An Investigation about Relationship between Citizenship Education and Ethnicity and Its Effect on Electoral Behavior at the Regions Level of Observation and Analysis

Abstract

One of the effects of citizenship education is the change of ethnic identity in favor of national identity through the institutionalization of the concept of "common identity" in the younger generation. However, electoral behaviors have shown that individuals' ethnocentric actions can affect the achievement of citizenship education goals.The purpose of this study was to investigate relationship between citizenship education and ethnicity and its effect on electoral behavior at the level of observation and analysis of regions. The research is a comparatively qualitative research using grounded theory. Based on Bray &Thomas Cube, level of observation and analysis were two cities of Bojnourd and Shirvan in North Khorasan province, Iran. The research population included three groups of faculty members, students and secondary school teachers. Targeted sampling method - with snowball approach - was used to select the research sample. Researchers used semi-structured interviews to collect data and content analysis using thematic content analysis. The findings showed the content of textbooks and school activities is not devoted to citizenship education, and existing content of textbooks is not appropriate for ethnic citizenship education. The finding indicates that there are many similarities between each of the two geographical regions in terms of ethnicity and the status of its components, and neither of these components is currently affected by citizenship education. Another finding indicates the lack of relationship between citizenship and ethnicity and electoral behavior in the observed areas. The latest research findings reveal that there is no significant difference between the two communities in terms of each of the factors studied. According to the findings, increasing the content related to modern citizenship education as well as multicultural citizenship education in school textbooks and extracurricular activities in schools seems necessary.

Keywords

• citizenship education
• ethnicity
• political behavior
• social inequality