Embedding citizenship education: A tale of Trojan horses and conflicting performativities

This is the presentation of the results from an interactionist ethnographic study which examines the implementation of citizenship education in an English urban secondary school through an analysis of the interactions between students and teachers. It reports students’ and teachers’ claims that their interaction is guided by the expectations and the priorities set by a group of stakeholders (government, media, parents, management team) who are in position to influence the interaction between teachers and students although they are only occasionally present when this interaction takes place. Because of this invisible presence, this group is described in the paper as the ‘invisible audience’. The study argues that regardless of their scepticism towards the role of the ‘invisible audience’, teachers and students seem to actively support and respond to the audience’s expectations when they interact with each other. The study argues that this appears to be a result of a process which allows this interaction to function as a process of conformist (re)construction of roles though the construction of a new subjectivity in education. The participants in the study recognise that a consequence of the above is that their roles suffer from lack of humanity and flexibility, both of which are largely considered as essential elements of democratic citizenship education. In this context, the study suggests that the implementation of citizenship education is a cause of conflict of expectations attached to schools and of significant stress and frustration to the school community. The paper claims that this is a conflict between the school’s discourse as this is formed in the context of performativity and the discourse supported by citizenship education. Furthermore, it claims that the revolution in the English political culture advocated by Prof. Crick should have started with the establishment of an educational discourse more hospitable to citizenship education. citizenship education might have entered schools as a Trojan horse aiming to bring change, but ten years later, Troy is yet to fall.