Citizenship Shaping in Schooling within Democratic Transition: Promoting Value Scales or the Development of the Moral Reasoning?

Abstract

This article examines the shaping of civic competencies and the development of values in a document from the educational sector in the State of Chihuahua. We present concepts such as democracy, transition and consolidation, political participation, citizenship, and education. The empirical information was obtained from two inquiries carried out in 2007 and 2012 about certain characterizations of those values and competencies in junior high students and professors, and university students. We used a quantitative method to obtain information about the moral reasoning and the educational ideology. The studied samples showed up a possibility to achieve a political and social participation by the professors and students within a stable political system that would correspond to democratic institutions. However, we concluded that the current Mexican socio-political epoch does not correspond with such level of participation. Finally, we provide a theoretical discussion based on the ideas of Kohlberg (1997) about the dilemma of promoting value scales or the moral development.

Keywords

• educación moral
• ciudadanía
• democracia
• política educativa
• valores.