ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief historical sketch of some relevant events and trends. We then argue that there have been three main periods of citizenship education in schools during the last three decades. Political literacy, which was in a dominant position in the 1970s, was succeeded in the 1980s by a wide array of ‘new’ or ‘adjectival’ educations which ranged from peace to global and from anti-sexist to anti-racist education. These were in turn supplanted more recently by a direct focus on citizenship education. A description of each of these main phases is given. Prior to a brief conclusion, we discuss four key trends with some comments about future prospects.
