Conference Agenda

Across the past two decades, education systems have experienced markedly different phases in civic and political learning. Many countries saw improvements in civic knowledge from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2009 to ICCS 2016, whereas declines were widespread from ICCS 2016 to ICCS 2022 (Schulz et al., 2010; Schulz et al., 2018; Schulz et al., 2023). Importantly, shifts in students’ performance do not necessarily translate into parallel changes in socioeconomic disparities, as gains may occur alongside stable or widening gaps, and broad declines may either exacerbate or dampen social differentiation. Most comparative work documents these developments primarily as outcome trends (changes in national means) and, particularly for 2016-2022, links them to macro-level conditions during the COVID-19 period (Kennedy et al., 2026). However, this leaves open a crucial set of questions: How does socioeconomic inequality in civic knowledge change across time , and what role do school-based learning opportunities play in shaping these distributional dynamics?

This study combines an outcome perspective with a mechanism-oriented perspective by examining two consecutive periods: 2009-2016 (predominantly gains) and 2016-2022 (predominantly declines). The analysis focuses on (a) the relations between students’ socioeconomic status and their civic knowledge, (b) the association between learning opportunities in civic education - captured through open classroom climate (OPDISC) - and civic knowledge, and (c) whether OPDISC moderates socioeconomic inequalities (SES×OPDISC) in civic knowledge. An open classroom climate, in which controversial political issues are discussed in a balanced way and students are encouraged to express and justify their views, is long known as a central focal point of political socialization at school (e. g. Graf et al., 2024). Students practice argumentation, perspective-taking, and conversational skills, and experience the norms of reasoned disagreement. At the same time, an open classroom climate may be unevenly distributed across students and contexts, and its learning benefits may depend on students’ prior resources, making implications for inequality theoretically ambiguous (Campbell, 2008).

Building on established frameworks in citizenship education research, we distinguish two inequality-relevant conditions (Deimel et al., 2020; Hoskins et al., 2017), compensation and acceleration. Compensatory effects occur when disadvantaged students benefit more strongly from a learning opportunity, implying that school partially offsets differences in civic learning resources at home. Acceleration effects occur when advantaged students benefit more, implying that learning opportunities contribute to the reproduction, or widening, of social disparities.

Against this backdrop, inequality dynamics may differ systematically between an “upward” and a “downward” phase of civic learning. Crises may amplify inequalities, as system-wide disruptions could disproportionately harm disadvantaged students by reducing opportunities to learn at school. Under this view, a period of broad decline such as 2016–2022 in many systems would be expected to coincide with steeper SES gradients in civic knowledge. At the same time, an alternative mechanism is plausible. If disruptions are sufficiently pervasive, losses may occur across social groups, potentially limiting changes in the SES gradient because many students are affected simultaneously. By contrast, phases of stabilization or improvement may be more socially selective. Higher-SES students are often better positioned to utilize available learning opportunities and external resources (e.g., parental support), potentially translating into steeper SES gradients even when national mean performance improves or declines only modestly. Moreover, the role of an open classroom climate could be counter-cyclical. When overall learning conditions deteriorate, discussion-based opportunities may become relatively more important as an accessible classroom resource; when systems improve broadly through curricular and instructional strengthening, the marginal contribution of discussion to measured civic knowledge may diminish.

This research explores a significant area in comparative civic and citizenship education by examining how national curriculum policies are translated into teaching practices. The study addresses the often-overlooked transition between policy intentions and pedagogical enactment across diverse education systems. To facilitate this analysis, the research utilises a Pedagogical Continuum Framework that conceptualises teaching as a dynamic range of instructional modes. This framework identifies a progression from Transmissive modes focused on knowledge acquisition to Guided modes involving critical deliberation and ultimately to Participatory modes centred on social action. By applying this theoretical lens to data from 24 countries, the study moves beyond fragmented views of teaching methods and provides a coherent system for diagnosing implementation gaps. This paper discusses how a Pedagogical Continuum Framework perspective can help comparative researchers and policy makers diagnose policy-practice misalignment beyond single-method classifications. The primary objective is to evaluate the extent to which official curriculum goals are reflected in the practical experiences of students and teachers, thereby offering a more nuanced understanding of how civic education policies are realised in global contexts.