Teaching and learning citizenship : from the margins to the centre

This chapter reports on the analysis and interpretation of feedback data from a series of workshops on active citizenship.1 The aim of the workshop program was to engage and empower young people who were seeking to build their personal and cultural capital and be more active in social change processes. From the early workshops' feedback, we located key themes and concepts, both manually and using 'text mining' software. The results ranged from the predictable to the powerful. The richest vein of data came from two substantive questions: What does active citizenship mean to you? and Do you see yourself as an active citizen? The answers represent largely unmediated voices from young people, a rare treat, and provide insight into how these young people think about 'changing the world'. The most prominent themes were the broadest: environment, climate, poverty, rights. These results are now inputs to workshop design and development under an Australian Research Council funded program.2 In partnership with Shift Space, we are developing Active Citizenship workshops for marginalised young people in Greater Western Sydney. This region is the largest population centre in Australia and the lower socio-economic beltway of a wealthy global city.