Teaching New Subjects: citizenship and curriculum reform

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The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between children and youngpeople's (CYP) civic engagement and curriculum reform, specifically the current program ofeducational reform in Wales resulting from Professor Graham Donaldson's Independentreview of curriculum and assessment (Successful futures, 2015).Whilst CYP are precluded from some forms of civic engagement (national elections, juryduty etc) they do have other opportunities to engage in civil action in the form of forexample, school elections, youth parliaments, voluntarism, environmentalism and politicalactivism.However, with the UK government acknowledging falling democratic and politicalparticipation (Uberoi, 2015), especially amongst the young, the debate surroundingcitizenship pedagogy has intensified. In this context the current reform offers a uniqueopportunity to directly compare two educational approaches and their impact on theperceived problem of falling civil engagement among the young.At the heart of this research then is the question of whether civic engagement is best 'taught'through the official curriculum or 'learnt' through experience.This study will continue the collection and analysis of WMCS data and in so doing,contribute to the data set available on the WISERD multi-cohort study, this in turn can beutilized by other researchers.The literature review found no CYP voice focused research relating specifically to the notionof civic engagement and curriculum reform - although much exists in relation to CYP voiceand curriculum design more generally. It is in this gap that this study hopes to further thecurrent understanding in the field and contribute to the current literature.