Recognition of young children as citizens is relatively new in sociology, with translation emerging into education. Discourses of children and childhood shape ideas of young children as citizens and national discourses of citizenship frame what civic participation can be. The authors analysed national early childhood education curricula frameworks…

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) indicates that education for global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity should be embedded at all levels of curricula. In this paper, we share findings from an analysis of curriculum documents in Victoria, Australia and Québec, Canada that identified learning related to this…

In addition to its influences across economic, geopolitical, and social spheres, globalization has given rise to the notion of a 'global citizen' who is able to understand a shifting and more internationalized world while moving fluidly through it. Education has been trumpeted as the means to achieve this globally-aware citizenry, leading to an…

Doing the right thing at school involves moral reasoning about right and wrong that interplays with a sense of responsibility as children move towards being active citizens. In the current study, we investigated how 124 Australian children's understanding and reasoning about doing the right thing changed over the early years of primary school (age…

The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) is one of the world's leading educational research centres. Since it was established in 1930, ACER has built a strong reputation as a provider of reliable support and expertise to education policymakers and professional practitioners. Each year, ACER is involved in a large number of research…

As the result of an increasingly technologically "connected" world, citizens are finding it difficult to effectively exercise civic responsibilities in relation to global issues such as climate change, poverty, and warfare (Tully, 2009). New understandings of the concept of "citizenship" are being extended beyond traditional…

Understandings of young children as active and capable citizens, while evident in discourses of early childhood education and research, are not widely reflected in the policy for the early years of schooling in Australia. This paper makes an analysis of the gaps and tensions between discourses of young children as active citizens and policy for…

This paper examines empirical data with regard to recent theorizing and conceptualizing of children's citizenship. It draws on a doctoral study where the author told social justice stories to one class of children aged five to six years to investigate the active citizenship that the stories set in motion. By imagining this action research study…

The last decade has seen, in the policy arena, a broad global push for children to be treated as active participants in society rather than as the passive recipients of adult decisions and interventions. The topic of literacy learning and teaching has, however, been absent from much of the policy and literature on children's social participation.…