier to blame because of the limits of the existing forms of it.
All school systems plan education for citizenship, anyway it is not very successful (ICCS 2009), and it is a task not only for the schools; the families, and the social political environment are important as well. The project ECLIPSE (European Citizenship Learning in a Programme for Secondary Education), conducted in the years 2011- 2014, aims at improving European citizenship learning at school through teaching/ learning activities. It is a Comenius Project, selected and co-financed by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union (EACEA - Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency), eclipse.lett.unitn.it.
The Project Consortium has six partners: Universita degli Studi di Trento (Italy): Olga Bombardelli, Universidad de La Laguna (Spain): Lidia Santana Vega, ST. John's School Marlborough (United Kingdom): Kerry Saunders, Patrick K Hazlewood, Instituto de Educapao da Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal): Maria Helena Salema, Leibniz Universitaet of Hannover (Germany): Dirk Lange, Doreen Huget, Scoala Nationala de Studii Politice si Administrative (Romania): Irina Stanciungelu, Cesar Birzea. It worked in order to promote ethic, economic, social, political, cultural aspects of citizenship, underlining the close interdependence between countries and peoples nowadays. The project includes learning updated information, and developing transversal skills, like learning to learn and entrepreneurship, the early developing of key competences (EU, 2006), focusing on active learning and self-planning by the students.
Education for citizenship implies becoming aware of the own skills, to manage information and participation, to interpret media communication, to develop critical thinking and to build independent judgment on civic- political topics. ECLIPSE intends both to contribute to the quality lifelong learning and to promote high performance in competent citizenship, preventing and contrasting undemocratic behaviours. ECLIPSE partners analyzed the different countries approaches, comparing them, and choosing the most valuable solutions, planned and implemented strategies to link the school with the daily life of the pupils, encouraging them to active learning, autonomy, and responsibility, involving the non formal learning too. Partners and teachers used the developed materials within the context of school practice, and for the teacher training. They worked together to foster civic education for all pupils, facilitating them to cooperate across the borders, encouraging them to become aware of the consequences of being good or bad citizens. The ECLIPSE partners arrived to a consensus on what
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“citizenship” in a democratic society actually means, and how citizenship education must be structured in order to develop responsible, competent citizenship. The Consortium adopts the concept of civic competence defined by the EU institutions: “Civic competence is the complex mix of the sum of the different learning outcomes which are necessary for an individual to become an active citizen. It is a combination of the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values which enable people to act successfully in civil society, representative democracy and everyday life based on democratic values” (EU 2006), adding some aspects, like understanding, dispositions, and behavior. The ECLIPSE concept of citizenship goes beyond a concept of citizenship that focuses on rights and obligations, although that play a central role; it implies willingness of people to take on responsibility for the community in different functions, at several social and geographical level.
The European Citizenship Modules and the pupils Portfolio. ECLIPSE partners developed seven European Citizenship teaching/ learning modules for students at the 8th grade, and teachers of different disciplines are expected to use them, especially in: Mother and Foreign Languages, History, Geography, Economy and Law, Visual Education, Citizenship education (in its different names in the EU countries), adopting an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach (Bombardelli, 2012).
The Programme for Secondary Education deals with topics like: human rights and responsibility, social identity (at local, national, European and global level), and cultural diversity, the EU in the daily life; European Citizenship; History of the European Cooperation process and the main European Institutions. Sustainable development, respect of the common good, group work and involvement of the community are addressed too. Teachers can use the offered material in flexible way, integrating it in their subjects, and in the school life.
For evaluation of the learning results ECLIPSE uses qualitative and quantitative approaches, collecting data through monitoring tools as the Students’ Knowledge test, the Students’ questionnaire, and the portfolios. The student portfolio helps to make explicit the competences gradually developed in the European Citizenship Learning Programme; it helps to think about the own civic and European identity, the awareness of rights and duties.
The ECLIPSE portfolio has six sections: 1. Political culture, with the following sub-sections: “I know my rights and responsibilities”; “I am aware of social and cultural diversity”; “I actively participate in democratic life”; 2. Awareness of European Citizenship, with the sub-sections “I understand rights and duties of European citizens”; 3. Active learning and self-planning, with the sub-sections “I am good in active self-regulated self-planning”; “I can plan, organize and manage my time”; 4. Skills and values needed to co-exist, with the sub-sections “I can communicate well, give opinions and debate”, “I can understand and respect others and I reject discrimination”, “I can prevent conflicts and manage them non violently”, “I can understand the importance of self-esteem, autonomy and responsibility”, “I can take constructive criticism”; 5. Participation in a local environment, with the sub-sections “I participate in sport teams, citizenship and solidarity associations”. in order to introduce young students to the habits of democracy already at school; 6. Initiative and entrepreneurship, with the following sub-sections: “I show initiative and autonomy”, “I can co-operate in a team”, “I think
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about my transition to work or about further studies”. Looking at the different sections, it is easy to recognize the categories entailed by the concept of “civic competence”.
ECLIPSE aims to guide pupils to documented and motivated choices and to contribute to the development of active democracy; positive effects are expected on teachers and students, by means of information, critical reflection, and responsible cooperation. Citizenship Education in this project encourages critical knowledge, excluding acritical adherence to a specific model. It is never indoctrination, instead it is an effort for information, reflexion and documented coherent decision making by the pupils, who are the citizens of tomorrow; the ECLIPSE work follows the ‘controversity principle’ (Beutelsbach Consensus 1977), and supports pupils both to acquiring information, and to think about controversial topics with coherent argumentation. The ECLIPSE teaching/ testing material is not intended to be the only work devoted to citizenship at school, and of course it doesn’t include all kind of information in the field of citizenship. In the 8th grade pupils are supposed already having had in the previous years the opportunity to learn about the basic contents in civic and economic field, like what is the concept of state, what is a currency etc.; that happens in general teaching in the different subjects (geography, history, art etc.), as well, in the already existing school activities.
Students should be empowered to understand the process and the results of the common decisions taken according to democratic rules, to influence it, and to take part in public life in a competent way.
References
1. Beutelsbach Consensus http://www.lpb-bw.de/beutelsbacher-konsens.html Das Konsensproblem in der politischen Bildung (El problema del consenso en la formacion polltica), editado por Siegfried Schiele y Herbert Schneider, Stuttgart 1977 (Traduccion al espanol: Ute Schammann y Raul Konsensproblem in der politischen Bildung, Stuttgart 1977).
2. Bombardelli O. (Ed.). (2012). L’Europa e gli europei a scuola, La Scuola, Brescia.
3. Recommendation 2006/962/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 on key competences for lifelong learning [Official Journal L 394 of 30.12.2006].
4. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=0J:L:2006:394:0010:0018:en:PDF
5. Eurydice (2012). Citizenship Education in Europe, 2012, http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/education/eurydice/documents/thematic_reports/139EN.pdf
6. Kerr D., Sturman L., Schulz W., & Burge B. (2010). ICCS 2009 European report: Civic knowledge, attitudes, and engagement among lower-secondary students in 24 European countries. Amsterdam: IEA (International Association for the Evaluation.
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