Future Citizens in Pedagogical Texts and Education Policies. Examples from Norway, Sweden, Syria and Turkey

Abstract

The aim of this project is to grasp processes of globalization in education policies and in selected pedagogic texts in Norway, Sweden, Syria and Turkey through a focus on the education of the “right” kind of future citizen. People increasingly move across national borders for longer or shorter periods. The autonomy of nation states is thus challenged and questioned, but they still hedge in and concomitantly close off people in separate national spaces. These simultaneous often contradictory – processes are of great importance for how the right kind of future citizen is moulded in mandatory schooling. Research on transnationalism is a theoretical starting point for this project. Long- or short term migrants create and maintain social relations which cut across national borders, but also law and policies move and are established across such borders. Research on education and nation state building and the globalization of education are important for the project, in order to understand education polices and the governance of education. We will collect and analyze educational documents and curricula for selected subjects like history, civic and religious education, interview politicians with influence over education, as well as teachers and authors of textbooks, and scrutinize selected textbooks in the four national settings. The cases will be used for soft comparison where similarities and differences will be used throughout to generate new insights and deepen the analysis.

Keywords

Citizenship, Education, Ethnicity, Pedagogic Texts, Globalization