Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

This paper examines the education reform in citizenship education curricula available to Foundation Phase (5-7 year old) students in Wales in the 2016-2017 academic year. Following recent OECD reports (2014, 2017) and the Donaldson report (2015) underscoring the need of the Welsh curriculum to emphasize developing ethical informed citizens of the world, there is renewed interest among academics and policymakers in how schools are implementing the curriculum. The new curriculum is designed to help create a new purpose of education in line with the goals of the Welsh Government (2016), that of a global, informed, multilingual citizen. A critical, social constructivist viewpoint was taken to determine how classrooms make sense of the dueling policy desires calling for emphasis on both hyperlocal, place-based education contexts, and global citizenship. Qualitative methods in the form of semi-structured interviews with ten lead teachers were used to ascertain how specific citizenship teaching policies and practices were manifested. Interviews were conducted at ten primary schools with an even mix of urban / rural, socioeconomic status and Welsh-medium / English-medium schools. Results were analysed using the theories of Ball (1994, 2012), Maguire (2015), Jephcote (2002) and Grunewald (2003). Research found that individual teacher pedagogy and the student/school context play a key role in developing an actionable curriculum, which sparks concerns about the nation-wide implementation of the new curriculum.