Northern Lights on Civic and Citizenship Education

This open access book presents an in-depth analysis of data from ICCS. An international group of scholars critically address the state of civic and citizenship education in the four Nordic countries that participated in the IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) in 2009 and 2016. The findings are of particular relevance to educators at all levels, from school education through to teacher education.
Nordic countries have long traditions of democracy and their students have performed relatively well in the ICCS assessments. Nonetheless, citizenship education continues to evolve and has received increasing attention in recent educational reforms, indicating policymakers understanding that schools play an important role in establishing democratic values among future citizens.
Data from ICCS can be used to analyze, discuss, and reflect on the status of civic and citizenship education and can contribute to the discourse on the potential role of educationin contributing to sustainable democracies for a common future. However, teaching citizenship and learning democracy are two different things. While young people can be taught about democracy in school, it is vital that schools work together with the wider community in which youth operate to strengthen civic understanding and values for all young people regardless of their social and economic background.

• ICCS 2016
• Citizenship education
• Democratic education
• Digital citizenship
• School climate
• Sustainable democracy
• IEA
• Civic and Citizenship Education
• Analysis of data from ICCS
• Young Nordic citizens
• Civic and citizenship education in the nordic countries
• Future sustainable democracies
• Open access
• ICCS 2009
• Environmental citizenship

• Department of Culture, Religion and Social Studies, University of South-Eastern Norway, Drammen, Norway

  Heidi Biseth

• Department of Social Sciences, University of Roehampton, London, UK

  Bryony Hoskins

• Norwegian Social Research—NOVA, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

  Lihong Huang

Dr Heidi Biseth, is professor of democracy, citizenship and multiculturalism in comparative education at the University of South-Eastern Norway. She has led several international and national research projects on democracy, citizenship and diversity, has worked closely with the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training on professional development projects in the education sector since 2013, and worked extensively on comparative and international education throughout the world. Dr Biseth is the Editor-in-Chief of the Nordic Journal of Comparative International Education.

Dr Bryony Hoskins, is chair professor of comparative social science at the University of Roehampton, London (UK). She has extensive research expertise in education inequality and youth democratic citizenship, and is a prominent expert consultant for UNESCO, UNICEF, World Bank, the UK cabinet office, the European Commission, the Council of Europe, and OECD on topics such as measuring and evaluating active, global, and European citizenship. Dr Hoskins has written numerous publications related to IEA’s International Civic and Citizenship Education Study.

Dr Lihong Huang, is a research professor in the Youth Research Unit at Oslo Metropolitan University with extensive research experience in education and survey studies. She was the national research coordinator for Norway for IEA’s International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2016, and has significant expertise in the related research methodologies and cross-country quantitative comparative analyses. Dr Huang has written several articles on and related to the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study.

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