Negotiating participation and power in a school setting: The implementation of active citizenship within the undergraduate sociology curriculum

Since the Crick Report, active citizenship has been promoted as a vehicle for enhancing community involvement and political literacy among school and higher education students. This ostensibly progressive educational and social goal is beset with a number of tensions and contradictions, notably around the nature of participation and between enhancing social control and encouraging political engagement. This article examines the various tensions surrounding citizenship education with reference to an evaluation of an innovative undergraduate sociology module called ‘Teaching Citizenship’. The aim of the module was to provide students with an experience of active citizenship based on local community involvement that took the form of students’ facilitating citizenship education at two secondary modern schools. Drawing upon evaluation research findings, the article discusses the ways in which the sociology students actively negotiated the dilemmas of participation and power characteristic of citizenship education.