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34 SES 15 A: Citizenship and conflict
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34. Research on Citizenship Education
Paper If and How (Global) Citizenship Education Engages with the Genocide in Gaza: A Scoping Review 1: University of Helsinki, Finland; 2: University College London, UK; 3: University of Padova, Italy Presenting Author:This paper reports on a scoping literature review examining how the ongoing genocide in Palestine (Albanese, 2025) has been addressed in Global Citizenship Education (GCE) and related educational fields between November 2023 and early 2026. We analyse patterns of engagement across the literature, including how Palestine and Palestinians are framed, what forms of educational response or non-response are visible, and which conditions shape these responses. This includes scholarship examining GCE under conditions of occupation and conflict, where human rights and justice are not treated as abstract ideals but as lived and contested realities (Barham et al, 2025). The aim of the paper is to connect solidarity with and for Palestine and Palestinians (Shatara & Saleh, 2024) to the broader purpose of citizenship education in times of polycrisis: preparing young people to take public action, ranging from boycotts and volunteering to critical media literacy and working with others to make a difference (Barton & Ho, 2021). We consider Israel’s unrestrained violations of human rights in Palestine, alongside ecocide and scholasticide, as an epitome of the polycrisis of our time. The genocide in Gaza and intensified violence in the Occupied West Bank have exposed tensions at the heart of GCE. While the field espouses democratic values, civic participation, and social justice, educational institutions in many countries have largely remained silent or actively suppressed engagement with Palestine (European Civic Forum, 2024; Porta & Doğan, 2026; Liddle, 2026). This silence persists despite -or perhaps because of - Palestine's emergence as a central site of student activism and solidarity organising globally. Across our respective contexts, communities of solidarity with the Palestinian people have formed. These include Researchers for Palestine in Finland, Teachers for Palestine in Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Italy, Academia for Palestine in Poland, and BDS@UCL in England. Those with less institutional protection, particularly students, have risked expulsion, even prison, or other sanctions for expressing solidarity with Palestine (Baak et al., 2024). There is also a clear commitment from the international education trade union to stand firmly with Palestinian teachers, students, and scholars (Education International, 2026). At the same time, we recognise a wider silence across the educational field to address what Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur, has identified as acts of genocide in Gaza and the ongoing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank (Albanese, 2025; Human Rights Council, 2025). While recent commentaries have pointed to silence within Global Citizenship Education scholarship regarding Palestine (Murphy, 2024; O’Toole, 2024; Stein, 2024), this paper offers a broader analytical review of various responses. Our analysis of 31 publications reveals a range of responses, including silence and institutional silencing and suppression, depoliticised and “neutral” framings, self-censorship linked to professional risk, uneven and conditional solidarity, and forms of activist and pedagogical engagement, especially through student movements, educator collectives, and protest-linked learning spaces. The paper makes three distinct contributions: First, it provides empirical documentation of engagement patterns through a scoping literature review, moving beyond anecdotal observations. Second, it theorises different forms of silence and constraint, distinguishing what previous commentaries have treated as monolithic. Third, it centers Palestinian pedagogical concepts and scholars and Palestine-engaged pedagogical perspectives as epistemological resources for rethinking GCE's purpose during polycrisis. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used For this study, we have conducted a scoping review, which is a suitable method for a broad, exploratory understanding of a research area that is complex or emerging, and for the aim to inform policy, practice, and future research directions (Colquhoun et al., 2014). Firstly, we conducted a keyword search in predominant academic databases (EBSCO, ERIC, Scopus, Web of Science, JSTOR, and Google Scholar), using keyword combinations of the terms “Palestine”, “Gaza” and “global citizenship”, “human rights education”, or “citizenship education”. The aim was to map the extent to which particularly GCE scholarship and closely related fields of education have engaged with the ongoing military assault in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank. Secondly, the search results were screened using the following inclusion and exclusion criteria: (1) publication between November 2023 and January 2026; (2) English language; (3) explicit engagement with Palestine (4) clear relevance to GCE, global education, human rights education, or related pedagogical debates on teaching about Palestine. The review was guided by a critical and decolonial orientation, attentive to power, and representation which informed both selection and analysis After removing duplicates, the total number of publications for full-text review was 31. Publications included in the final sample were read by the four authors, who proceeded with structured note-taking and initial coding, capturing key descriptive and analytical features such as publication type, geographical context, educational setting, how Palestine was framed (e.g., “conflict”, “crisis”, “settler colonialism”, “genocide”), and the forms of engagement, silence, or constraint discussed in relation to Palestine. The results of this data charting were collaboratively analysed, including descriptive numerical analysis and qualitative thematic analysis. We approached this review as members of an emerging transnational collective of early career researchers of GCE who have participated in solidarity actions within our respective institutions in Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and England. Our involvement ranges from supporting student encampments to organizing teach-ins and contributing to Teachers for Palestine networks. This positionality shapes our research in three ways: First, it motivated our attention to silence as a researchable phenomenon. Second, it positioned us to recognise institutional constraints through lived experience. Third, it obligated us to reflexivity about how our commitments might influence interpretation. We also addressed positionality through reflexive measures of collaborative reading, sharing coding protocols and doing inclusion checks to identify engagement as well as silence, in order to avoid overstating absence. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings Although our analysis is ongoing, preliminary findings show recurring patterns of silence and institutional constraint, alongside emerging forms of educational and scholarly engagement especially through student encampments. We argue that meaningful engagement requires solidarity frameworks proposed by Palestinian educators and educators to avoid ‘perfect victims’ narratives (Badaan & Abu Moghli, 2025), and instead to teach about joy, empathy, and care for land and community (Shatara & Saleh, 2024). The literature also points to sumud (steadfastness) as a critical Palestinian pedagogical concept linking hope, agency, and resistance through storytelling and intergenerational learning alongside Indigenous and land-based knowledges where relationships to land, memory, and ecological practice function as sites of learning and resistance (Scott et al., 2025; Van Teeffelen et al., 2025; Jadallah, 2026). Centring Palestinian voices and lived realities within GCE is essential as it exemplifies how struggles against oppression are interconnected and how contemporary forms of erasure are tied to longer histories of colonialism and supremacy (Garcia et al., 2025; Hajir & Qato, 2025). Our findings show a tension between the stated commitments of GCE and what happens in practice. External pressures include the suppression of civic protests and academic solidarity in universities across the Global North. Identified internal contradictions include a paradox whereby scholars working explicitly on decolonisation and global justice demonstrate reluctance to explicitly address Palestine. GCE claims to prepare young people for democratic participation and addressing interconnected crises. Yet when confronted with Palestine - one of the clearest contemporary examples of settler colonialism, apartheid, and now genocide- the field has until recently largely fallen silent or spoken in depoliticised whispers. Such silences matter. The task ahead is to determine whether GCE field can move beyond recognising this gap to demonstrating that the commitments to global justice, decolonisation, and democratic participation are more than performative declarations. References Albanese, F. (2025). From economy of occupation to economy of genocide: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 (A/HRC/59/23). United Nations Human Rights Council. https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/59/23 Baak, M., Mayes, E., & Rizvi, F. (2024). Approaching educative responses to and about the Palestine crisis. Curriculum Perspectives, 44(3), 361–365. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-024-00286-3 Badaan, V., & Abu Moghli, M. (2025). Academic solidarity in the time of genocide. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2025.2558989 Barham, K. A., Al-Shaer, N. M., Ftayer, O. S., & Khlaif, Z. N. (2025). Global citizenship in conflict settings: An-Najah National University as a case study. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2025.2524482 Barton, K. C., & Ho, L.-C. (2021). Curriculum for justice and harmony: Deliberation, knowledge, and action in social and civic education (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003010104 Garcia, A., González, R. A., Jackson, K., & Mirra, N. (2025). Teaching About Palestine in U.S. Schools From the 1980s to Present Day: A Systematic Review of Research. Educational Researcher. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X251365922 Hajir, B., & Qato, M. (2025). Academia in a time of genocide: Scholasticidal tendencies and continuities. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 23(5), 1163–1171. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2024.2445855 Jadallah, C. C. (2026). What could be more innocent than planting trees? Thinking with Palestine in land education. Curriculum Inquiry, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.2025.2584998 Liddle, A. (2026). The riskiness of Gaza in the classroom: The experiences of UK teachers during an unfolding human rights crisis. Human Rights Education Review, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/25355406.2025.2605315 Murphy, C. (2024). Development education and Palestine: Confronting the non-response. Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, (39). O’Toole, B. (2024). The silences of global citizenship education: A concept fit for purpose. Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, 39. Scott, H., Ujvari, M., Bakeer, A. M. A., & Shanaa, K. (2025). Sumud as Connected Learning: Towards a Collective Digital Commons in Palestine. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2025(1), 8. https://doi.org/10.5334/jime.877 Shatara, H., & Saleh, M. (2024). Solidarities with/for Palestine and Palestinians: A call to action for educators. Equity & Excellence in Education, 57(4), 399–412. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2024.2357068 Stein, S. (2024). The paradox of educational silences and cacophonies in liquid modernity. Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, 39. Van Teeffelen, T., & Giacaman, F. (2025). The Concept Of Sumud, Resistance and Citizenship in Occupied Palestine: Critical Pedagogy and Muslim-Christian Living Together. Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, 24(2), 159–179. https://doi.org/10.3366/hlps.2025.0361 34. Research on Citizenship Education
Paper Knowing and Acting in Times of Poly-crisis: Affective and Behavioural Attitudes of Adolescents Towards War and Peace – a Q-Based Analysis Heidelberg University, Germany Presenting Author:Educational research in Europe is currently confronted with profound transformations in its societal and political context. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022 marked a deep rupture in the European peace order and has since been widely discussed as a “Zeitenwende” in politics, society and educational research (Deutscher Bundestag 2022; Hafeneger 2023). This turning point entails a reorientation of foreign and security policy and has intensified debates on the role and necessity of security-related education as well as on citizenship education in Europe under conditions of conflict, uncertainty and democratic challenges. Against this background, educational research is challenged not only to generate knowledge (knowing), but also to better understand the conditions under which this knowledge becomes relevant for orientation, judgment and potential action (acting). This challenge is particularly pressing for young people, whose everyday lives are increasingly shaped by multiple global crises: War scenarios are embedded in broader poly-crisis constellations and permeate adolescents' lives through continuous media exposure, encounters with refugee peers, and socio-economic consequences (Albert & Quenzel, 2024; Hafeneger 2023). These developments have significant implications for young people’s emotional well-being, sense of security and political socialisation, and consequently shape educational processes, teaching and learning in times of uncertainty. Representative youth studies indicate that more than 80% of adolescents in Germany identify fear of war in Europe or in Germany as one of their central concerns (Liz Mohn Center 2023; Albert et al. 2024). For the first time in decades, a generation is growing up without taking peace as a self-evident condition of life in Europe (BMFSFJ 2024). In order to develop educational approaches that respond to the realities of young people's lives and that support them in engaging with ideas about war, peace, and possible courses of action as young citizens, a nuanced understanding of their subjective attitudes toward war and peace is essential. Existing research has so far paid limited attention to adolescents’ subjective attitudes in times of poly-crisis. Addressing this gap, the present study examines adolescents’ affective and behavioural attitudes towards war and peace. Its theoretical framework draws on the multicomponent model of attitudes proposed by Zanna and Rempel (1988), which distinguishes cognitive, affective, and behavioural components (Haddock & Maio 2023). While this model also allows for the systematic analysis of cognitive attitudes, the study deliberately focuses on affective and behavioural dimensions. These components are particularly salient in contexts of crisis characterised by uncertainty, emotional strain, and perceived constraints on agency. They are further central to understanding adolescents’ emotional responses to war as well as their orientations for action, political socialisation and civic-related attitude under conditions of uncertainty and crisis. The study is guided by two research questions: (1) Which affective and behavioural attitudes do adolescents in Germany hold towards war and peace? (2) Which distinct attitude types can be identified, particularly with regard to peace-logical and security-logical orientations? By reconstructing these subjective orientation patterns, the study contributes to European educational research by illuminating how adolescents position themselves emotionally and behaviourally in times of war and poly-crisis, and how these attitudes can shape civic engagement, alienation and political orientation. It thus complements knowledge-oriented approaches and provides an empirical basis for reflecting on the potentials and limits of political education and citizenship education under changing societal and political conditions. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used The study uses Q methodology (Q), a mixed-methods research approach situated at the intersection of quantitative and qualitative traditions (Stephenson 1935, Brown 1993). Q methodology is particularly suited to systematically explore subjectivity, as it focuses on how individuals organise, prioritise and relate their points of views using the Q-typical self-referential sorting procedure, rather than on the distribution of predefined variables (Watts & Stenner 2012). In contrast to traditional survey methods, Q aims to identify shared patterns of subjective meaning rather than measuring attitudes in isolation. By combining rating procedures with factor-analytic techniques, Q methodology proves a qualiquantological approach to assess subjective attitudes (Brown 1993). It is particularly suitable for exploratory research designs with small samples and for the investigation of complex, nuanced perspectives that are often difficult to capture with standardises questionnaires (Watts & Stenner 2012). In addition, Q has a reflexive dimension, as the sorting process can support participants in becoming aware of their own positions and priorities (Kling & Lintner 2022). The present Q study was conducted in July 2025 at two high schools in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The participants were 10th grade students, organised into two P-sets (P-set 1: n1=23; P-Set 2: n2=25). The data collection was carried out in classroom settings, using the online tool Q-Perspectives® (Walker & Lin 2017). The central research instrument was a Q set consisting of 24 statements, developed on the basis of a qualitative literature review on youth, attitudes, war and peace, and political education. Twelve statements addressed affective orientations which encompassed attitudes in dimensions such as fear, worry, powerlessness, hope, indifference and resignation. The remaining twelve statements focused on behavioural orientations, encompassing information behaviour, engagement, and self-efficacy, as well as attitudes related to peace-oriented and security-oriented perspectives. The participants performed a Q Sort in which they ranked the statements relative to one another along a predefined bipolar quasi-normal distribution (Q grid), thereby positioning the statements on a continuum of agreement. The resulting individual Q Sorts were digitally collected using Q-Perspectives® (Walker & Lin 2017) and analysed using KEN-Q Analysis (KADE v1.3.1, Banasick 2019). An inverse (by-person) factor analysis was conducted, in which individuals rather than variables were correlated and factorised (Brown 1993). To deepen the interpretation of factors, participants provided written explanations for statements placed at the extreme ends of the distribution. These qualitative comments were evaluated using content analysis and included into the interpretation of the extracted factors. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings The analysis shows that adolescents do not respond uniformly to questions of war and peace. In both P-sets, several different types of attitudes were identified reflecting different affective and behavioural orientations. In P-set 1, two factors (p<0.01) were extracted, explaining 50% of the variance. In P-set 2, three factors (p<0.01) were identified, accounting for 60% of the variance. The types reveal differentiated patterns along affective and behavioural dimensions, with distinguishable patterns despite overlaps. Factors B1 and A2 are characterised by emotionally involved, informed, and peace-oriented attitudes, combining strong emotional concern with engagement and rejection of military solutions. Factors A1/C2 are characterised by emotionally detached, interested, and security-oriented types. In addition, Factor B2 emerged exclusively in P-Set 2, and is marked by emotional withdrawal, disinterest and a predominantly security-oriented attitudes. Overall, the results show that adolescents react strongly to questions of war and peace, yet their attitudes differ and varying configurations of peace-logical and security-logical perspectives occur. These subjective patterns often remain hidden in representative surveys, yet they are significant for understanding processes of political socialisation, participation and (non) formal learning in times of uncertainty and poly-crisis. The discussion focuses on how these affective and behavioural orientations influence adolescents’ possibilities for action, withdrawal and positioning in times of increased insecurity. From the perspective of political education, the findings emphasise the relevance of systematically investigating young people’s attitudes towards war and peace and their subjective orientations in order to encourage reflection, conflict competence, tolerance of ambiguity and action-related orientation in educational contexts. The study highlights the potential of Q methodology to gain differentiated insights into selected target groups via subjective frames of reference empirically accessible, thereby contributing to educational research in Europe by providing an empirical basis for current debates on political, peace- and security-related education under changing societal and political conditions. References Albert, Mathias/Quenzel, Gudrun/ de Moll, Frederick /Leven, Ingo/McDonnell, Sophia/Rysina, Anna/Schneekloth, Ulrich/Wolfert, Sabine (Hrsg.) (2024). 19. Shell Jugendstudie - Jugend 2024: Pragmatisch zwischen Verdrossenheit und gelebter Vielfalt. Weinheim: Beltz. Albert, Mathias/Quenzel, Gudrun (2024). Jugend 2024: Vielfalt zwischen einigendem Pragmatismus und Polarisierung? In: Mathias Albert/Gudrun Quenzel/Frederick de Moll et al. (Hrsg.), 19. Shell Jugendstudie - Jugend 2024: Pragmatisch zwischen Verdrossenheit und gelebter Vielfalt (S. 33–42). Weinheim: Beltz. Banasick, Shawn (2019). KADE: A desktop application for Q methodology. Journal of Open Source Software, 4 (36), 1360. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01360. BMFSFJ (2024). 17. Kinder- und Jugendbericht: Bericht über die Lage junger Menschen und die Bestrebungen und Leistungen der Kinder- und Jugendhilfe. Online verfügbar unter 132 https://www.bmbfsfj.bund.de/bmbfsfj/service/publikationen/17-kinder-und jugendbericht-244628. Brown, Steven R. (1993). A primer on Q methodology. Operant Subjectivity, 16 (3/4), 91–138. https://doi.org/10.22488/okstate.93.100504. Deutscher Bundestag (2022). Regierungserklärung: Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz: Wir erleben eine Zeitenwende. Online verfügbar https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2022/kw08-sondersitzung 882198?ref=apolut.net. Haddock, Geoffrey/Maio, Gregory R. (2023). Einstellungen. In: Johannes Ullrich/Wolfgang Stroebe/Miles Hewstone (Hg.). Sozialpsychologie. Berlin, Heidelberg, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 193–226. Hafeneger, Benno (2023). Aufwachsen in Krisenzeiten. Journal für politische Bildung, 13 (1), 40–45. https://doi.org/10.46499/2232.2628. Kling, Ines/Lintner, Anja (2022). Praxisbezogene Einstellungen von Lehramtsstudierenden – eine Q-Studie. Zeitschrift für Empirische Pädagogik, 36 (1), 80–98. Liz Mohn Center (2023). Einstellungen und Sorgen der jungen Generation Deutschlands 2023. Bertelsmann Stiftung. Online verfügbar unter https://www.bertelsmann stiftung.de/de/publikationen/publikation/did/einstellungen-und-sorgen-der-jungen generation-deutschlands-2023. Stephenson, William (1935). Technique of factor analysis. Nature, 136 (3434), 297. Walker, B. B., Lin, J. (2017). Q-Perspectives® Online. University of Georgia Research Foundation. Watts, Simon/Stenner, Paul (2012). Doing Q methodological research: Theory, method and interpretation. Los Angeles: Sage. Zanna, Mark P./Rempel, John K. (1988). Attitudes: A new look at an old concept. In: Daniel Bar‐Tal/Arie W. Kruglanski (Hrsg.), The social psychology of knowledge (S. 315–334). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 34. Research on Citizenship Education
Paper Patriotism as a Tool to Measure Citizenship in a Conflict Affected Society Breda University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands, The Presenting Author:The role of schools in providing opportunities for young people to learn how to participate effectively in democratic life and society is very important, because the foundations for active citizenship are established during adolescence. Currently, a large number of countries include citizenship education as a discrete part of school curriculum or prefer teaching citizenship through other courses such as history or social studies. However, European Policy documents or international research such as The International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) contain a combination of liberalism and republicanism, with the dominance of republican orientation that sees participation and social adherence as the main pedagogical aims of citizenship education. Critical and indepth analysis of literature reveals the reflection of this tendency in empirical research. Although a large body of empirical research on citizenship and citizenship education exists, most of these studies have explored adults such as teachers’ and policy makers’ perspectives. When it comes to the studies exploring the youth’s perspectives, the analysis of the literature shows that there is a lack of research reflecting young people’s own perspectives on their citizenship education and understanding of citizenship. It leads to the gap in incorporating young people’s perspectives into the conceptualization of citizenship and application of citizenship education that is likely to provide better understanding of the phenomenon and practice of citizenship education. The current study positions young people as marginalized and disenfranchised, as international empirical research has either overlooked or ignored their perspectives on their citizenship education by favoring adults and their perspectives. The research project explores young people’s perspectives on their citizenship education and its contribution to their development as a citizen, but in this paper, it covers only their undertanding of citizenship and how the conlifct shaped their unidrtsaning. The research contributes to better understanding of the concept of patriotism and citizenship and how a clonflict shapes these understandings. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used This paper reports on a three-year qualitative research project exploring young people’s perceptions of citizenship where young people themselves participated as co-researchers throughout the study. While reporting Azerbaijani students’ perceptions of citizenship and how the Azerbaijani -Armenian conflict has shaped their understanding of citizenship, the paper describes how some participatory elements incorporated into this study. Two student research advisory groups were formed in the beginning of the study and these students works as co-researchers during the study where they actively participated in developing the interview guide for the study, advised on organizational and design issues such as interview location, focus group size and gender balance of focus groups and also participated in initial data analysis. It total, the study report the date collected in 15 focus groups with students of both private and public schools of Baku, Azerbaijan. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings The data analysis across four cases showed that the understanding of citizenship described by almost all students was the reflection of “civically passive but patriotically active citizenship” (Jafarov, 2024). When the students talked about civic duties, they only referred to passive citizenship duties such as paying taxes, but when they talked about patriotic duties they were not referring to only passive actions such as learning the history of the country or love to the country, but all mentioned actively doing something for the country. Although in some reports this was “fighting for your country” or in some reports this was “promoting your country’’, all were actions rather than passive patriotic elements. In all four cases, our conversations with the students somehow led to the topic of Nagorno Karabagh conflict. For instance, in the IDP school, the students mentioned the need to be ready to fight for the homeland to return Karabagh while in the private school the students mentioned the importance of promoting Azerbaijan abroad and how it would help return Karabagh back to Azerbaijan. Even the way they ranked the subjects was related to the Nagorno Karabagh as they thought, for instance, as an Azerbaijani citizen you had to study Azerbaijani History to know what territories belonged to Azerbaijan and defend it abroad or you needed to learn foreign languages to be able to tell the history of Karabakh to prove it was a part of Azerbaijan. Although the emphasis on the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia was more frequent and strong in especially school 3 (IDP), it was an inevitable part of the conversations in all four schools. References ....................... | ||