How is political efficacy addressed in civic and citizenship education? The case of teacher education in the Nordic countries

The essential relationship between education and democracy has a long tradition in national educational policies and practices. However, the principles and practices of teaching civic and citizenship education (CCE) in teacher education (TE) institutions have rarely been addressed in research on this topic. The operationalised concept of political efficacy is demonstrated to be a stronger predictor of political participation than democratic knowledge and associational involvement among Norwegian ninth-grade pupils. In this paper we investigate how TE institutions in Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden integrate the concept of political efficacy in their preparation of future CCE teachers. CCE is under general pressure in a globalised situation marked by a decline in civic and political participation, increased corruption, emergence of populism and the rise of unequal distribution of political power determined by socio-economic status (SES). Civic and political participation are necessary conditions for democracy to function effectively. At a societal level, lack of political influence and engagement among disadvantaged groups imply that democratic institutions may not only lose their responsiveness towards those groups, but also jeopardise democratic legitimacy. At the individual level, political apathy affects disadvantaged youth and their prospects, and this effect tends to be passed on to the next generation. Among the 24 countries participating in the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016, the civic participation of ninth-grade pupils in the Nordic countries is below the international average. Although these pupils’ civic knowledge achievement ranks in the study’s top five, no significant correlation between civic knowledge and civic participation is detected. Boys, in general, and pupils with an immigrant background or low SES, score even worse on both civic knowledge and participation. This may point to a widening civic empowerment gap. It may also point to possible deficits in primary school teachers’ CCE emphasising civic knowledge in order to prepare the students for future formal political participation, instead of here-and-now political engagement fit for under-age pupils. Through document studies (national curricula, syllabi and course plans) and interviews with TE practitioners in a total of eight TE institutions we present a Nordic comparison of how pupils’ everyday life experiences of democracy and CCE in the school context are addressed in TE, taking pupils’ diversity and difference in background into account. Here we use Biesta’s (2009) three functions of education, meaning qualification for active citizenship in adult life, socialisation to a given cultural, political and social order, and subjectification: attaining agency in life through the development of a conscious self. We expect that our paper may help explain previous findings on biases in primary schools’ CCE. While the documents emphasise a traditional understanding of civic and political engagement, interviews reveal an awareness of pre-service teachers to instil here-and-now civic engagement in primary school pupils. Moreover, the national origin of CCE in academic subjects (history, political science) combined with educational reform history may prove to have a strong influence on how CCE is taught at TE level with consequence for CCE in primary schools.