ABSTRACT
The introduction of citizenship education into secondary schools in England from August 2002 offers a number of challenges and opportunities. This essay reviews the recent history of attempts to introduce citizenship education (or variants of it) into schools and comments upon the failure thus far of widespread implementation. Drawing bn a number of recently completed or current research projects, comments are made about the potential for success of the present initiative. Recommendations for action are made (in the form of examples, rather than a complete guide for implementation) which include the clearer identification of procedural or second-order concepts and, with reference to initial teacher education, that work should take place in international as well as other contexts. Although the scale of the challenge of implementing citizenship education is emphasized in this essay, I do believe that it is possible to succeed in that task and that, if we do, enormous benefits will be achieved.
