Introduction

Abstract

In spite of the challenges citizenship education presents in further and adult education, there is a pressing need for it to be adopted as an important part of the curriculum for both areas of education. Currently, vocational education in FE is largely delivered using an ‘instrumentalist’ curriculum where the focus is on achievement of assessment outcomes at the expense of allowing students to investigate their chosen craft or profession in a more holistic fashion. It is my belief that citizenship education embedded into vocational programmes offers an opportunity (by exploring the social, ethical and cultural aspects of crafts or professions) for tutors and students to see the wider perspectives in which their vocations operate.

Citizenship in adult education also suffers, in the present climate, from an over-emphasis on achievement of outcomes and qualifications. I will present a vision of citizenship in adult education that challenges this current mode, offering in its stead citizenship programmes where adult students have considerable degrees of ownership over the content and teaching methods on the course. Such courses, because they encourage and facilitate negotiation and participation involving all students, are utilising the rights and duties adult students encounter in their lives as citizens, as well as studying aspects of social power and change.

Citizenship education operates best in educational institutions that are themselves genuinely democratic, and the case will be made for further education colleges to adopt the tenets of deliberative democracy to ensure fair representation of important stakeholders within the institution as well as offering a forum for issues explored in individual classrooms or workshops to receive a wider hearing (and thus provide opportunities for cross-curricular projects and discussions).