Johan Sandahl

Democratic school systems are expected to equip students with the knowledge, abilities, and attitudes needed for life as citizens, particularly through social science education. Disciplinary knowledge, derived from the academic counterparts to school subjects, is essential in developing these skills. However, research has also emphasized the importance of life-world perspectives, where students’ experiences are included and taken seriously in teaching. This study suggests that the theory of (civic) narrative competence can function as a bridge between the disciplinary domain and the life-world domain in its focus on how students’ civic reasoning can be developed through teaching. The article uses narrative theory to explore how the students’ civic narratives changed and became more nuanced after a teaching segment focusing on social and political trust. In the article, we demonstrate how the students’ personal experiences colored their interpretations and orientations before the teaching segment and how their civic narratives were developed through the implemented teaching, which provided them with concepts, a theoretical model, and empirical examples. We found that the students did not discard previous perceptions after the teaching segment, but integrated them into their new knowledge and orientations, thus integrating the life-world and disciplinary domains.

In most Western democracies, there is an ongoing discussion on the role of education, particularly in times of increasingly polarized political views, leading to democratic erosion and social unrest. Citizens have been described as living in echo chambers, relying on, and often receiving, information that confirms their own world views and political ideas. In this climate, education has been emphasized as an important antidote to provide students with knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to strengthen democracy and social cohesion. In most cases, this assignment is primarily tasked with subjects that can be considered political education, such as social studies, civics or social science education. However, there is no consensus on what kind of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values students need to fulfil a “good political education”. Historically, there has been a rift between advocates of progressive ideas such as political deliberation and those who favor an emphasis on disciplinary-based knowledge. The latter perspective has been, for some time now, highlighted in educational sciences through Michael Young’s concept of powerful knowledge, where knowledge from academic disciplines is emphasized in shaping youth into critical thinkers on social and political issues. This article critically examines the ideas of powerful knowledge and its potential for political education in secondary school. An important argument is that powerful knowledge, or disciplinary thinking, is necessary for a good political education but not sufficient in its own right. In order to deal with complex political issues, students need to be invited with their life-world perspectives.