Most schools will agree they want to create good citizens. Beyond that, you'll find less agreement; the definition of what a good citizen is varies widely.
Defining Good Citizenship
Few will disagree that a primary objective of schooling is to create good citizens (Pancer, Pratt, Hunsberger, & Alisat, 2007; Pancer, Rose-Krasnor, & Loiselle, 2002). Of course, depending on who is speaking, the definition of good citizenship varies significantly (Littenberg-Tobias, 2014). For many, developing skills to continue future civic presence and volunteering is sufficient. The citizenship framework developed by Kahne and Westheimer is particularly effective at delineating different levels of citizenship schools and programs may be oriented towards. They suggest that “good citizenship” is actually a step ladder with three levels; the personally responsible citizen, the participatory citizen, and finally, the justice-oriented citizen (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004). The phases of this citizenship ladder are presented here:
Stage 1: The Personally Responsible Citizen
The personally responsible citizen obeys laws and respects her fellow citizens. She is charitable, giving of time or money to causes in her realm of influence, whether that be donating to a food drive, serving at a soup kitchen, or giving monetarily to an organization serving those in “need.” This person is also kind to all persons, regardless of social status. This level of citizenship may be developed through anti-bullying programs, classes on mercy, and community values. For the personally responsible citizen, presence and local charity are sufficient for good citizenship, they do not need to have any connections outside of their immediate sphere of influence.
Stage 2: The Participatory Citizen
The participatory citizen is likely to take on greater leadership in social action. She is active in some way in local government or organizations, possibly sitting on a board, and takes organizing roles for charity projects. Rather than bringing in a can of food for the food drive, she is setting up the food drive to give the personally responsible citizen an opportunity to demonstrate their good citizenship. She has developed a sense of care for those affected by inequity, which drives her actions. She is engaged in collective commitments for social good and is also rule abiding and respectful of all.
Stage 3: The Justice Oriented Citizen
The justice-oriented citizen is aware of structural inequalities and their impacts on communities. She is critical in her participation with charity organizations and eschews one-off efforts for remediation of suffering preferring to address root causes. These individuals have felt such strong feelings of care and empathy for individuals that they were moved to act on behalf of entire communities to enact structural change. The justice-oriented citizen is not necessarily identified politically as a liberal; their cause issues and believed solutions may be conservative in nature, for example some who favor school privatization in the pursuit of “competition” to benefit poor students. These small cases aside though, the predominant leaning of a justice-oriented citizen would inevitably be to more liberal political ideologies in the interest of intervening to correct historically unjust systems.
While these stages are presented as a ladder, with students often needing to move through participatory citizenship on their way to justice orientation, for many educational programs the target destination for students is one of the three, not a full progression. This paper will explore how some programs that strive for more traditional definitions of citizenship; personally responsible or participatory; versus those who seek to create more engaged justice-oriented citizens. Because of the importance of empathy in assisting students in transitioning from participatory citizenship to justice oriented citizenship, and because empathy with oppressed communities is particularly tricky to develop for children of the oppressor (van Gorder, 2007), this will also be given particular focus in the exploration of research on this area and development of curriculum to address it.
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