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How are young Australians learning about politics at school?: The student perspective
Ghazarian, Zareh Laughland-Booy, Jacqueline De Lazzari, Chiara Skrbis, Zlatko
Ghazarian, Zareh
Laughland-Booy, Jacqueline
De Lazzari, Chiara
Skrbis, Zlatko
Abstract
In order to confidently participate in the democratic process, citizens from liberal democracies require knowledge about how their nation’s system of politics and government functions. For the past 30 years, successive Australian governments have endeavoured to educate school students about the political system via a civics and citizenship curriculum. Despite this, official data suggests that current approaches may not be providing young Australians with the level of understanding they require to be active and informed citizens. In this paper, we present a study of Australian school leavers who were interviewed about the civics and citizenship education they received while at school. The first-hand experiences of these young people have enabled us to highlight potential problems with how the curriculum is being delivered and identify ways of improving the political knowledge of young people.
Keywords
civics and citizenship, political knowledge, young people, first-time voters, Australia
Date
2020
Type
Journal article
Journal
Journal of Applied Youth Studies
Book
Volume
3
Issue
3
Page Range
193-208
Article Number
ACU Department
Research Office
Non-faculty
Non-faculty
Collections
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
All rights reserved
File Access
Controlled