The making of citizens? Citizenship education at school viewed differently

This contribution departs from two different outlines of the history of policy on citizenship education (CE) in Europe. These, respectively, put forward the changeability and consequent employability of CE at schools, or put emphasis on the slow and rigid character of school-based citizenship education as an answer to social issues. In this article we juxtapose these two 'external' approaches to CE (both emphasizing the importance of societal expectations) with a third perspective, namely what we call a school pedagogical perspective. This perspective views and describes the relationship between school, citizenship and democracy from 'inside' the school. From this 'inside' perspective, we put forward the idea that training for democratic citizenship at school can be better shaped at the level of policy, research, curriculum and classroom practice, when all elements of democracy, citizenship, training and the school itself are taken seriously.