Student and Teacher Attitudes to Civics and Citizenship Education

Abstract

This chapter describes the different attitudes of students and teachers towards civics and citizenship education. Drawing on interviews conducted as part of Justice Citizens, it describes the challenges of standardised testing, the teaching of citizenship through form and informal curricula, and the presence of authoritarian approaches in the school environment.

Research Portrait Nine: The Premiere

After about six months over the course of 2013, the students were finally ready for the premiere screening of their films. Since the start of Justice Citizens, I had been using this screening as a motivator for the students to keep working on the project, even when they were struggling. I had promised them that there would be an audience of community members to watch the best films. With the support of Penrith City Council and their Magnetic Places program, I had enough funding to book the Bringelly Community Centre. Although I would have preferred a real movie theatre, I had neither the funds nor the contacts to organise that. I was also aware that the students were not going to become professional film-makers over the 20 hours or so that Justice Citizens ran. Rather, I was hoping the unsophisticated films would speak to the youth of the film-makers and to the honesty of their concerns.

Not everyone in the class produced a film. I was expecting to have about 25–30 films; this was predicated on every group finishing their film. However, I hadn’t taken into account that students would run out of time, or just lose interest in the project. This was one of the problems with the limited face to face contact we were having. In future, a shorter, more intense project would probably achieve better outcomes than the one-hour-per-week project that I had been forced to use in the first iteration of Justice Citizens. All together there were 18 films, spread almost evenly across all five class groups. The content of the films ranged from school experiences like bullying, school bags and teacher–student relationships, to much wider issues such as racism, dirt bike safety, domestic violence and environmental degradation Fig. 1 shows the films that were shown at the Film Festival. Many films started off in the context of the school, for example, a student accused of stealing a book from the school library, but then addressed issues present in many levels of society. I saw this as evidence of students seeking ways that the overarching theme of social justice applied to them in their own lives.

Fig. 1

Films shown at the film festival

When I spoke to the students who had not made a film, for most the reason was simply a lack of time. Many expressed a desire to finish their film, even if it meant reshooting or re-editing the parts of it that hadn’t turned how they had wanted, but they were unwilling or unable to give up the time to do so. Many lacked the autonomy to make decisions about their own lives—to stay at school after class or to give up time on the weekend—and so they struggled to fully commit to the project.

Some students were disinterested in the whole project; they finished the course having done the bare minimum. These students fell into two groups. One group consisted of students who acted the same way in many of their courses: it was a trial to be endured, I had failed to convince them that Justice Citizens was different from their other courses of study. Having said that, Justice Citizens did succeed in engaging a number of students who were part of this group; in fact, one of the better films, Dirt Bike Safety, was made by two students who were constantly in trouble and whose continued enrolment at the school was in jeopardy.

The second group consisted of students who had lost interest when they found out that there would be no formal assessment for the course; they would rather devote their efforts to a subject that was ‘important’. Amongst this group, however, were some high-achieving, motivated students who indicated that, despite the lack of assessment, Justice Citizens was valuable because it was so student-centred.

After the films were submitted, I posted them on the school’s YouTube channel. I had already gained the permissions of all the students and community members for this to happen. Using a simple online form, I then asked students to watch the films and vote for the one they felt was the best. I left the poll open for a week, and after more than 100 students had cast their votes, I was able to determine the best eight films. Despite some resistance, I had already insisted on the students introducing their own films at the festival. I wanted them to be proud of their work and be recognised for it.

I invited all the film-makers to the film festival along with everybody who had been involved in any way with the project: council workers, professional film-makers and sound technicians, school principals, parents and community members. More than 70 people show up in the evening. A local Penrith Councillor, Prue Car spoke about youth initiatives, and the festival was opened in absentia by the then Federal Member David Bradbury, who, despite not being able to attend, had recorded his own short film about the importance of active citizenship.

A couple of memories of the film festival stand out for me. The first is the gratification in the faces of some of the film participants. For example, one of the young women who participated in the teen pregnancy film made a point of speaking to Liz and Emmalee, the students who had made it (Liz and Emmalee actually made two films—one about refugees and this one about teen pregnancy). She was quite emotional—to the point of tears—as she expressed how grateful she was for the opportunity to explain her point of view. Liz and Emmalee were surprised at the response that their film had created, and pleased that they had provided this opportunity for the woman.

The second memory is that nobody wanted to leave after the films had finished. I had provided a light supper, and I was hoping that there would be a general discussion after it, but there were still people talking about the films more than an hour after the last film finished. The conversations were often about the ‘what’s next’; that is, now that the students had made a film, what were they going to do about it? We hadn’t really talked about this in class, so the students were not prepared. The students were confidently talking to the other people in the room, and I was pleased to see them answering honestly and sensibly.