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Key highlights from discussions on “Civic and Civil Education: Identity, Belonging and Education in the 21st Century”

Photo Credit: Christian Streili

Fellows from educational spaces across the world gathered at Schloss Leopoldskron from November 14-19, 2023 to rethink the role that education can play in tackling issues like declining democracy, misinformation, and polarization, by considering how to support citizens with the skills and behaviors to live harmoniously.

They found ways to connect, communicate, and solve problems together across different cultures, countries, and ideas - an example that they hope to set for students everywhere. Fellows were inspired to co-create comprehensive solutions that strengthen citizenship and democracy education for learners as well as better training for educators. Below are 5 key takeaways from their discussions during the Salzburg Global program on “Civic and Civil Education: Identity, Belonging and Education in the 21st Century”.

Education can create the conditions for active citizens by:

1. Developing Critical Thinking and Global Citizenship

   • Equip students with critical thinking skills and ethical skills to analyze information, interests, and agendas and to propose solutions to socio-economic, political, and environmental problems.
   • Help students build personal, national, and global identities that allow them to make sense of the world and their relationships with others.

2. Teaching for Democracy

   • Foster democratic values in students by implementing curricula, pedagogies, and spaces that "teach for democracy", where students actively learn that their voices, agency, and participation are encouraged.
   • Support student-led active citizenship through projects that engage young people in positive problem-solving in their communities, value their voices, and help them challenge injustices in the wider world.

3. Modeling Everyday Democracy and Shared Responsibility

   • Model citizenship in the classroom and utilize citizenship as pedagogy.
   • Demonstrate that democracy is a verb by practicing it daily through our own agency and the opportunity for agency that we offer each other.

4. Encouraging Inclusive Leadership for Democratic Culture

   • Encourage leadership and decision-making in schools, universities, and public bodies like libraries to see themselves as beacons for building a resilient democratic culture through inclusive approaches that encourage human flourishing.

5. Promoting an Ethical Use of Information and Technology

   • Build resilience to misinformation and junk news through media and information literacy, including “solutions journalism”.
   • Inspire and harness ethical and informed uses of technologies to further democracy so that citizens understand digital tools like AI as a force for good and are empowered to assume their data rights.

As the diversity of Fellows in this program showed, working for democratic engagement has to engage everyone across all sectors and settings. It also requires an understanding of our connection to others, our higher order needs and wants, how we can create synergy for change together, and asking ourselves the fundamental question of ” What do we owe each other?”.

As one Fellow summed up, “There is no one solution to the complexity of problems surrounding civic and civil education, but any improvement we make will encompass many different actions and actors putting their own solutions at work. This complexity gives hope that there are different people working on different parts of the problem, and it will all come together in a lasting way.” 

“Civic and Civil Education: Identity, Belonging and Education in the 21st Century” is part of the Education for Tomorrow’s World series, which informs new approaches to learning, skills, and inclusion for radically different societies.