Transformative Citizenship: A Redefinition of Citizenship in a Multicultural Society

Citizenship education has long been recognized as a central goal of schooling. It has been an integral part of the social studies in particular and there have been a number of attempts in the field to outline what its goals should be and how it should be taught. The two conventional approaches to citizenship have discussed: cultural transmission and reflective inquiry into social science knowledge. This paper contends that both the cultural transmission and reflective inquiry approaches to citizenship are inappropriate because they maintain that democracy is a static rather than a constant struggle for equality and justice, and they support a limited socializing role of mainstream citizenship education rather than classroom activities that lead to civic empowerment and civic courage. This critique leads to an alternative concept of citizenship as democratic transformation. The focus of transformative citizenship is a concern for reconstructing society by developing a critical understanding of and engagement with social issues and institutions. Orienting this understanding and engagement are concerns for overcoming relations of domination and promoting a more just and equitable distribution of society`s benefits. This approach to citizenship seems to be central to the creation of education that is multicultural and social reconstructionist. It is important to note that at the level of practice, the goals and principles of citizenship education tend to remain largely inaccessible. In this spirit, the ultimate significance of this paper lies in the potential connection between social studies educators conceptions of citizenship education and classroom practice-a potentially fruitful area for further research.