International

Imagined communities: values literacy in the 14-16 curriculum

Project description

Pathways to Citizenship is a well-established course for pupils aged 14-16, developed to address the absence of a co-ordinated approach to ethical and political literacy in the secondary curriculum. It takes as its starting point the contestability of current citizenship education in a globalised world. It examines critically the conditions of possible citizenship rather than describing a series of social or national givens. It also uses citizenship issues to develop critical thinking skills.

It is organised round the themes:

• The Local and the Global
• The Private and the Public
• Representation and Reality
• The Past, Present and Future
• Power

This thematic approach allows the course to be inflected according to local needs, facilitates updating and allows a vocabulary of citizenship across nationalities and cultures. After four years, the course has begun to revise traditional approaches to PSE and to link and integrate with humanities subjects.

The course was devised by teachers experienced in the International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge course and has proved a useful preparation for this diploma requirement

Benefits

Students receive an integrated programme in values literacy and a challenging course in ethical and political thinking in the four years preceding active political life. Although the course was developed for the particular circumstances of international schools, it helps to reveal the plural and multicultural dimensions to living in most modern societies.

School

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