Weinberg, J. orcid.org/0000-0001-7395-724X, Sant, E. and Thiel, J. (2024) Fail to plan, plan to fail. Are education policies in England helping teachers to deliver on the promise of democracy? British Educational Research Journal (BERJ), 50 (4). pp. 1831-1856. ISSN 0141-1926
Abstract
This paper examines three questions: (1) (How) Is democracy promoted in secondary schools in England? (2) How is the promotion of democracy understood in education and teacher education policy? and (3) To what extent does existing education policy benefit the promotion of democracy in schools in England? To explore these questions, we first discuss the policy landscape surrounding democratic education in England. We then outline our data collection and analysis methods, which comprised (a) the coding of ten different policy documents, including curriculum specifications, teaching standards and inspection frameworks, and (b) the utilisation of an original survey of more than 3000 teachers working in approximately 50% of all secondary schools in England. Together, our data allow us to raise three important points. First, education and teacher education policy neglects to specify ‘how’ democracy should be promoted and by ‘whom’. Second, schools are offering scant provision of democratic education. Third, the majority of teachers feel fundamentally underprepared to teach democracy. We conclude this paper by arguing that, if policymakers do wish to promote democracy, there is a need for a cohesive policy and teacher education approach that guarantees democratic education for all.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Authors. British Educational Research Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Educational Research Association. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Keywords: | citizenship education; democratic education; education policy; political literacy; secondary education; teacher education |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Politics and International Relations (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ESRC X/014889 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 15 Mar 2024 11:42 |
Last Modified: | 15 Nov 2024 11:30 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/berj.4001 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:210316 |