sphere”
the existence of “the public sphere”, which underlie the potential of cultural citizenship in any particular context. After examining corresponding preconditions in China, there emerged an unpromising theoretical context for university students’ enactment of cultural citizenship.
However, civic experience of university students is not mechanically shaped by their university education or by society. Kennedy and Fairbrother (2004) found that students in the Asia-Pacific region are competent to react to what is offered to them, and their response is not presumed to be the same as what is expected by policy makers and teachers. Thus university students should never be regarded as passive recipients of citizenship education. This indicates the need to study university students’ particular response to aspects related to the preconditions for cultural citizenship, in particular civic participation in citizenship pedagogy and the public sphere in the Chinese context.
Civic commitment reflects students’ recognition of their obligation to participate in civic activities. Solid commitments to civic participation are fundamentally important for a democratic society (Barber, 1984; Boyte & Kari, 1996; Dewey, 1916). Recent studies have demonstrated that young adults who express a strong commitment to civic and political participation are more likely to be civically and politically engaged than their peers who show low levels of commitment to take actions (Ajzen, 2001; Fishbein et al., 1980; Oesterle et al., 2004). Furthermore, previous studies have shown that civic knowledge promotes political participation in both quantitative and qualitative ways (Galston, 2001), which means that the greater the civic knowledge citizens possess, the more effectively they can realize their interests in political process (Galston, 2007). A structural test for civic knowledge was included in the IEA study to test scores of students’ civic knowledge (Torney-Purta et al., 1999). However, due to the different political system as well as the immature citizenship education in China, a structural test for civic knowledge would cause confusion to Chinese university students. Rather, a broad question about students’ perceived civic commitment and civic knowledge is used with the intention to examine their perceptions in the Chinese context.
Factors that may influence the development of students’ commitment to civic participation have been explored by previous research. As noted in Chapter Two, scholars find strong associations between the school-based citizenship curriculum and students’ civic commitment (Kahne & Sporte, 2008). For instance, the civic study conducted by IEA introduced in Chapter Two provided a research model to examine necessary aspects related to students’ civic experience under citizenship education and the wider community (Torney-Purta et al., 1999). To be specific, the provision of an open classroom climate and civic engagement opportunities is crucial for students’ civic capacities and civic development (Campbell, 2005; Hart et al., 2007). In addition, the factor of whether students feel supported by the school atmosphere and teachers needs to be explored, as research shows that there is a positive relationship between school and community climates and students’ civic commitment (Flanagan et al., 2007). Another factor related to citizenship education is the participation in extracurricular activities. A longitudinal study demonstrates that students’ participation in extracurricular experiences especially in youth voluntary associations related to community services, speaking in public forums and community identity construction in high schools has been linked to their later civic and political participation (McFarland & Thomas, 2006).
However, this IEA study has never developed a research version for China. Considering students aged 10-14 years old were subjects of this IEA research, certain adaption was made in order to cater for the Chinese context. Finally, based on the questionnaire in the IEA research, six aspects related to the citizenship education curriculum in China are proposed in the conceptual framework including: received learning outcomes, teaching methods, assessment methods, preferred learning methods, opportunities for civic participation and supports received for civic learning, for which I developed the diagram in Figure 4.1.
The theories of the “public sphere” also provide resources for the conceptual framework of this research. The civic value of social trust is an essential quality in the political public sphere. For instance, the regeneration of social trust is believed to increase voting turnout
and other modes of civic participation in politics (Putnam, 1995). In addition, the literature of the digital public sphere provides a theoretical direction for understanding the significance of mass media for civic expression and civic participation. Specifically, students’ attitudes towards aspects related to the mainstream culture and media censorship in the Chinese context needs to be revealed (See Figure 4.1)
Figure 4. 1: The conceptual framework investigating university students’ perceptions of university citizenship education and the “public sphere”
Referring to the literature review in Chapter Two, developing active citizens is advocated in the national curriculum in England. Contrary to the notion of “active citizen”, the western discourses have the concept of “good citizens”, which depicts those who tend to obey the law, address moral virtues of care and generally relate ideas of the good life to their private sphere (Crick & Lockyer, 2010). Lin and Starkey (2014) point out that the concept of “good citizens” implies a normative and conservative view of citizenship which encourages the value of conformity. In this sense, the current citizenship education in China places emphasis on fostering “good citizens” who have their loyalty to the motherland and perform submissive behaviours. Thus, within this conceptual framework of qualitative and quantitative analysis, I am interested in exploring university students’ attitudes towards university citizenship curricula and mass media, what their civic participation is like in the digital public sphere, what their civic knowledge and civic
University students' civic knowledge and civic commitments
Precondition I :participation in citizenship education
received learning outcomes, teaching methods, assessment methods, preferred learning methods,
opportunities for civic participation and supports received for civic learning
Precondition II: the public sphere
social trust
attitude towards mainstream culture attitude towards media censorship
commitment are and whether they have actually behaved as active citizens or good citizens.
4.2.2 Enacting cultural citizenship: assessing university students’