Moving beyond Idealistically Narrow Discourses in Citizenship Education

What is it about?

the main goal of this article is to provide conceptual guidelines to move the pedagogical debate in the field of citizenship education beyond idealistically narrow models. We begin by providing an overview of key shortcomings presented in most citizenship education programs, specifically in the USA context. The second section presents the conceptual perspective of embodied cognition to discuss the prevalent metaphors and prototypes related to the notion of “the nation as a family” commonly used in understanding citizenship education. The third and final section concludes with a set of suggestions for re-conceptualizing the field of citizenship education using the tools of embodied cognition.

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Why is it important?

As educators and scholars we cannot make much progress by ignoring the unconscious and automatic levels of thinking and maintaining idealistically narrow models of citizenship education. We need 21st pedagogical tools to solve 21st century educational problems.