The key questions surrounding education for citizenship in higher education;
– what is education for?
– what are universities for? and
– what values should education systems aim to develop in young people?
raise complex issues. As these are such challenging questions and as there is little agreement about them, this raises for the public, students, academics, and educationists, as many issues as definitive answers. Nearly all of us who chose education as a career did so to make a difference; not just degree results, but to the lives and aspirations of young people and society as a whole. Thus, although we champion the development of critical abilities, the skills of inquiry and questioning, activity based approaches to learning and the notion of rights as something to be cherished, this is not in itself merely a chronicle. It is to suggest that a mixture of creative content, ethos and a participatory, consultative, democratic approach in the framework of macro and micro improvements can lead to better, deeper learning and crucially a fairer and more just society.
Learning Change 