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FINNUT-Forskning og innovasjon i utdanningssektoren

Transloyalties in Citizenship Education

Alternative title: Translojaliteter i utdanning for medborgerskap

Awarded: NOK 12.1 mill.

At school, pupils learn how to be citizens of a country. How did citizenship teaching take place in history classes in Norway after World War II? In post-apartheid South Africa? In Madagascar and Mauritius after the colonial period? And how can citizenship be taught today, when many of the students in the classroom have backgrounds from different parts of the world? TransCit is about how the teaching of history in secondary school has promoted citizenship, both historically and today. The starting point is the traditional teaching of history and citizenship in our time, and the concept of transloyalties. Because the world has become more globalized and diverse, it has become usual to have multiple and shifting loyalties. We, inspired by another research project at VID, call this ‘transloyalties’. We will explore how citizenship was promoted through history teaching in periods after wars and colonization: in Norway after World War II, South Africa after apartheid, and in Madagascar and Mauritius after the colonial period. The case countries are chosen because they are at different levels according to the Human Development Index, which has implications for the possibilities of acting as local and global citizens. We will also explore how teachers in secondary schools today can be aware of transloyalties in history teaching and teaching citizenship. Through action research in the four countries, researchers in the project will work with teachers to find out how to teach in a way that recognizes that students today have multiple loyalties. In addition to scientific articles and chapters, through the project we will publish a textbook on how teachers can take transloyalties into account in history teaching. Historians and educational researchers from all the case countries are involved in the project. In addition, two PhD students with good knowledge of the context in the countries in question will be recruited, both in terms of language, history and culture.

What would a global world without citizens negotiating between different loyalties look like? The context of our global world is characterised by migration and requires multiple loyalties. Even though the international educational discourse promotes global citizenship, citizenship education often aims to educate citizens that are loyal to nation-states. Transloyalties in Citizenship Education (TranCit) aims to push critical approaches to citizenship education that promote independent, self-reflective, and active global citizens forward by introducing the concept of transloyalties. This concept was developed to analyse multifaceted interactions that focuses on multiple relations, loyalties and takes various dimensions of encounters and negotiation processes into account to see how identities are transformed and contested. TranCit’s objective is to develop a historical and empirically grounded framework for citizenship education in history teaching that includes perspectives of transloyalties. This will be done through an analysis of conceptualizations of citizenship education on different levels (local, national and global). The focus is on various ways countries conduct(ed) citizenship education through history teaching in historical and contemporary societies. Archival and empirical studies, involving educational action research, will be done in four case countries that represent different contexts: Madagascar, South Africa, Mauritius, and Norway. The overarching questions that guide the project are firstly how citizenship education is included in national education policies, curricula and textbooks in history teaching in historical and contemporary contexts, and secondly how teachers may engage with transloyalties in citizenship education through history teaching. The project aims to shed historical and empirically grounded light on established assumptions around citizenship education and advance our theoretical and scientific understanding.

Funding scheme:

FINNUT-Forskning og innovasjon i utdanningssektoren