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Background: In many countries, working towards a truly inclusive national citizenship means deconstructing hegemonic structures that are deeply entrenched. Moving outside of the borders toward a global citizenship hints at giving up on what has been a long road toward multicultural citizenship. A balance between including and empowering diverse populations within borders as a part of citizenship education is critical. Likewise, future citizens must be prepared to conceive of a borderless world and interact with cultures different from their own. Literature that empirically examines the relationship between global citizenship and multicultural citizenship is sparse. This paper explores this tension, using the case of Germany. Purpose: The overall aims of this study were to explore German teachers' values and beliefs about citizenship education in light of new citizenship and immigration laws, and in light of European and global influences, as well. Design/method/sample: A qualitative research design was employed to capture a range of German social studies teachers' views on citizenship, diversity and education. Interviews were conducted with 43 teachers from five different states across Germany. The constant comparative method of analysis was used to analyse these data. Findings: The analysis suggests the existence of four major themes: "Peaceful Europe", and "Rejection of Europeanisation", "Christian like us" and "Multicultural = European". Taken as a whole, these categories show that the teachers did engage with both multicultural and global citizenship ideas, but they did so in a manner that created limits on both concepts. European citizenship emerged as a means of comfortably addressing diversity and, perhaps unintentionally, disenfranchising non-ethnic Europeans present in the classroom from accessing this concept of citizenship. (Contains 5 notes.)

This paper examines the Europeanization of citizenship education policy through a comparative analysis of two European states, Germany and Spain, with strong traditions of regional control of education policy. While previous studies have tended to focus on national responses to and implementation of EU initiatives, they often disregarded the complex relationship regional actors have with national state and supranational actors. Using evidence from interviews and a detailed framing analysis of citizenship education curricula, textbooks, and policy documents, this paper looks specifically at Catalonia and Bavaria to explore the conception of the "ideal citizen" within and across local education practice(s), regional policy imperatives, central state-level citizenship education policy, German and Spanish federal policy related to citizenship and immigration, and EU educational initiatives. (Contains 1 table and 6 notes.)

Citizenship education has been the subject of growing attention in policy and academic circles over the past 20 years. Citizenship education curricula have typically focused on national institutions, issues, and ties. Citizenship education has been closely bound up with the legitimacy of the nation-state, and alternative institutions and citizenships thus present a significant challenge not only to the contents of national curricula, but also to the traditional purpose and assumptions of citizenship education. The articles in this special issue seek to explore how nation-states have responded to this challenge by exploring, from a comparative perspective, the ways in which one supra-national, regional citizenship (namely European citizenship) has been defined in the citizenship education curricula of states from across Europe. This Introduction describes the supra-national policy developments that have led European states to consider reforming their citizenship education curricula. (Contains 2 tables and 8 notes.)

This special issue of "JCS" has examined the changes and challenges facing citizenship education policy and curricula by way of case studies from Europe and beyond. It is indicated that European and/or global integration have had an impact on all of the citizenship curricula examined. However, it is also noted that each case conceptualizes supra-national citizenship and its relationship to national citizenship and other groups in differing ways. It is argued that these ways present issues of exclusion, as curricula often remain centred on the nation-state and use European citizenship as a means to exclude "non-Europeans". The article concludes by discussing the research implications of these findings within the context of discussions over supranational and cosmopolitan modes of creating, and educating for, citizenship. (Contains 5 notes.)

Since 1989, large numbers of "ethnic returnees" have settled in Germany and Japan. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, 2.8 million "Aussiedler," or ethnic German returnees, came to Germany from the former Soviet Union. In Japan, immigration reform driven by low-skill labor shortages induced nearly 300,000 "Nikkeijin," or people of Japanese descent, to come from South America in the 1990s. This article analyzes the development of language education at the local and national level for the "Aussiedler" and "Nikkeijin" since 1989. In particular, the authors investigate how the policy makers and educators have problematized the returnees and in what ways discourses of national identity, citizenship, and belonging have (not) adapted to the slow integrations of the "Aussiedler" and "Nikkeijin" into the larger German and Japanese communities. The return of large numbers of "Aussiedler" and "Nikkeijin" to Germany and Japan, respectively, in the 1990s challenged the foundations of ethnic identity in both countries. The development of language education policies for the returnees over the past 15 years also illustrates how national and local officials have problematized return migration and how notions of multiculturalism and national identity have evolved. The authors' analysis of these policies suggests that the comprehensive national policy framework in Germany has not resulted in substantially better outcomes for the "Aussiedler" than the local and nongovernmental implementation framework they found in Japan. Further, the authors show that in the case of "Aussiedler" and the "Nikkeijin," whose heritage are tied to the notion of Germanness and Japaneseness, respectively, the returnees' inability to speak their ancestral language is consistently offered as the primary reason for their lack of integration. (Contains 4 footnotes.)

This study investigates how the European dimension emerges in the various European member states' civics education curricula. Does an image of the European citizen appear alongside that of the national citizen or are the two still highly interwoven? Is the curricular goal primarily knowledge-based, that is, to know about Europe, or normative-based, that is, to be a European? To explore these questions empirically, Austria, Denmark, and Germany were chosen as initial case studies because their education systems, in particular upper secondary schools, are highly comparable and draw generally on the same principles of an elite education. Their civics education curricula for upper secondary schools will be examined using framing theory. This study hypothesizes that an analysis of civics education curricula may reveal important differences in how countries balance European identity and national identity through education. (Contains 2 figures and 4 notes.)

Background: In many countries, working towards a truly inclusive national citizenship means deconstructing hegemonic structures that are deeply entrenched. Moving outside of the borders toward a global citizenship hints at giving up on what has been a long road toward multicultural citizenship. Abalance between including and empowering diverse populations within borders as a part of citizenship education is critical. Likewise, future citizens must be prepared to conceive of a borderless world and interact with cultures different from their own. Literature that empirically examines the relationship between global citizenship and multicultural citizenship is sparse. This paper explores this tension, using the case of Germany. Purpose: The overall aims of this study were to explore German teachers' valuesand beliefs about citizenship education in light of new citizenship and immigration laws, and in light of European and global influences, as well. Design/method/sample: A qualitative research design was employed to capture arange of German social studies teachers' views on citizenship, diversity and education. Interviews were conducted with 43 teachers from five different states across Germany. The constant comparative method of analysis was used to analyse these data. Findings: The analysis suggests the existence of four major themes: 'Peaceful Europe', and 'Rejection of Europeanisation', 'Christian like us' and 'Multicultural = European'. Taken as a whole, these categories show that the teachers did engage with both multicultural and global citizenship ideas, but they did so ina manner that created limits on both concepts. European citizenship emerged as a means of comfortably addressing diversity and, perhaps unintentionally, disenfranchising non-ethnic Europeans present in the classroom from accessing this concept of citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]