Class Councils in Switzerland: Citizenship Education in Classroom Communities?

Abstract

Democracy depends on the participation of citizens. Citizenship educationis taking place in classroom communities to prepare pupils for their role ascitizens. Class councils are participatory forms of citizenship educationguaranteeing the children’s right to form and express their views freely aswritten down in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Theoreticaldeficiencies and empirical objections have been formulated againstparticipation in the school setting. Despite widespread practices, empiricaldata about class councils in Switzerland barely exists. In our researchproject we video-recorded fourteen class councils in secondary schools, weinterviewed the teacher and four pupils of each class, and all the pupilsfilled in a standardized questionnaire. Class councils are very popular formsof education with pupils although the actual power to influence decisions bydeliberation is doubted to some extent. Quantitative analysis of the videorecordingsshows the wide range of forms of class councils that exist inrespect to the talking time of the pupils. To express one’s own viewpointand to understand the standpoint of other discussants, constructarguments and counterarguments, participate, and lead discussions aredifficult tasks. Based on the empirical research the project describes threeforms of class councils that differ in the degree of favouring thedevelopment of communicative competences as a part of citizenshipeducation.

Keywords

• Class council
• participation
• citizenship education
• deliberation