The Exploration Of Textbook Resources Of Active Citizenship Education

Countries around the world have been more and more valuing citizenship education since21st century. Active citizenship education is significant for shaping citizenship and national reform in China, which can not only promote active and orderly civic participation, strengthen the interaction between citizens and governments, unify national spirit and civic spirit, but also better the development of socialist democracy, the construction of service-oriented government and the practice of socialist core values. Active citizenship education is aimed at helping students to learn civic knowledge, skills, attitudes and values, enabling them to have a comprehensive view about their rights and obligations as a member of the community, public spirit and service awareness, empowering them to participate in public affairs and assume social responsibilities actively and effectively and take action for enhancing the welfare of the community. High schooling is a special period during which students experience the transformation of identity from "expectant citizens" to "citizens". The curriculum of Ideology and Politics is the high school subject which is mainly responsible for citizenship education and its teaching and learning in class is the best approach to citizenship education. The textbook is an important curriculum resource, a basic tool for carrying out the curriculum standard and a guide to teaching and learning. Thus, how to explore the textbook Ideology and Politics resources to launch active citizenship education within the context of curriculum/classroom is a valuable research topic.This paper adopts literature study and content analysis as methodologies. I construct a conceptual framework of active citizenship basing on western citizenship theories and use this conceptual framework to analyze the textbook Ideology and Politics (compulsory). The paper has six chapters:The first chapter is introduction in which I introduce the international background of the rise of active citizenship education and the importance of China launching active citizenship education, and also explain the subjective and objective reasons of choosing Ideology and Politics (compulsory) as the object of this study. Meanwhile, the main ideas of this paper are also presented in this chapter.The second chapter is literature review in which I review domestic and foreign research papers on relevant topics and analyze the theoretical and methodological support that those studies give my study as well as those studies’ shortcomings. The third chapter elaborates on the theoretical framework of active citizenship education. Above of all, I explore the meaning of the notion of active citizenship from two aspects of citizenship theories and educational policies, based on which a conceptual framework of active citizenship that is used to analyze the textbook is constructed. In addition, I also explore active learning, a teaching methodology of active citizenship education within the context of curriculum/classroom, clarifying its meaning, types, approaches and the internal logic relationship with active citizenship education.The fourth chapter is the analyses on textbook resources of active citizenship education in Ideology and Politics (compulsory), which is the key point of my study. The conceptual framework of active citizenship which is constructed in the third chapter is used for the content analysis on Ideology and Politics (compulsory). The analytical results contain four tables of different analytical dimensions (the first analytical dimension:types of civic participation; the second analytical dimension: levels of civic participation; the third analytical dimension:objectives of civic responsibilities; the fourth analytical dimension:knowledge, skills, attitudes and values of active citizenship) and quantitative and qualitative analyses after each table. The fifth chapter is the conclusion of this paper in which I summarize the characteristics of active citizenship education resources in Ideology and Politics (compulsory), and provide some suggestion on the usage of the resources. Firstly, I elaborate on the understanding of Ideology and Politics (compulsory) about active citizenship education. Secondly, I point out the advantages and disadvantages of textbook resources on active citizenship education and provide some suggestions for improvements. Thirdly, I give advice on how to explore textbook resources of thinking, practice and emotion activities to launch active citizenship education within the context of curriculum/classroom.The sixth chapter is epilogue in which I outline the work I have done for this study, the main argument of this paper, the innovative points and drawbacks of this study and the prospect of future studies.