Narratives of political identities: young Europeans and citizenship education

This keynote will present aspects of my recent study* of young Europeans’ constructions of their political identities - a one-person qualitative study, conducted over several years, in which deliberative discussions were conducted with over 350 small groups of 12 to 20 year olds, in 29 different European countries (including Croatia and some of its neighbours), some 2000 people in total. Two particular foci of these discussions were the young peoples’ sense of political identity with their country and their identity with Europe.

The keynote will focus on five areas:

• The nature of (political) "identities" today: their kaleidoscopic nature, what identity narratives are constructed, the sources they draw on (including schooling), and how these accounts are assembled and integrated with each other.
• The problems and strengths of "deliberative discussions" as a methodology for generating qualitative data, particularly in the area of analysing young peoples’ political/civic ideas.
• The apparent role of civic education in young people’s political learning, with some particular reference to Croatia.
• The construction of "the other" in creating a European and country identities.
• Some broader implications for the practice of citizenship education.

* Ross, A. (2018) Finding Political Identities: Young People in a Changing Europe, Palgrave Macmillan

Short CV

Alistair Ross is Emeritus Professor of Education at London Metropolitan University, and a Jean Monnet Professor. He founded and directed the Institute for Policy Studies in Education at London Metropolitan (2000-2009), which researched social justice and inclusion issues in educational policies in the UK and in the European Union; and the European Academic Network Children’s Identities and Citizenship in Europe (CiCe) (1998-2008). His current research interests are in social inclusion and social justice in education, and in young peoples’ political and social understanding and learning. Since retiring from full time academic employment, he has engaged in a one-person study of how young Europeans construct their political identities. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (UK). Principal publications include Curriculum: Construction and Critique (Routledge, 2000), Social Class and Higher Education (with Archer and Hutchings) (Routledge, 2004), Understanding the Construction of Identities by young new Europeans: Kaleidoscopic identities (2015) and Finding Political Identities: Young people in a changing Europe (Autumn 2018, Palgrave Macmillan).

In the Shadow of Reforms: Educational Policies and Social Needs

The first decade of the 21^st century was marked by the implementation of the "Bologna Reform" in the Croatian higher education system. In the second half of the second decade, the focus of attention is on the "curricular reform" of primary and secondary education. In the public discourse both reforms were marked by controversies of political nature, and in the educational discourse by the questions of the usefulness of acquired "skills" and "competences" for finding employment, or "the applicability of acquired knowledge in real life". In the shadow of political and educational controversies, questions remain about what are the developmental needs of the Croatian society and whether the proposed reforms can successfully respond to them.

Attempting to offer elements for answers to these questions, the lecture will first discuss the criticisms of today's globally dominant hegemonic educational policies, created in the environment of neoliberal individualisation and the so-called "competition state" (Liessmann 2006, 2012, 2014; Negt, 2010; Münch, 2011; Nussbaum, 2012; Heinzlmaier, 2013). Further on, the taxonomy of educational goals and policies within the framework of the delineated neoliberal model (Prisching, 2008) will be presented, and the question of which approach would best fit the current context of a "transformed", "post-transitional" Croatian society will be raised. The empirical basis for discussing the advisability of the globally dominant education policies implementation includes primary data from the lecturer's own research on youth in Croatia, and secondary data from the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung youth research in Southeast Europe and the research on youth in Europe within the FP7 project MyPlace.

Short CV

Inga Tomić-Koludrović, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar – Centre Split. Until 2014, she was a Full Professor of Sociology and the Head of the Department for Sociology of the University of Zadar. She has authored or co-authored 8 books and more than 50 scientific papers in national and international publications. She has participated at national and international scientific conferences with more than 40 conference papers, and has held more than 40 invited lectures at scientific and expert conferences. She held invited lectures at prominent foreign universities (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston College, Academia Sinica, Taipei). The areas of her academic interest include sociological theories, lifestyle and the social status of women and youth in the context of modernization. She has been principal investigator and team member on numerous national and international research projects. She was a Fulbright Fellow (MIT and Boston College, 2003-2004) and was awarded a scholarship within the Erasmus Mundus Programme (Karl-Franzens Universität Graz, 2012). She has taught at Ph.D. studies and summer schools at the Universities of Zadar, Zagreb, Bologna, Teramo and Graz. She was the president of the Croatian Sociological Association in two mandates and member of the Council of National Associations at the International Sociological Association (ISA). Currently, she is president of the Croatian National Scientific Council for Academic Advancement in Interdisciplinary Areas (Science and Arts) and an auditor for quality assurance at the Agency for Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Croatia. She was awarded the National Award for Science in 2016 for her book "Pomak prema modernosti: Žene u Hrvatskoj u razdoblju zrele tranzicije" (Moving Towards Modernity: Women in Croatia in the Period of Mature Transition) (2015).

Programme of the conference