Group problem solving as citizenship education: Mainstream idea of participation revisited

Policy makers in Europe pursue a specific participatory approach to citizenship education, based upon a particular idea of democracy and citizenship. In this approach, schools are required to foster certain virtues such as solidarity, empathy and an active participation that will enhance social cohesion. The present study argues that such an approach to citizenship education holds three constraints, a practical one, a political one and a fundamental one: it is not feasible for implementation in schools (practical constraint); it doesn’t explicate and justify the theory of citizenship underlying its idea of ‘good citizenship’ (political constraint); it aims at ‘making’ a certain kind of citizen in order to solve society’s problems, instead of developing students’ autonomous thinking (fundamental constraint). This study develops and justifies an alternative participatory approach to citizenship education, based on the democratic principle of group problem solving. Its source is a specific idea of democracy: an epistemic theory of deliberative democracy. This theory is explicated and justified and subsequently translated into learning activities. Four educational principles have been developped: (1) practicing and developing argumentation skills, (2) connecting different perspectives (connected learning), (3) learning how to make group decisions and (4) learning to think together.An important part of the justification is to show that the alternative approach meets the three constraints, the practical one, the political one and the fundamental one.