Journal of Social Studies Education Research (Jan 2013)
Citizenship Education in Denmark
Abstract
Many countries in the world refer to the social studies and history program to achieve the objective training a good citizen according to its own structure and approach. Denmark is one of these countries. For this purpose Denmark aims to educate individuals who are respectful to the values of community, actively participate in the democratic society and contribute to the development of living community. In this context, the content of Social Studies Program in Denmark forms such as freedom of thought, democracy, ideology, policy and constitutional issues. In recent years in our country makes many applications and project that is based to citizenship education by the Ministry of Education. To shed light on these studies and bring recommendations, social studies and history curriculum of Denmark carrying out citizenship education very seriously is investigated in terms of dimensions of goals, content, learning and teaching process and evaluation.This study is limited with social studies lesson in 7th-9th class and history lesson in 3th-9th class which is applied in Odense of Denmark. In this study it is examined metioned the programs by document analysis. The Programs are obtained reaching the country’s Education Ministry sources. The documents which were written Danish language are translated into first English and then Turkish language. In the meantime it is receieved the support for translation fromDanish programs professionals and teachers where it is needed. In addition to data collection, the researcher is observed participating various course activities.According to results of analysis of the data, these findings are reached: It is often emphasized on concept of democracy, freedom, and respect in citizenship education in Denmark. It is intended to give the students required the rules and values for participation in the democratic life and it is attempted to be given approach that the students have a right to say their ideas freely and to choose to participate in democratic life. It is seen that citizenship education is not only based on theory in the process and democracy approach is at the center of this course is tried to gain the students in the schools in both of thought and action, it is shown the student council as an example. In this context it can be said that Danish Social Studies Program’s contentoccurs from issues such as freedom of thought, democracy, ideologies, policies, constitution It is seen to reveal that individuals need to understand each other that Denmark has a multicultural structure. It is also seen to have an important function about adoption complex social structure and understand differences of students in citizenship education.
