ABSTRACT
To address how education can move towards cultural citizenship as a collective learning process, Chapter 2 compares three conceptions of education: teaching as transmission, transaction and transformation. These different conceptions of education indicate a tension between present societies and social aspirations; at one end, the view that education should reflect the composite values of the present society and preserve it from one generation to the next, and at the other, that it must aspire to lead students towards an idealised society, which raises questions of value conflicts and teacher neutrality. We contend that neutrality is an untenable position that can only privilege the dominant ideology. To avoid this, teachers need to engage students in genuine communicative practices through community-centred, inquiry-based pedagogy with the purpose of the continuous reconstruction of experiences that develops students’ capacities for active and informed citizenship.
