The Study Of Irish Citizenship Education In The Process Of Modern Nation-state Building

Citizenship education takes the cultivation of qualified citizens as the fundamental goal.Citizenship education is decided by citizenship.In turn,Citizenship education will also play a role in shaping citizenship.Modern citizenship is greatly influenced by the nation-state independence movement(nationalism)and the capitalist democratic revolution(democracy).Therefore,citizenship education is also influenced by the principles and values of nationalism and democracy.Modern nation-state building,as a part of modernization,consists of two parts: nation-state building which embodies nationalism and democratic state building which embodies democracy.The interactive relationship between the modern nation-state,citizenship and citizenship education provides an analytical framework for analyzing the development process of citizenship education.This study takes the theories of modern nation-state building and citizenship theories as the theoretical basis,upon which analysis framework is built.Taking the development process of Irish citizenship education in recent century as the research object,this study investigates the interactive relationship between modern nation-state building and citizenship education in Ireland and tries to answer the research question raised in this dissertation.This study first sets up an analytical framework upon which the study investigates the different development stages of Irish citizenship education.The overall research approach is as follow: analyzing the background of social development;analyzing the process of nation-state building;analyzing the citizenship;analyzing the civic education in the process of national construction.The research methods used in the study include documentary research,historical and comparative methods.The dissertation is divided into six chapters.The first part is the introduction,which mainly covers the research origin,literature review,research significance,theoretical basis and analytical framework.Chapter one to chapter four inspects Irish citizenship education in different stages including early days of Irish independence,early days of national opening up,the Celtic tiger era,and the period of economic decline since 2008.The study analyzes citizenship education in the overall social development background and in the process of nation-state building,and analyzes influences brought by nation-state building tasks to the citizenship education and citizen education’s response to the task of nation-state building.In the early days of Irish independence,the state-building was mainly focused on the construction of the nation-state.The nationalist education was the main form and content of the citizenship education in this period.Since the 1960 s,Ireland began to implement the policy of opening to the outside world,and the task of nation-building began to shift to the construction of a democratic country.At this time,Ireland began to introduce formal civic education courses,which focused on implanting civic knowledge which reflected democratic principles.Since the 1990 s,the Irish society has undergone great development and changes.The citizenship has been constantly expanded and updated;the task of modern state building has been basically completed;and the civic education has also experienced profound changes in the its goals,contents,methods and other aspects.However,since 2008,the economic crisis and complex social development situation have brought new challenges to citizenship education.Ireland has also responded to the new tasks and challenges facing the modern nation-state building through launching global citizenship education,active citizenship education and inclusive social cohesion education.Chapter five is a summary and evaluation part,which mainly summarizes the modern nation-state building process of Ireland,the development process,characteristics and principles of Irish citizenship education,as well as the relationship between the nation-state building process and citizenship education,and evaluates the achievements and shortcomings of Irish citizenship education in short.In general,the process of modern nation-state building in Ireland has brought far-reaching influence on the development of citizenship education.The social development and changes in different periods and the changing of the process of nation building are important impetus to the citizenship education reform.In return,citizenship education also reforms and makes adjustments to respond to the task of modern nation-state building in different periods.