TEACHERS' PERCEPTIONS OF CITIZENSHIP AND CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION:A COMPARATIVE STUDY

This study examines citizenship education policy and practice as they are perceived by teachers in three different societies — the United States, England, and Hong Kong. Through a secondary analysis of the teacher data in Civics Education Study (CIVED), conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), it identifies similarities and differences in teachers' beliefs and perceptions of citizenship, citizenship education, their professional preparation for their work as civic teachers, and their teaching practices. Six research questions have guided this investigation which was grounded on the literature of models of citizenship and of global vs. national cultural factors affecting education systems. The findings reveal strong consensus among teachers in the three countries suggesting that civics education matters a great deal for students' political development and for their countries. Teachers, also, in the three countries, do not demonstrate a great deal of differentiation among the citizenship models and categories prescribed in the literature. For the teaching practices, the study presents that indirect teacher-centered methods dominate civics education classrooms, and that political socialization in the form of knowledge transmission is the most emphasized objective in these countries' schools. The study concludes with recommendations to education policy-makers to consider teachers' suggestion of the need to improve the quality of civics materials and sufficient training. The study, also, suggests diversifying the data of the future IEA studies in civics by incorporating qualitative and quantitative data that aim to explain the process of teaching and learning, and the educational outcomes as well. Finally, it recommends that cross-national studies need to consider and theorize as much about similarities and common features among various educational systems as they currently do for the differences among these systems. Also, it suggests a need to develop a more inclusive theoretical framework of citizenship