Conference Agenda

When it comes to fostering citizenship in schools, history lessons are often presented in Europe as playing a decisive role (read OHTE, 2024). They are supposed to open students’ minds to otherness, help them understand the world in which they live, apprehend contradictory logics and avoid Manicheism (Arthur et al., 2001; Barton and Levstik, 2004; Grossrieder, 2015; Joutard, 2015; Souplet, 2018; McCully, 2018 Epstein, 2018).

To achieve this, history lessons rely on two complementary dimensions: the transmission of knowledge and the development of skills. On the one hand, students must acquire historical knowledge in order to understand the past in all its complexity and nuances. Yet, this knowledge should not be abstract but meaningful – some even speak of a “useful” past (Cole, 2007) – in order to impart historical consciousness, understood as “how the past is experienced and interpreted in order to understand the present and anticipate the future” (Rüsen, 1987, p. 286).

On the other hand, history lessons must also prepare students for their future role as citizens. This can be achieved through skills-based teaching: learners must be introduced to the historian’s method, including how to approach sources, distinguish between continuities and ruptures, and critically analyze information (Bugnard, 2015; Nitsche, 2015). The overall aim is to equip students with skills considered essential for citizens’ participation in society.

In this contribution, I examine the missions assigned to history classes by Belgian political authorities. Belgium offers an interesting case study, as it has undergone a process of dissociative federalism: since the seventies, its three communities have become increasingly institutionally distant, to such an extent that all powers relating to education have been transferred to the three linguistic communities. As a result, history teaching is governed by different reference frameworks depending on pupils’ language.

Does this mean that these three communities, governed by different political authorities, do not share the same view of the objectives of history teaching? I argue that answering this question is crucial for three reasons.

Firstly, Belgium is often characterized as a deeply divided society – « political communities characterized by mutually reinforcing divisions » (Caluwaerts & Reuchamps, 2020, p. 54). Among these divisions, history is particularly sensitive, notably with regard to colonisation, collaboration, the Holocaust and interlinguistic relations (see Benvindo & Peeters, 2012; Hirst & Fineberg, 2012; Luminet et al., 2020). Teaching the past can therefore simultaneously function as a means of mitigating conflict and as a space where it may manifest. Understanding these dynamics is not only relevant from a Belgian perspective, but also contributes to the literature on education in divided societies (see for instance Gallagher, 2004 or Bentrovato et al., 2016).

Second, the potential of history lessons is not unidirectional. History can also be taught in ways that foster antagonistic representations of groups, thereby reinforcing existing divisions (Psaltis et al., 2017; McCully, 2018). It is therefore crucial to examine the missions entrusted to the teaching of the past: is it to turn towards a peaceful future, or anchor them in a conflictual past?

Finally, history classes are among those that attract the greatest political and societal attention (Chapman 2007; Audigier, 2016). Studying the policy frameworks governing history teaching – its objectives, methods, and content recommendations – thus sheds light on political agendas, as well as on a society’s relationship to its past and its expectations regarding its educational system.

Exploring the missions assigned to history teaching is therefore essential. Furthermore, in the Belgian case, no comparison between the three communities has yet been published, to my knowledge. This is the aim of the present contribution.

Global changes and crises highlight the need to support education as one of the pillars of sustainable development (UNESCO, 2018). Maintaining sustainability in today’s world requires flexibility and skills to be prepared for life in an unpredictable environment. However, over the last decade, citizenship has become part of life skills, and citizenship competence has been defined as one of the key competences for lifelong learning (European Commission, 2019, p. 12). It is described as the “ability to act as responsible citizens and to fully participate in civic and social life (…)” This highlights the importance of having a highly relevant civic and citizenship curriculum to support sustainable development in rapidly changing global circumstances.

Citizenship education is part of the social science curriculum in schools, where students learn moral principles and values (Veugelers & Groot, 2019), feel liberated and empowered (Duplass, 2018) and become aware that they can change things by political action (Whiteley, 2014). The home and the school are the primary environments in which students develop civic habits and learn how to act in society for the benefit of themselves and others. However, teachers in the school environment play several roles in the social science teaching process (Duplass, 2021) and are responsible for delivering content that supports students civic-mindedness and civic self-efficacy in their role as present and future citizens at the community, national, and global levels.

In circumstances where Western democracy and values are experiencing a crisis, influenced by fake news, populism, and other hybrid activities that threaten and challenge Western society, resilience, and civic engagement as such, it is important to develop teaching materials that strengthen critical thinking, societal resilience, and a deeper understanding of citizenship.

Research-based social science content provides an opportunity to fill the gap and to create targeted teaching materials that help to develop students’ citizenship competence and self-efficacy.

The aim is to develop teaching materials based on the results of the ICCS 2022 study to support teachers in delivering social science content to Latvian students in Grade 7–9, and to help bridge the gaps in students’ knowledge and skills.

Data has become a significant source of power, with the capacity to reinforce discriminatory practices and deepen inequalities affecting marginalized groups (Richterich, 2018). The expanding datafication of society—“taking all aspects of life and turning them into data” (Cukier & Mayer-Schoenberger, 2013, p. 35)—raises concerns about its implications for democracy and social justice. Scholars argue that datafication can restrict individuals’ agency by positioning them as passive users within opaque technological systems (Pangrazio & Sefton-Green, 2020).

While datafication influences society broadly, its impacts vary across generations. Generation Z—whose lives are deeply shaped by digital technologies—experiences datafication as a central part of everyday and future life (Haddington et al., 2022). As a response, data literacy has been incorporated into the Council of Europe’s digital citizenship education guidelines and into the Finnish national curriculum. Despite this growing institutional recognition, data literacy remains contested. Multiple definitions coexist (Gebre, 2022; Wolff et al., 2019), and debates persist over whether data literacy should focus on technical skills, inquiry-based learning, or civic engagement. Skill-centered approaches are often criticized for portraying data as neutral, overlooking its social and political dimensions (Bhargava et al., 2015; D’Ignazio, 2017). Other critiques highlight the limited attention given to learners’ experiences, identities, and community contexts. Even as data literacy initiatives expand, researchers continue to identify challenges in engaging diverse learners in meaningful, critical data education (D’Ignazio, 2017).

This study responds to these challenges by conceptualizing data literacy as a critical practice essential for fostering critical citizenship (Durham, 2019). It is grounded in the view that, within datafied societies, individuals must be able not only to understand how data is collected and used but also to interrogate unjust systems and imagine alternatives. The research contributes to digital citizenship education by bringing together social justice perspectives with participatory, critical, and creative approaches designed to support young people’s data literacies. The study is situated within the Critical DataLit project, which frames literacy as a means to enable democratic and empowering data practices. Drawing on critical pedagogy and critical data pedagogy (Markham, 2020), the project encourages learners to explore, question, and reflect on the data practices they engage in.

Building on scholarship advocating for creative practices to broaden participation in science and technology education, Critical DataLit challenges approaches that prioritize technical skills alone. Such approaches, it argues, are insufficient for engaging non‑technical learners. Research in science education shows that creative practices rooted in arts and design can open more inclusive spaces for participation and support equity (Mejias et al., 2021). Following this insight, the project integrates methods that combine making and technology with artistic practices, including critical making and critical design (Hertz, 2012; Iivari et al., 2021), to democratize data practices. It also employs narrative and speculative methods, such as design fiction (Durall, 2022; Sharma et al., 2022), to foster civic engagement. These creative, imaginative modalities invite learners to explore and envision data futures oriented toward social justice, thereby strengthening their capacity to interrogate and reimagine datafied systems.

This study extends this work by examining the potential of creative and speculative design methods to support critical citizenship education with youth aged 15–17 in non-formal learning settings. We investigate three methods inspired by the futures tradition, drawing on Johnson and Morris’s (2010) framework for critical citizenship education. The findings provide insights into young people’s knowledge, skills, values, and dispositions related to data and data-driven technologies. These are interpreted through four dimensions of critical pedagogy—politics/ideology, social/collective, self/subjectivity, and praxis/engagement—showing how creative and speculative practices can cultivate critical, reflective, and socially aware data literacies.

Contemporary civic education faces growing challenges in engaging young people in meaningful democratic participation, as traditional pedagogical approaches struggle to combine rational instruction with experiential, affective and relational dimensions of learning. In this context, serious games and gamified learning environments have gained prominence as socio-technical spaces where learners encounter civic norms, ethical dilemmas and collective decision-making through participation rather than instruction alone.

This paper conceptualizes serious games as micro-laboratories of civic learning, where rule-based systems, procedural logics and immersive experiences intersect to shape learners’ civic agency. Drawing on theories of procedural rhetoric developed by Ian Bogost, democratic and experiential education articulated by John Dewey, and critical pedagogy advanced by Gert Biesta, the paper argues that serious games do not merely function as motivational tools, but as relational learning environments in which ethical norms, responsibility and democratic values are enacted through interaction, choice and consequence.

Positioned within the broader discourse on human–AI collaboration in education, the study is guided by the following research question: How do algorithmically mediated structures in civic serious games shape the co-construction of learners’ moral reasoning, civic agency and critical reflection?