Discourse between pupils represents a core element of citizenship education in England. However, as it is currently presented within the curriculum, discourse adopts the form of the rather broad terms of 'discussion' and 'debate'. These terms are diffuse, and in themselves offer little pedagogical guidance for teachers implementing the curriculum in schools. Moreover, there has been little academic reflection in England as to how theoretical ideas on civic dialogue may usefully inform approaches to pupil discourse. For this reason, how pupils (...) experience discursive learning activities is likely to depend on how individual schools and teachers understand the terms 'discussion' and 'debate' and the way in which this understanding is translated into pupil learning activities. This article explores how recourse to deliberative democratic theory, and in particular to the principle of contestatory deliberative democracy found within recent republican writing, may be useful in helping educators to consider critically the capacities needed for effective civic discourse as a well as the outcomes of pupils' dialogical engagement. (shrink)

The notion of the common good has been cited as a key constituent of citizenship education in England, within which the development of a concern for the common good represents a key disposition. The term has, however, received little critical attention to date within the discourse of the subject, either in terms of its theoretical basis or its educational function and form. For this reason to develop the common good represents an ill‐defined aim of the citizenship education in schools. This (...) article seeks to redress this by critically engaging with different formulations of the common good within recent civic republican political theory. More specifically, it attempts to delineate between notions of the common good that are essentially moral and notions that emphasise political understandings of the term, and which, in so doing, minimise the moral. On the basis of this exploration a number of issues are raised for citizenship education in England and it is suggested that to fail to view the common good as a moral enterprise is inherently problematic. (shrink)

The profile of volunteering in English Higher Education [HE] has been enhanced in recent years through various initiatives that have not only funded activities, but have sought to expand the range of volunteering opportunities available to students and recognise the contribution that volunteering can make to students ' employability. This expansion has also brought about emergent interest in understanding the conditions of student volunteering, in particular why students volunteer and what they seek to achieve through their involvement. This paper adds (...) to this growing literature on indentifying student motivations through analysis of both survey and interview data on student volunteering. The use of mixed methods allows for a detailed interrogation of motivations and how students make sense of their own experiences with respect to dominant discourses about what volunteering can achieve. In particular the paper argues that students are reflective about why they volunteer, their motives can change over time and that for many students volunteering is not necessarily part of a strategic goal to enhance CVs or even 'do good'. (shrink)

We examined the links between moral identity—the centrality of moral principles to identity—and political purpose during emerging adulthood. We analyzed data from two waves of a longitudinal study of civic purpose. T1 surveys were collected before high school graduation and T2 survey were collected two years later. We categorized people (N = 1,578 at T1 and N = 480 at T2) into political purpose groups based on the person-centered perspective and then performed multinomial logistic regression analysis to test whether moral (...) identity was associated with categories of political purpose. The findings from our study indicate that moral identity at T1 is linked with the maintenance and formation of T2 political purpose. (shrink)