ABSTRACT

Education, in its aim of socialisation, reflects particular understandings of how people grow, learn, be, and become. This topic has been a focus of philosophy throughout history, across cultures. It remains a key issue continuously examined in educational scholarship, psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, and other social sciences. This chapter offers a small contribution to such discussions as they pertain to the kind of person conceived in civic education. In this context the chapter critiques the idea of a universal, generalisable individual where it is promoted in education, from a view oriented toward social justice and recognition of difference, diversity, and inequality. It also shows how social justice concerns in society seem to disappear in prevalent conceptualisations of moral development, in contradiction to civic aims. First, the chapter discusses development in terms of rational autonomy or emotional virtue. Next, it critiques these lenses as applied to civic education. This critique foregrounds issues of social justice and political understanding as vital to teaching and learning in civic education. It also reflects on dispositions, habits, and non-cognitive attributes to be cultivated through civic education.