Abstracts - Earli

democratic perceptions, attitudes and participation among adolescents (Ichilov, 2000; Torney-Purta et al., 2001) was administered to all students. Six teachers of Communication participated inthe study. They were examined by a Qualitative research tools included interviews, andobservations of theoretical and practical lessons. Findings: 1.Communication students were foundto perceive the classroom climate as open for discussing political issues more than the controlgroup. 2.Communication students’ perception of the curriculum as advancing democratic valueswas statistically significantly higher than the perception of students in the other study tracks.3.Communication students participated significantly more in voluntary organizations than studentsin the other tracks. 4.A relationship was found between teaching methods implemented in theclassroom and school involvement indices. Discussion: The study corroborated the researchassumption that the Communication track makes a positive contribution to democraticinvolvement in school, and this contributes to increased political involvement. The media literacywas found as a crucial skill for democracy life, emphasizing the contribution of the relationshipbetween critical pedagogy and citizenship orientation among adolescents (Ten Dam & Volman,2004).The antecedents of civic engagement; school and community experienceHelen Haste, University of Bath / Harvard University, United KingdomIn a study of over 1000 British young people we found that certain aspects of democraticclassroom climate were associated with current and intended future action in the civic domain andwith beliefs about citizenship. We also found that experience in the community, and the perceivedquality of life in the community of origin, predicted action and values. Strong outcomes of havingbeen engaged in recent action included increased confidence, a desire to do more of the same kindof thing, and also a change in personal values. The educational implications of these findings arediscussed.Creating critical-democratic citizenship educationWiel Veugelers, University of Amsterdam, NetherlandsAs of 2006, Dutch schools are formally obliged to work on citizenship education. Educationallegislation and regulations state that schools should develop ‘active citizenship and socialintegration’. The Minister of Education is aware of the fact that schools do already work oncitizenship development in their curriculum and in their school culture. The new initiative attemptsto support this work and to stimulate more being done in schools on citizenship development andin a more coherent framework. This paper first examines developments in Dutch education, anddraws on the results of various empirical studies we have conducted. We then set out our ownparticular critical pedagogical view on citizenship education. The outline of the paper is: Differentconcepts of citizenship and changes in Dutch education · Changes in educational discourse onvalues and norms · Developing a critical-democratic pedagogy · Individualization in modernsociety · Social awareness and democracy · Empowering humanity · Moral education, criticalpedagogy and democratic education Critical issues in Dutch citizenship education · Differencebetween development of values and norms · Citizenship education in Dutch state schools · Theschool as a community · The multicultural society and values and norms in education · Criticaldemocraticcitizenship in education– 254 –