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Purpose: We intend to bring into debate what seems to be a paradoxical relation between the lack of youth civic and political participation, and the current disinvestment in the effective implementation of citizenship education policies. Design: A comparative framework between four European countries concerning youth civic and political participation, and citizenship education policies, including the involvement of NGOs in youth civic education. Findings: Data shows that young people's (apparent) participatory apathy may have other readings or other meanings. Young people seem to be increasingly looking for more dynamic and less traditional forms of participation, and there is a need for citizenship education policies to be more grounded in this reality. Implications: Overall, we might be facing a paradox where educational policies seem to be tailor-made for young people who do not actually relate to them.

Despite the increase in life expectancy and the intensification of research with older populations, little is known about the relation between adult learning and engagement in social, civic, and political participation experiences. In this study, we interviewed 18 older adults involved in a diversity of contexts, from senior universities to civic associations or political organizations to explore whether and how these were perceived as learning experiences. Our findings reinforce the vision of social, civic, and political participation as learning experiences with a strong intergenerational component, where teaching and learning coexist. Participants recognize gains in a variety of knowledge and skills, from the more technical to the more interpersonal/social and political. Previous educational background and the lack of learning opportunities in old age are recognized as barriers to participation. Therefore, social, civic, and political participation clearly seems to transcend the strictly feel good and/or recreational perspective, emerging as valid adult education experiences.

This paper makes an empirical contribution to the debate about the pluralism of global citizenship. This is considered a crucial aspect for research, not only because charity and social justice standpoints coexist, but also in the light of growing examples of neoliberal understandings about global citizenship education and the global citizen. Informed by critical and postcolonial thinking and with a special focus on Andreotti's discursive orientations, this paper analyses discourses of practitioners of global citizenship education who work in development NGOs in Portugal. Findings suggest that humanist views are predominant, although intertwined with neoliberal and postcolonial perspectives. They also point to an archetypical vision of the global citizen and a prevalence of the responsible citizen-consumer as an agent of social change.

Purpose: To map and discuss core narratives and challenges crossing the field of DE in Portugal, from a postcolonial stance. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis is based on a qualitative approach, comprising two studies: interviews with experts and online analysis of development NGOs active in the field of DE. Findings: DE is discussed as a set of theories and practices under reconfiguration in terms of scope, aims, actors and educational approaches. There is the need for reconnecting with and addressing the legacies of DE, particularly, given its formal and informal emergence; this is an inevitably conflictual process involving a balance between tradition and change. Higher education is considered a relevant actor in strengthening the field. Research implications: A postcolonial stance is suggested as valuable orientation for actors, organizations and research in the field of DE, considering its transitional status and an inherently conflictive nature.

Purpose: The social dimension of Higher Education has gained relevance on the political and strategic discourses that urge Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to put University Social Responsibility (USR) into action and also recognise its importance for students' development. However, students' conceptions of USR are seldom explored. This paper aims to understand students' perceptions of USR and the potential of their involvement in broadly-defined USR activities/projects. Design/methodology/approach: This research involves two studies in three European universities, Edinburgh, Porto and Kaunas--the first uses a qualitative approach to consider how students perceive the impact of their involvement in the Erasmus+ project ESSA, using document analysis, focus groups and thematic analysis; the second involves a questionnaire with 718 students to explore their views on USR, participation in university-based experiences, personal and social development and citizenship conceptions, analysed with descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings: Student's value USR and their university policies and practises, even if they feel they are not engaged as they should. They value university as a learning space beyond the classroom and putting USR into practice. Their participation is related to their appraisal of USR and their conceptions of citizens' roles. Research limitations/implications: In spite of using convenience samples of students in three different universities, this research not only sheds light on students' views on USR and their participation in diverse university-based experiences but also advances with research instruments that can be used in future research in this field. Social implications: This research helps HEIs realise the potential of promoting students' participation in diverse university-based experiences, increasing community engagement and their development as professionals and critical citizens. Originality/value: This paper addresses a research gap by exploring how students perceive USR and their participation in university-based experiences might simultaneously be a strategy for putting USR in action and fostering students' civic engagement.

Work as a place of activism is a vast field to be explored in adult education research, particularly within educational, social, and community intervention with people in situations of vulnerability. This qualitative study aims to unveil the richness of activists' learning processes and outcomes by reflecting on the pedagogy of professional activism, with professionals working in Portugal. Their sharing reveals a thematic influence and interdependence between the dimensions "How?" and "What?" of professional activism learning and the themes composing them--respectively, "political socialization" and "work experience"; and "critical, social and political consciousness," "sense of (in)justice and empathy," and "know-how to speak out." As professionals learn how to become activists, they also construct this praxis, and themselves as professionals, giving meaning and (re)defining their activist craft, through a learning-creative process.

Purpose: This article explores different strands of educational discourse about sexual diversity in Portuguese schools, from the students' perspectives. Method: The methodological approach consisted in conducting focus groups discussions: 36 with 232 young students (H = 106, M = 126) in 12 public secondary schools. Findings: Students reveal a polyphony of discourses that gravitate between liberal acceptance, conditional acceptance and intolerance. Research implications: Attention is drawn not only to discriminatory processes that question school as a democratic place for LGBT youth, but also to the gap between what is legally decreed and a lack of know-how in the approach to sexual diversity in school.

Purpose: To investigate how EU related contents are represented in Portuguese upper secondary school textbooks of History and English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Design/methodology/approach: The study performs a textbook analysis on two History textbooks and three EFL textbooks to explore if and how EU related topics are addressed. The methodological approach was mainly qualitative, based on a content analysis of the textbooks, but also includes some quantitative data (e.g., number of paragraphs) to determine the importance given to European topics in each of the selected school subjects. Findings: EFL textbooks have a residual approach to EU topics that is mainly focused in students' mobility. History textbooks, while containing a significant amount of information about the EU, present it mainly in a nonconfrontational perspective and do not prioritize the development of students' critical thinking about the EU. Our data also points to a predominance of national level citizenship related content, with European citizenship being briefly and normatively presented to the students. Research limitations/implications: EFL is attended by almost 100% of students in the academic track of secondary education, but History is a curricular subject only available to 25-30% of the students; as such, our findings refer to a specific group. Practical implications: Textbooks should include more information about the actual problems and challenges of the EU to foster the development of students' critical thinking about the EU.

Considering discursive transitions in development education, we discuss the main findings of a qualitative study with practitioners in Portuguese development nongovernmental organizations, based on semi-structured in-depth interviews. Our goal was to understand practitioners' accounts of their field of action and the discursive transition between development and (global) citizenship. The research provides new information about the Portuguese situation and contributes to the reconceptualization debate. The analysis reinforces the complexity of the field, connected to its focus on processes, and its highly organic, personal and multidimensional nature. It also depicts a nuanced understanding of terms and an increasing identification with global citizenship education as an umbrella term for practitioners' action and an alternative to the North-South and development narratives attributed to development education.

The paper "American democracy is distress: The failure of social education" presents several "symptoms of democracy's dysfunction in the United States". These include the extreme reliance on campaign contributions, giving the donors--economic elites and groups representing business, frequently operating at a transnational level--an excessive power in determining government policy in areas such as the environment, media or fiscal regulations, as profusely exemplified in the paper. At the same time, policies impose restrictions on citizens' rights in areas such as voting, healthcare or employment. In this sense, the power gap between citizens and economic elites in the form of a global capital is growing and, as it goes undisputed and unchallenged, menaces the core of democracy itself. This is a paper worth reading. Not only does it present an argument--and this is something to be praised and cherished--but it also sustains its argument on a sound and systematic analysis of documents and research. As such, this is not a trivial paper. The data, analysis and argument the author develops call for our attention and challenges us to reflect on whether and how the situation described for the US resonates with the situation of those currently living in Europe.

Purpose: This article explores the classical relationship between socioeconomic status and political domains, and the need to include different variables (contextual and individual) to measure the effect of economic and cultural capitals on youth participation and knowledge. Method: A multivariate analysis of covariance was performed on a sample of 732 Portuguese students, from Grades 8 and 11, in order to analyse how different socioeconomic variables related to family and schooling contexts have an effect on their political knowledge and experiences. Findings: The article highlights the differential role of socioeconomic variables on political knowledge and participatory patterns. Low economic capital instigates participation, while high cultural capital is related with higher political literacy. However, both forms of capital interact with the schooling context, revealing more complex patterns of behaviour and knowledge in students attending public and private schools.

The recent shift towards more practice-oriented doctoral training programmes relevant for non-academic settings raises the important, but still largely unexplored, question regarding how the relationships between research and professional practice are understood, experienced, and developed in contemporary doctoral education. Drawing on a mixed-methods study, combining a survey (n = 188) and individual interviews (n = 14), this paper explores the nature of the research-practice nexus in doctoral education from the perspective of PhD candidates and graduates with different professional backgrounds in social and health sciences in Poland and Portugal. Overall, the study findings suggest that this nexus is viewed as a dynamic, multidimensional relationship imbued with both connections and tensions. While the majority of the participants reported that their doctoral research influenced their professional practice positively and vice versa, there were also some respondents who identified negative impacts of their research on their practice and vice versa. The paper ends with some implications, thus providing a basis for reappraisal of current doctoral education provision in terms of deepening the relationship between research and professional practice.

The global COVID-19 public health crisis has driven policies of lockdowns and social distancing that have had negative social and economic impacts, worsening inequalities and social exclusions, and mixed environmental impacts. This study engaged children from schools with diverse environmental pedagogies in online focus groups about nature and their experiences with nature during the pandemic. Participants expressed fear of the unknown virus, sadness from isolation, longing for family and friends, and yearning for the freedom to enjoy the outside world. They revealed knowledge of both positive and negative impacts of lockdowns on the environment. Their experiences with nature demonstrate how environmental injustice affects the lives of children from public schools in urban contexts, especially those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who reported less contact with nature during the lockdown. As a group, children are aware and very critical of intergenerational environmental injustice and argue for the need for adults to act.

Purpose: To contribute for the ongoing discussion about associations between art education and citizenship education, presenting Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, as a theatre method that exercises active democracy by means of promoting epistemological development merging Art, Citizenship and Education. Design: Drawing form a selected set of relevant concepts and data in the fields of psychology, education, arts and performance studies, amongst others, the advantages and limitations of the artistic practice of theatre are analyzed in terms of its impact in epistemological and socio-cognitive development. Findings: A literature review shows several studies that evidence the benefits of artistic practices, namely theatre, in several indicators. Despite these evidences formal educative contexts, rooted in traditional pedagogic paradigms, resist to the entrance of arts, such as the performative, in school curricula, as well as other interactive practices indispensable in the promotion of participative citizenship. Research implications: Present existing methods alternative to formal education, exemplified by the method of the theatre of the oppressed, that aim to develop art, education and citizenship in one same practice. Practical implications: Evidence the need to reconsider formal education curricula with the objective of enhancing epistemological development, empowerment, autonomy and active citizenship.

The WaterCircle (WC) project was implemented in a school, with young adolescents, to address environmental problems. Framed in a participatory research (PR) approach, this school-and-community based intervention includes the use of online tools through which environmental problems in the community are discussed within and by a group of students. Using a quasi-experimental design, with intervention and control groups, the present study involved 361 young adolescents, in grades 7 to 9, from a public school in the northern region of Portugal. Mixed methods were used for data collection and analysis, namely based on questionnaires administered in the pre- and post-test moments, as well as on students' discourses produced in the classroom during planned activities. Statistically significant changes on self-efficacy were found for the experimental group, suggesting that the intervention program has the potential to raise young people's empowerment regarding environmental issues. The WC program seems to foster students' awareness of the socio-political dimensions of environmental problems, since they were able to identify different actors in the community who should be involved in the proposed solutions. Longer-term intervention is required to foster the impact of the PR on the students' experience.

This article examines the perceptions of young migrants (and non-migrants), their parents, and teachers to discuss whether the school is a device of inclusion or a device of exclusion that produces inequalities. It presents qualitative and quantitative data collected in the urban areas of Lisbon and Porto. First, we analyze data from 14 focus groups, involving 94 participants, and 12 interviews. Second, we consider survey data from a sample of 1,010 youngsters of Portuguese, Angolan, and Brazilian origin. Findings suggest the school plays an ambivalent role; however, participants emphasize mostly its discriminatory and segregating role.

This article presents a description of the major campaigns of adult literacy in the revolutionary period in Portugal, between the years 1974 and 1977. The campaigns aimed to address the problem of extremely low levels of formal education and high levels of adult illiteracy, and were organized by different movements, from the military to political youth organizations. In all cases, Paulo Freire's theory and methods were an important reference to these initiatives of popular education even if, in some cases, these were clearly top-down approaches, while others advocated a bottomup perspective. We will start by an analysis of the rationale of these movements based on documents produced at the period and a literature review. Then, retrospective interviews with two women participating in these campaigns are used to illustrate these experiences and their perceived impact on themselves and the adults involved. Not surprisingly, the impact of these literacy campaigns is perceived as significant both for the population, particularly older women, but mainly for the young literacy mediators who seem to have experienced this as a life-changing event. Even though this is a preliminary stage of the research, results suggest the significance of gender inequality and poverty as markers in the lived experience of these campaigns, and the high levels of hope and political mobilization of the young people involved, even with various degrees of ideological commitment.

This article presents a 2-year participatory intervention developed in a secondary school. Based on the European project Catch-EyoU, fostering a critical and active European citizenship, Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) was used with students to develop individual and collective reflection on the possibilities of political change over dating violence. The complexity of doing TO inside the school and the challenges of promoting a critical political understanding of the structural roots of social problems are discussed.

The global climate crisis is present in national and international discourse, along with other challenges the world is going through, such as the current wars in Ukraine and Gaza or the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, with the negative effects highlighted in the United Nations' sustainable development report. This paper aims to analyse and discuss how higher education institutions (HEIs) in Portugal cope with these challenges and contribute to a more sustainable world. The Portuguese case is interesting because, in recent years, they have been pressed to demonstrate their commitment towards sustainability publicly. We will proceed with framing the current role of Portuguese HEIs and their commitment to a sustainable world. This implies taking stock of their engagement with university social responsibility (USR), a concern of HEIs that is transversal to their roles – research, teaching, and service to society – but emphasises developing environmental sustainability and engaging students in active citizenship. Our argument is based on the importance that HEIs play in the sustainable development of societies, particularly in terms of environmental sustainability. Through documentary analysis of the strategic plans of HEIs, we explore if sustainability emerges and how it is framed in terms of policies and practices, contributing to a reflective debate on HEIs’ potential role in addressing current challenges and committing to a more sustainable world. Therefore, the findings suggest that institutional diversity and territorial inequalities are important elements for understanding how different public HEIs in Portugal conceive and practice sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research shows its limitations by not capturing the specificities of individual experiences, which result either from the participation of or interaction among different people in a given context across time. This study explores the effect that the quality of youth participation experiences in a Portuguese voluntary organization can have on the development of their psychological empowerment (PE). This study adopted a longitudinal, quantitative design where the same cohort of 481 participants (62.4% female; Mage = 17.26 years) was followed across three time points. Latent growth curve modeling was performed to examine the effect of the quality of participation experiences (QPE) on the developmental trajectories of PE components. Findings show that the QPE had the most powerful effect on developmental trajectories in PE. The study shows how youth perceptions of opportunities for reflection and action in interaction in a climate of openness to dialogue and the emergence of different ways of thinking and doing affect their PE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]