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Theory and Research in Education
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Curricular transposition in citizenship education

Tristan McCowan

Roehampton University, UK, t.mccowan{at}roehampton.ac.uk

The considerable debate in recent years on the aims of citizenship education has not been accompanied by an equally substantial discussion on the educational processes involved.This article puts forward a theoretical framework, referred to as `curricular transposition', for understanding the complex task of realizing normative ideals of citizenship through education. The framework highlights four stages in the educational process: the ideals and aspirations underlying an initiative; the curricular programme designed to achieve them; the programme's implementation in practice; and its effects on students. The `leaps' between these stages — involving movement between ends and means and between ideal and real — are highly problematic.These ideas are explored in the context of an empirical case: the `Voter of the Future' programme in Brazil. Disjunctures are observed at the different stages — in particular, a lack of `harmony' between ends and means, and a lack of teacher ownership of the initiative in the process of implementation — leading to divergence between the initial aims and actual effects. Finally, broader implications of the curricular transposition framework for citizenship education are drawn out.

Key Words: Brazil • citizenship education • curriculum theory • democratic education

Theory and Research in Education, Vol. 6, No. 2, 153-172 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1477878508091109
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