teachers' views on citizenship education in secondary education in the netherlands
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Teachers' views on citizenshipeducation in secondary education inThe NetherlandsHélène Leenders a , Wiel Veugelers a & Ewoud De Kat aa Graduate School of Teaching and Learning , University ofAmsterdam , the NetherlandsPublished online: 29 May 2008.
To cite this article: Hélène Leenders , Wiel Veugelers & Ewoud De Kat (2008) Teachers' views oncitizenship education in secondary education in The Netherlands, Cambridge Journal of Education,38:2, 155-170, DOI: 10.1080/03057640802063106
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Teachers’ views on citizenship education in secondary education in TheNetherlands
Helene Leenders, Wiel Veugelers* and Ewoud De Kat
Graduate School of Teaching and Learning, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
(Received 3 May 2006; final version received 11 July 2007)
In 2005 the Dutch Minister of Education proposed making it compulsory for allschools in The Netherlands to stimulate active citizenship and social integration.Teachers must give these educational goals a tangible form in their practice. Whatare the teachers’ views on citizenship education? Concepts of citizenshipeducation and the teacher’s role in it may differ widely, and very differentperspectives on values and value development are possible. This article addresseshow teachers view citizenship education. We present the results of a surveyconducted among a representative sample of Dutch secondary schools. Theresults show that teachers make clear choices in the importance they attach tocertain values. Teachers want students to acquire skills to analyse, communicateand reflect on values, and they want to stimulate the development of certainvalues. The chosen values relate to different types of citizenship. School level,school subject and the age of the teachers make a difference to the importanceteachers attach to different values.
Keywords: citizenship; teachers; secondary education
Introduction
Citizenship development is an important issue in contemporary political initiatives and
public debate, and education has a crucial role to play in its development. Governments
in many different countries have recently introduced citizenship education (Davies &
Issitt, 2005; Torney-Purta & Barber, 2004). The Council of Europe earmarked 2005 as
the ‘European Year of Citizenship Education’. The Netherlands Advisory Council for
Education submitted a legislative proposal for the introduction of citizenship education(Onderwijsraad, 2003). The Advisory Council on Government Policy recommended
further scientific research ‘into the best ways to internalise, transfer and sustain values
in child raising and education in general, and in a pluralistic society as a whole’
(Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, 2003, p. 271). The Dutch Minister
of Education recently proposed a statutory obligation for schools ‘to stimulate active
citizenship and social integration’. In her explanatory remarks the minister stressed the
relationship between citizenship, social cohesion and social integration, and went on to
describe citizenship as ‘the willingness and the opportunity to be part of society and toparticipate actively in that society’. Social integration is seen as ‘participation of
civilians in society and its institutions, and social participation and familiarity with, and
knowledge of Dutch culture’ (Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen, 2005).
These new citizenship initiatives are part of the changing social and political climate in
The Netherlands which manifests itself in a lack of trust in Dutch political policy and in
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Cambridge Journal of Education
Vol. 38, No. 2, June 2008, 155–170
ISSN 0305-764X print/ISSN 1469-3577 online
# 2008 University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education
DOI: 10.1080/03057640802063106
http://www.informaworld.com
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the European political project, in violence – even political violence, as, for example, in
the killing of the politician Pim Fortuyn and the movie director Van Gogh – tension
between native Dutch people and immigrants and concern about the influence of non-
Christian religions such as Islam.
Given the widespread international debate on citizenship education in politics
and science and the social and cultural challenges Dutch society and Dutch
education are currently facing, we consider it important to examine how teachers
consider citizenship education. Teachers are professionals who bring educational
policy, the pedagogical vision of the school and their own cultural-pedagogical
project into action (Hansen, 2001; Veugelers, 2007). Every teacher makes choices
and makes the formal curriculum tangible. Teachers contribute to school as a social
and a learning environment (Hargreaves, 2003). They attempt, both consciously and
unconsciously, to influence their students’ value development.
Teachers demonstrate values through the material they choose, subject content,
examples and their coaching of students (Gudmundsdottir, 1990) or, in the words of
Arthur (2003, p. 317), ‘Values are an integral part of teaching, reflected in what is
taught and also in how teachers interact with pupils’. Teachers stimulate the
development of certain values and attempt to help students form their own opinions
on values and to communicate them. A teacher can transfer values, but is also in a
position to generate the conditions in which different perspectives are confronted
with one another. The teacher in education is a role model. Students are not obliged
to heed this role model, but it is something they are faced with in school life.
Empirical research has been conducted into the teachers’ exemplary model as a
moral person for students (Oser, 1994), into the interaction processes between teachers
and students (Hansen, 2001) and into the effects of citizenship education on the
knowledge, views and skills of students (Cleaver, Ireland, Kerr, & Lopes, 2005; Torney-
Purta & Barber, 2004). What is still required is empirical research into teachers’
pedagogical actions, their motives, their knowledge and beliefs and the way they reflect
on their own practice. Solomon, Watson and Battistich (2001) believed that research
into moral education should not focus on behaviour alone, but also on the motives for
this behaviour, since motives lend meaning to behaviour. This implies taking account of
values and the political and cultural ideas that determine how teachers actually behave.
This article examines how teachers view citizenship education. We assume that
teachers express diverging values and perspectives on citizenship education and that
these values are related to different citizenship perspectives (Leenders & Veugelers, 2006).
Section one – the conceptual framework of the study – discusses theories of
moral education and citizenship education. We argue that different perspectives on
values and value development can be distinguished in education and that teachers
articulate a pedagogical vision in which a specific type of citizenship, with a
concomitant specific set of values, may dominate. Section two sets out the
methodology, the research questions and study design. Section three presents the
survey results, and the conclusions and discussion are set out in section four.
Conceptual framework
Moral education
The theoretical framework of the study is partly based on the ‘moral education’
tradition, and in particular on studies by Power, Higgins, and Kohlberg (1989), Oser
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(1994), and Solomon, Watson, and Battistich (2001). The central concepts are: value
development, value communication, and participation and community. Values steer
a person’s beliefs and behaviour and values give meaning to a person’s actions
(Berkowitz, 1997). Paying attention in education to values and value development is
necessary to prevent education from merely developing an ability to judge, without
reflecting on the moral criteria involved (Veugelers, 2000). Value communication
places moral education in the perspective of ‘active and independent learning’ and
autonomy development. It implies learning to reflect and act with regard to values
and value development. Several academic traditions focus on the development of
these kinds of skills: ‘moral development’ (Power et al., 1989), with an emphasis on
moral reasoning; ‘critical thinking’ (Paul, 1992), with an emphasis on learning to
think rationally; ‘critical pedagogy’ (McLaren, 1994), with an emphasis on
empowering subjects.
Participation and community refer to students’ active involvement in their own
education and value development and that of other students. Various traditions
regard this active social participation of students in a community of learners as the
core of meaningful learning processes, as can be seen in the ‘Just Community
Schools’ (Power et al., 1989), the ‘democratic schools’ (Apple & Beane, 1995;
Goodman, 1992) and ‘caring communities’ (Battistich, Solomon, Watson, & Schaps,
1997; Noddings, 1992; Tappan, 1998).
Citizenship
Contemporary debate on the social development of youngsters concentrates on the
concept of citizenship. Citizenship is not restricted to the political level, but also
refers to civil society as a whole, and even to the day-to-day interaction of human
beings (Banks, 2004). Because citizenship is seen as identity formation, citizen
development is linked to moral development (Haste, 2004; Veugelers & Oser, 2003).
On a conceptual level, different perspectives on values and value development are to
be found. Values may be oriented towards adaptation, towards personal emancipa-
tion or towards more collective emancipation (Leenders & Veugelers, 2006).
Teachers articulate a pedagogical vision in which a specific category of citizenship
may dominate. Different citizenship categories are to be found in the literature
(Apple & Beane, 1995; Goodman, 1992). We make a distinction between adapting
citizenship, individualistic citizenship and critical democratic citizenship. Education
may endeavour to develop these citizenship categories.
Different categories of citizenship relate to different educational practices
(Leenders & Veugelers, 2006). The educational goal of adapting citizenship refers to
value transmission as a method. This kind of educational practice is characterised by
a firm focus on values – virtues such as discipline, obedience, hard work, integrity,
respect and responsibility. The teacher attempts to transmit knowledge and fixed
values, i.e. give the ‘right’ message. Self-regulation of the learning process by the
student is not really encouraged, and neither is autonomous identity development of
the student.
Individualistic citizenship is an educational practice that focuses on value
communication, and it stresses communication skills such as critical reflection and
rational discussion. Identity development is important. There is a clear emphasis for
the student on independence, self-regulation and personal autonomy. The teacher
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coaches the individual learning path of each individual student in a stimulating
learning environment. Social development is not explicitly part of this kind of
learning process.
Individualistic and critical democratic citizenship are two variants of autono-
mous citizenship. The individualistic type reasons more from the individual
perspective, whereas the critical democratic type reasons from involvement with
others. We consider that promoting critical democratic citizenship in education
means fostering critical thinking and developing values such as care and solidarity.
The implication for education is the stimulation of certain democratic values, the
teaching and learning of skills to communicate better about values and increasing
students’ active participation. The teacher is the mediator of democratic values and
norms and is, at the same time, a participant in the interactive and dialogical process
in which the students give meaning to values. Learning is seen as a social activity in
which students engage with others and the world around them, and it challenges
them to develop intellectual and social qualities and attitudes.
Educational goals: linking values and types of citizenship
In former research projects we presented different kinds of educational goals to
parents, teachers and students. They were asked how important these goals currently
were in education and how important they should be. We encountered three clusters
of goals (Veugelers & De Kat, 2003a):
N ‘discipline and adaptation’, with aims such as obedience, good manners and
self-discipline;
N ‘social commitment’, with aims such as showing respect for others and
solidarity with others;
N ‘critical thinking and autonomy’, with aims such as forming one’s own
opinion and learning how to handle criticism.
We expected to find a relationship between the value-related educational goals that
teachers consider important and the type of citizenship they pursue. An adapting
citizen considers discipline and social commitment to be important and critical
thinking and autonomy to be relatively less important; a calculating citizen sees
discipline, critical thinking and autonomy as important and social commitment as
relatively less important; a critical democratic citizen sees critical thinking and social
commitment as important and discipline relatively less important (see Table 1).
Table 1. Expected relationship between educational goals and types of citizenship.
Discipline Social commitment Critical thinking
Adapting citizenship + + –
Individualistic citizenship + – +Critical democratic citizenship – + +
+, important (high score); –, not important (low score).
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Social context: school denomination, school type and school subject
This study analyses teachers’ perspectives on values, the educational goals they pursue
and the type of citizenship they focus on. We also asked teachers whether they think they
actually manage in their educational practice to achieve the goals they find important.
Bearing in mind that Dutch schools are required to stimulate not only active citizenship
but also social integration, we paid particular attention to the social aspects of citizenship
development. The literature on citizenship education also stresses the importance of the
social component of citizenship development (Banks, 2004; Haste, 2004).
We included school and teacher characteristics in the study. Dutch society has
been strongly influenced by what is referred to as ‘pillarisation’ (see Spiecker &
Steutel, 2001). Some 65% of schools in the present school system are denomina-
tional, mainly Roman Catholic and Protestant. Against this background, we
analysed whether it is teachers’ personal religious beliefs or the denomination of the
school that influence their citizenship orientation. There is also a distinction in
Dutch secondary education between the goals of academic schools and those of
vocational schools. Academic and vocational schools have different curricula and
different teacher training programmes, and the students’ social class and prior
educational experience also differ. For this reason we also compared teachers from
academic schools and those from vocational schools.
The subject taught by secondary schoolteachers is part of their professional
identity (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001). Moreover, school subject cultures make
different assumptions about the nature of the subject matter, student learning and
good teaching practice (Stodolsky & Grossman, 1995). We therefore included
teachers of different school subjects to ascertain whether there is a relationship
between the subject they teach and their opinions and beliefs.
Design of the survey
Based on our theoretical framework the research questions were as follows.
1. Which value-related educational goals are important to teachers?
2. Do teachers think students attain the goals that the teachers find important?
3. Are there different groups of teachers that have different educational
goals and aim to foster different types of citizenship?
4. Is there any correspondence between the type of citizenship and the
teachers’ attention to the social domain in the curriculum?
5. Are there any differences related to school subject, school type and the
characteristics of the teachers?
The questionnaire developed for the survey comprised the following components.
Educational goals
These include the three item clusters mentioned above: discipline and adaptation,
critical thinking and autonomy and social commitment. The items are taken from
earlier research (Veugelers & De Kat, 2003a). The respondents were asked to
indicate on a five point scale which goals they found important (5, very important; 1,
very unimportant). The teachers were also asked to indicate whether they thought
students attained these goals (5, very well; 1, not at all).
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Social domain
As argued above, the social domain in citizenship development is very important. We
used four different instruments to measure the social domain in the curriculum: ‘social
competence’, ‘concern for others’, ‘social attitude in the global society’ and ‘social
change’. We took the following scales from the Child Development Project (CDP):
‘social competence’ and ‘concern for others’ (Watson, Battistich, & Solomon, 1997). The
CDP scales had previously been used in studies on Dutch primary and secondary
education (Veugelers & De Kat, 2003b) and showed good reliability in these studies. The
respondents in the present study were asked to indicate on a five point scale whether they
paid attention in their educational practice to different aspects of the social domain (5,
almost always; 1, not at all). The ‘social competence’ scale comprised seven items and
measured whether teachers helped students to learn how to work with other students,
how to listen carefully to others or how to cheer up someone who is feeling miserable.
The ‘concern for others’ scale comprised nine items and measured whether teachers
focused on changing student attitudes. Did they help their students develop an attitude
of social commitment, solidarity with others, care and concern for others?
The ‘social attitude in the global society’ scale consisted of social issues such as
the natural environment, global life and politics. This ‘social attitude in the global
society’ scale comprised nine items and measured whether teachers paid attention to
developing skills and attitudes for different domains in global society.
We also developed a more politically oriented scale comprising four items on
political and democratic involvement. This ‘social change’ scale measured the
teachers’ focus on attitudes such as involvement with social change, the creation of
equal opportunities, an equal voice in decision-making and cooperating in changing
unequal power structures.
School and teacher characteristics
Do school and teacher characteristics influence the teachers’ goals? The respondents
were asked to give their age, subject, type of school, i.e. academic or vocational, the
school denomination and their life stance, i.e. none, Roman Catholic, Protestant,
Islamic, Humanist or other.
Sample and response
We selected a representative sample of 150 secondary schools (75 academic and 75
vocational) in The Netherlands, which amounts to 15% of all Dutch secondary
schools. Within each school four teachers from different subject areas were invited to
participate: the Dutch language and literature, art, civic education and economics.
Of a total of 150 schools, 109 schools participated in the research: 55 academic
schools and 54 vocational schools. There were 33 Roman Catholic schools, 35
Protestant schools, one Jewish school and 40 non-denominational schools. Of a total
of 600 teachers 254 completed the questionnaire (43% response rate). The different
school subjects were represented as follows: Dutch language and literature 58
teachers, economics 69, civics 67 and art 60. Of the sample, 135 teachers were from
academic schools and 119 were from vocational schools.
We gathered non-response information from a sample of 10 of the 41 non-
responding schools. The reasons for not participating were ‘no time’ or ‘participating
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in other research projects’. These reasons are not related to how important
citizenship development is for teachers or to their opinions on these matters.
Data analysis
Different teachers pursue different educational goals and, therefore, probably favor
different citizenship orientations. We distinguished three hypothetical orientations,
adapting, individualistic and critical-democratic citizenship. To test the validity ofthis a priori classification we used a person-centered hierarchical cluster analysis.
The cluster membership of the teachers was determined using a three cluster single
solution. The three scales measuring educational goals – discipline, social
commitment and critical thinking – were the criterion variables. The clustering
method ‘between-groups linkage’ was used with the ‘squared Euclidean distance’ as
distance measure. To test the differences on the dependent variables between the
different groups of teachers, a one-way analysis of variance was used.
Results
Educational goals
To answer the research questions (which value-related educational goals are
important to teachers and do teachers achieve these goals in their educational
practice?) we analysed the teachers’ scores on the 15 items concerning educational
goals. The items clustered into three consistent scales: discipline, social commitment
and critical thinking and autonomy. The internal consistency of the scales is betweena50.73 and a50.84. The results for the total mean scores for the three clusters of
value-related educational goals show that teachers attach considerable importance to
all groups of goals: discipline, social commitment and critical thinking (discipline,
mean¡SD53.88¡0.69; social commitment, 3.99¡0.63; critical thinking,
4.01¡0.66). Teachers strive not only for character qualities, such as good manners,
honesty and obedience, but also for autonomy development and intellectual
qualities, such as critical thinking and developing one’s own opinion, and for social
qualities and attitudes, such as care and solidarity. There are no significantdifferences in the importance attached to these three clusters of educational goals.
The results also show that teachers think they are not able to fully achieve their
desired goals (discipline, mean¡SD53.18¡0.85; social commitment, 3.28¡0.83;
critical thinking, 3.30¡0.86). All three groups of goals show a statistically significant
difference (P,0.01) between desired and achieved goals. Teachers find good
behaviour, autonomy development and social concern ‘considerably important’,
while their pedagogical actions only lead to ‘some’ learning effects on the part of the
students. There are no clear differences between the three clusters of goals inrealizing these educational goals.
Different types of citizenship: linking educational goals and citizenship
To answer the research question are there different groups of teachers that aim at
different educational goals and different types of citizenship we conducted a person-
centred hierarchical cluster analysis to identify teachers who show different patterns
in the educational goals they pursue. We analysed the data using a three cluster
single solution to determine the respondents’ group membership. Table 2 shows the
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Table 2. Differences between desired educational goals, achieved goals and citizenship orientation.
n Discipline Social commitment Critical thinking
Mean SD Significance Mean SD Significance Mean SD Significance
Group 1 (adapting)
Desired 74 4.21 0.48 b 4.12 0.50 b 3.48 0.67 a
Achieved 74 3.43 0.63 b 3.38 0.63 b 3.05 0.65 a
Group 2 (individualistic)
Desired 45 4.16 0.46 b 3.47 0.61 a 4.14 0.51 b
Achieved 45 3.32 0.61 b 3.01 0.61 a 3.39 0.68 b
Group 3 (critical
democratic)
Desired 135 3.61 0.73 a 4.10 0.61 b 4.25 0.52 b
Achieved 135 2.99 0.98 a 3.32 0.96 b 3.40 0.98 b
Differences between a and b are statistically significant (P,0.01).
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mean scores and the standard deviation for the three groups on the clustering
measures.
A group of 74 teachers found discipline and social commitment important and
not critical thinking; a second group (45 teachers) found discipline and critical
thinking important, but not social commitment; the third group (135 teachers) found
social commitment and critical thinking important,and not discipline. The study
shows that three types of citizenship can be distinguished in the goals of the teachers.
This is the case for both desired educational goals and achieved goals. We label thesethree types of citizenship: adapting, individualistic and critical democratic. About
half the teachers (53%) were oriented towards a critical democratic position. The
other two groups were still substantial. A large group (29%) strove for an adapting-
oriented type of citizenship, and 18% for a more individualistic one.
Teachers who favoured the adapting type of citizenship found critical thinking
significantly less important than teachers from the individualistic and the critical
democratic type of citizenship (P,0.01). Teachers who favoured the individualistic
type of citizenship found social commitment significantly less important than the
adapting-oriented and critical democratic-oriented citizenship teachers (P,0.01).
Teachers who favoured the critical democratic type of citizenship found discipline
significantly less important than the adapting-oriented and individualistic-oriented
teachers (P,0.01).
Citizenship and attention to the social domain in the curriculum
Our study shows that teachers’ opinions on the importance of values as educational
goals differed and that the type of citizenship corresponded with the teachers’
educational goals. The social domain is very important in citizenship education.
Does the type of citizenship also correspond with more curriculum-related goals in
the social domain? To answer this question we asked teachers if they paid attention
to the social domain in the curriculum and we made a distinction between ‘social
competence’, ‘concern for others’, ‘social attitude in the global society’ and ‘social
change’.
The total mean scores for the different aspects of the social domain show the
following.
N Teachers paid considerable attention to the development of students’ ‘social
competence’ (mean¡SD53.70¡0.72). Teachers indicated that they ‘regu-
larly’ helped students learn how to work with other students, how to listencarefully to others or how to cheer up someone who is feeling miserable.
N Teachers also paid considerable attention to helping students develop ‘social
attitudes in the global society’, such as concerns for society, politics and
environmental issues (mean¡SD53.55¡0.74).
N Teachers regularly helped their students to develop an attitude of ‘concern for
others’ (mean¡SD53.16¡0.86). Teachers worked on developing values such
as solidarity and care.
N The teachers’ focus on developing an attitude of involvement with ‘social
change’ was less pronounced (mean¡SD52.14¡0.84). Teachers indicated
that they ‘sometimes’ helped their students develop social change attitudes,
such as the creation of equal opportunities or giving everyone an equal voice
in decision-making.
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Teachers paid most attention to the development of ‘social competence’ and quite a
lot to curriculum-oriented ‘social and global issues’. Their attention on moral
attitudes, such as ‘concern for others’, was not very strong. Teachers worked little on
more political ‘social change’.
We analysed whether the three types of citizenship were related to the different
aspects of the social domain (see Table 3).
The results show that teachers who aimed for adapting citizenship and those who
aimed for critical democratic citizenship paid more attention to ‘social competence’,
‘concern for others’ and a ‘social attitude in the global society’ than teachers who
aimed for individualistic citizenship. The social orientation of both types of
citizenship can be found at the more concrete curriculum level. However, we did not
find a difference between adapting-oriented citizenship and critical democratic
citizenship on these three scales.
Teachers were more reluctant when it came to more politically oriented ‘social
change’, such as developing a critical attitude towards existing inequities in society
(social change scale). There was a significant difference between the individualistic
type, who paid attention to this matter either ‘not at all’ or ‘sometimes’, and the
critical democratic type, who did this ‘sometimes’ (P,0.05).
Why did the adapting type and the critical democratic type not differ in their
social orientation in the curriculum? We can discuss these results in different ways:
adding autonomy to social commitment does not result in a loss of attention to
social commitment. We can also argue that both paths – the combination of
discipline and social commitment and the combination of autonomy and
commitment – led to a strong emphasis on the social domain in the curriculum.
These results require more research into the development of autonomy and discipline
and their link with social commitment.
Citizenship and school and teacher characteristics
Are the teachers’ goals, the attainment of these goals and their citizenship
orientation related to school and teacher characteristics? Are there differences
between:
N academic schoolteachers and vocational schoolteachers;
N teachers of different subjects;
N teachers of different ages;
N schools of different denominations;
N teachers’ different religious beliefs?
School level
There are statistically significant differences (P,0.05) between teachers in academic
schools and those in vocational schools in the educational goals they consider
important. Academic schoolteachers found critical thinking the most important
(academic mean, 4.08; vocational mean, 3.92), while their colleagues in vocational
schools found social commitment (vocational mean, 4.21; academic mean, 3.79) and
discipline (vocational mean, 4.16; academic mean, 3.64) the most important goals.
We found that teachers do not pay much attention to the more politically-oriented
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Table 3. The social domain scales and the different citizenship orientations.
Type n Social competence Concern for others Social attitude Social change in a global society
Mean SD Significance Mean SD Significance Mean SD Significance Mean SD Significance
Adapting 74 3.85 0.62 b 3.34 0.76 b 3.73 0.62 b 2.18 0.82
Individualistic 46 3.47 0.82 a 2.82 0.92 a 3.23 0.74 a 1.95 0.75 a
Critical
democratic
134 3.78 0.72 b 3.33 0.91 b 3.69 0.86 b 2.30 0.95 b
Total 254 3.70 0.72 3.16 0.86 3.55 0.74 2.14 0.84
Differences within the three groups of teachers between a and b are statistically significant (P,0.05).
Ca
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goal of social change. Teachers from academic and vocational schools did not differ
in this (academic mean, 2.25; vocational mean, 2.15).
The results of the study also show that there are statistically significant
differences (P,0.05) between teachers from academic and vocational schools when it
comes to types of citizenship. The majority of teachers in academic schools were
oriented towards critical democratic citizenship (61%). Only 22% of the academic
teachers aimed to foster individualistic citizenship, with 17% fostering adapting
citizenship. Many teachers in vocational schools were oriented towards adapting
citizenship (43%) and critical democratic citizenship (44%). There were only a few
teachers oriented towards individualistic citizenship (13%).
Age
We found a statistically significant (P,0.01) relationship between teachers’ age and
citizenship orientation. Young teachers (,30 years) were most oriented towards
individualistic citizenship (50%) and they were the least oriented towards critical
democratic citizenship (23%). Twenty-seven per cent of them were oriented towards
an adapting type of citizenship. The opposite was true for their older colleagues (.40
years): they were the most oriented towards critical democratic citizenship (51%) and
the least towards individualistic citizenship (15%). Thirty-four per cent of older
teachers were oriented towards an adapting citizenship. We can conclude that age
makes a difference in teachers’ orientation towards type of citizenship.
School subject
We included teachers of four different subjects in the study: the Dutch language and
literature, economics, art and civics. We checked whether any differences between
school subjects were not due to different compositions by age group. We did not find
any relationship between the age of the teachers and the subject they taughth. We
found a statistically significant (P,0.01) relationship between school subject and
citizenship orientation. Among the adapting citizenship-oriented teachers economics
teachers formed the largest group (37%); among the individualistic citizenship-
oriented teachers Dutch language and literature (30%) and art (28%) teachers formed
the largest group; among the critical democratic citizenship-oriented teachers civics
teachers made up the largest group (34%).
Denomination and religious beliefs
We did not find any relationship between teachers’ citizenship orientation and the
denomination of the school or their own religious beliefs.
Conclusions and discussion
This study has shown that teachers strive for different educational goals: for
discipline, for critical thinking and autonomy and for social commitment. Teachers
consider these three groups of educational goals to be important. They indicated that
there is a gap between the importance they attach to the goals and whether students
attain these goals. It is interesting to see that they did not think some goals were
attained more easily than others. In earlier research among school leaders we found
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that according to these school leaders the gap between intended and achieved goals
was greater for autonomy and social commitment than for discipline (Veugelers &
De Kat, 2003b). We did not find this difference in the present research among
teachers. Teachers appeared to be less optimistic than school leaders about the
effects of disciplining students.
Although teachers found most of the educational goals important, we
distinguished three groups of teachers that differed in their orientation towards
citizenship. About one-third of the teachers aimed to foster adapting citizenship,
which means that they found discipline and social commitment the most important
educational goals. Only one-fifth of the teachers strove for an individualistic type of
citizenship, in which critical thinking and autonomy was stressed. A small majority
of the teachers were oriented towards critical democratic citizenship; they aimed to
foster or both critical thinking and autonomy and social commitment. This relatively
large number of critical democratic-oriented teachers can be explained by the fact
that education in The Netherlands has a historical tradition of a cultural and social
educational policy of education for all, and Dutch education is highly meritocratic.
The social democratic and Christian democratic parties have dominated educational
policy over the years and many Dutch teachers tend to favour these political parties.
The type of citizenship not only corresponds with the teachers’ educational goals
but also with more curriculum-related goals in the social domain. Adapting-oriented
teachers and critical democratic-oriented teachers pay more attention to the social
domain in the curriculum than individualistic-oriented teachers. Social issues are not
really part of the learning process in an individualistic approach. A smaller focus on
the social domain is connected with less attention to social and political
participation. Individualistic-oriented teachers do not focus on developing a critical
attitude towards social change – only their critical democratic colleagues do so.
The study has also shown that most older teachers are oriented towards the
critical democratic, while younger teachers are oriented towards the individualistic,
not the critical democratic. We do not know if these results can be explained by age
or by culture. If age is a factor, teachers will become more critical democratic as they
get older. The older teachers were educated in the 1960s and 1970s, the younger
teachers in the 1990s. If culture is a factor, there is a chance that the young teachers
will retain their individualistic orientation. They were educated in The Netherlands
of the 1990s when Dutch society and secondary education were characterised by a
more individualistic approach.
School level also makes a difference. Vocational education teachers strongly
emphasise social commitment and discipline, which may partly be necessary to
facilitate the learning process in vocational education and to solve students’
behavioural problems. The fact that academic education teachers place considerable
emphasis on critical thinking and autonomy may be part of the school ethos of
academic classes. Most of the individualistic teachers worked in academic schools.
Teachers in academic schools advocate being a coach who guides the individual
learning path of the student and who stresses individual personal development.
Together these results show that teachers actively, but probably not intentionally,
contribute towards reproducing social relations in society (Bourdieu & Passeron,
1970). However, this reproduction is incomplete. By emphasising social commitment
vocational education teachers show their support for the transformation of society,
maybe not in a strong political way, but with a moral basis. Our study shows that the
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other half of the vocational schoolteachers strove for a critical democratic type of
citizenship: they challenged their students to develop a critical attitude combined
with solidarity with others.
Citizenship in a democratic society requires being able to communicate with
different social and cultural groups, to appreciate differences and to ‘bridge’ with other
social and cultural groups (Putnam, 2003). We found in earlier research that teachers
believe that communicating about values during regular classes is very important. They
also think that most school subjects lend themselves to this purpose (Veugelers & De
Kat, 2003a). In this research we compared different school subjects and found a number
of interesting differences. Most of the civics teachers were oriented towards critical
democratic citizenship, which means that political and social issues are discussed in a
critical manner and from different perspectives. However, 13% of civics teachers were
still oriented towards adaptation and 20% towards individualism. These findings are
similar to the results of a US survey on perspectives on citizenship education among
social studies teachers (Anderson, Avery, Perderson, Smith, & Sullivan, 1997).
Our study also shows that almost half the economics teachers tended towards
adaptation. It seems that they consider their subject as a fixed values system in which
facts are seen as ‘truth’. One might expect economics teachers to be more oriented
towards an individualistic type of citizenship that supports entrepreneurship, but
only 10% of them actually were. We found a stronger individualistic orientation
among art teachers and Dutch language teachers. Art and language classes stimulate
the personal and creative development of students. Students can, moreover, learn the
values of their own cultural inheritance and that of others through literature. The
teachers in our study taught their students to reflect on texts and images, to find
arguments in a discussion, but they see art and literature as a personal creative
practice, not as a social-cultural practice.
Against the background of the Dutch schooling system, in which some two-thirds
of schools are denominational, we expected to find a strong influence of the
denomination of the school and the personal beliefs of the teacher. For example, we
expected Protestant teachers or teachers in Protestant schools to be relatively more
oriented towards adapting citizenship because of a firm focus on ‘Protestant values’
such as obedience, hard work and discipline. However, we found no statistical evidence
to support this. We did not find any relationship between the citizenship orientation of
the teachers and the denomination of the school or their personal confessional beliefs.
The results show that teachers make clear choices when it comes to the
importance they attach to certain values. They want to help students acquire the
skills to analyse, communicate and reflect on values. However, they also stimulate
the development of certain values. The chosen values relate to different types of
citizenship. School level, school subject and age make a difference when it comes to
the importance teachers attach to different values, although in this study religion did
not make a difference. Citizenship education consists of different goals and practices.
We must to take account of these differences in research into citizenship education.
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