Citizenship, civic education and civic participation as emerging meanings for secondary school students participating in student movements

Abstract

Civic education in Chile has a history marked diverse changes. Students have been permanent protagonists of this social change and transformation, which is evident from their protagonism in the Social Outburst of 2019. The new generations bring with them new meanings regarding citizenship, along with the rights and obligations that this entails and that are currently deeply valued by society. This research addressed the meanings that secondary school students belonging to a student movement have about citizenship, civic/citizenship training and citizen participation in times of democratic crisis in Chile. Through a qualitative design, in-depth interviews were conducted with 14 secondary students, belonging to politically mobilized school collectives. Using the open and axial coding techniques of the Grounded Theory, it was concluded that current notions of citizenship, civic education and participation are intertwined in the experience of all students. It became evident a lack of civic training by virtue of a civic education marked by the learning of constitutional and reproductive aspects of a model that limits their possibilities of political participation in a context of national democratic transformations.