A Romanian and Icelandic student's profile from the perspective of education for democratic citizenship

Abstract

In a global context marked by the need to uphold democracy and human rights, education for democratic citizenship (EDC) has increasingly emerged as a prerequisite for shaping active and responsible citizens for the decades to come. The importance of EDC is strongly acknowledged by the Romanian and Icelandic educational systems and it is integrated in school syllabi at all levels of education. However, despite the wide recognition and support for EDC, challenges in its putting into practice are still persistent. Against this background and capitalizing on complementary expertise, the University of Craiova, alongside with Bifrost University and the University of Iceland, has proposed a project that aims at moving beyond the traditional approach to EDC by addressing the transversal competences that lead to it, in order to show how they can be developed in classes which are not specifically oriented towards topics related to democratic citizenship.

The project A Comparative and Transferable Approach to Education for Democratic Citizenship (ACTA), developed from September 2018 to April 2020 and financed by the Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway Grants, is underpinned by a comparative approach of EDC in two countries that are fundamentally different in terms of state of democracy and educational policies. Moreover, it holds a transdisciplinary focus, reinforcing the EDC role of all school teachers and integrating information and communication technologies (ICT) in problem-based teaching/learning for EDC. The utmost objective of the project is to design transferable educational resources for the development and assessment of transversal competences related to education for democratic citizenship (with a focus on future language teachers). Thus, this project complements previous research endeavours undertaken at the University of Craiova within international projects aiming at developing transversal skills. A prerequisite for the transferability of educational resources is their adaptability to heterogeneous audiences and various national, identity and educational contexts. Furthermore, in the context of student-centred education, educational research is nowadays increasingly focused on how teaching practice can be tuned to the needs and expectations of students. Teaching outcomes should be effectively achieved only by duly taking into account the students’ own motivations, aspirations and attitudes. Starting from this premise, the project team has designed a questionnaire to compare and analyse the standpoints of Romanian and Icelandic students in terms of education for democratic citizenship (EDC) and the competences that lead to it. The current research presents the answers provided by Romanian and Icelandic language students when asked to list up to 3 strong points and up to 3 weak points of the educational system in their country