ABSTRACT

A critical approach to educational policies and practices of civic and political participation, as expressed in this volume, takes two systematically different positions and perspectives seriously: the position of organised political or educational agencies and the position of the political subject or individual citizen. A critical approach emphasises the positional, political and pedagogical difference with respect to capacity, ideas, expectations, interests, measures, power, action scope, experience and practices. A critical stance presupposes neither congruence nor antagonism between these two positions and their viewpoints on participation. Instead, it takes their theoretical and empirical relationship as an open question of research. Therefore, a critical approach pleads for theoretical conceptualisations, practical approaches and research methods which acknowledge the basic difference of authorities and citizens and take the corresponding different dimensions of the complex phenomenon “education for active citizen participation” into account. The “requirement of participation” is an ambiguous term: it makes a difference, who—the state or the citizen—formulates it and, of course, which state and which citizen claim what kind of participation. This volume tackles the task of differentiating in terms of theories and conceptualisations of democracy, participation, citizenship and citizenship education as well as in terms of empirical evidence on participatory practices and outcomes.