Keywords

1 Introduction

Global and local emerging social issues exert pressure on political systems around the world. Populism, intolerance, xenophobia, social media manipulation, and global threats, such as pandemics and climate change, are phenomena that challenge political systems, and young people respond to these problems in different ways.

It is undeniable that the recent COVID-19 pandemic that spread between 2019 and 2020 has pushed the need to consider citizenship in a global context. During this recent period, humanity faced a real threat to the health and lives of the population, while challenging the economic, political, and social organization of societies. The response to the pandemic required combined efforts from the international community, national governments, and individual citizens. In summary, the pandemic clearly showed how the interconnection of our societies requires mechanisms and structures of collaboration beyond national borders to face challenges of rapid international spread. Furthermore, the pandemic’s nature also required maximum cooperation from citizens in limiting several of their daily activities to maintain physical distance. The present scenario is a cross national phenomena, where people had to follow social norms, in order to contribute to the suppression of the virus and its spread. Therefore, it seems that a more profound notion of citizenship is needed to prepare societies and youth as future citizens dealing with problems that require commitment in a globalized world.

Learning that local actions can have a global effect is undoubtedly a challenge for all educational systems. This notion requires thinking about what is civil beyond the limits of a given nation’s borders. Likewise, it requires understanding the connection between individual actions and their global consequences. Different global concerns such as pollution, climate change, economic inequalities, and health crises may require a new conception of citizenship. The COVID-19 pandemic, represents an example of the challenges that we face as a human collective. In less than one year, we have witnessed the unpreparedness of countries’ institutions and the fragility of individual citizens for this kind of challenge. Something similar may occur with climate change, where individual actions are not enough to confront this problem, and its awareness is difficult to develop due to the short span of human life. How to face different world threats can become a requirement for citizenship education.

What is a “good citizen”? The present book explored what is good citizenship from a normative perspective (van Deth 2007). Using data from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016, the book inquired into grade 8 students’ views of what is a good citizen and what is expected for adult citizens. It surveyed how students respond to different citizenship norms relevant to the support of democratic systems (van Deth 2017), how these are distributed among countries, and which school factors promote support the endorsement of citizenship norms. Additionally, it contains six chapters using samples from Europe, Asia, and Latin America providing studies with a distinctive regional focus. The present chapter summarizes key findings and discusses implications, limitations, and the need for further research.

2 Main Conclusions

The contemporary idea of good citizenship includes several elements, such as personal, relational, and social aspects of individuals. In this regard, the notion of good citizenship itself is a topic of debate due to its situated character and the importance of its historical context. What is expected from citizens, and what is deemed ideal is context dependent (Denters et al. 2007).

This book has a twofold purpose. On the one hand, it aims to study good citizenship theoretically and empirically. More specifically it looks into how different citizenship norms endorsement are configured, beyond a two dimensional conception. The present approach allows inquiry not only into which students adhere to conventional or social movement norms, but into which students endorse both types of citizenship norms. Second, the research focuses on specific challenges faced by countries from Asia, Europe, and Latin America. To fulfill such aims, the authors in this book used data from ICCS 2016. It is important to state that the research reported here is a joint effort to understand citizenship beyond the restrictive focus on formal political participation that has greatly influenced civic and citizenship education (Kennedy 2019). Thus, the different chapters included cover a varying list of topics including students’ views on governmental authority and its limits, tolerance of corruption, support for equal rights among women and immigrants, the understanding of democracy, and students’ political engagement beyond conventional forms of participation.

The present research seeks to uncover how students endorse different citizenship norms. In particular, how students adhere to different injunctive norms, of what adults citizen ought to be (see Chap. 3). Following the work of Hooghe and Oser (Hooghe and Oser 2015; Oser and Hooghe 2013) on citizenship norms, we fit a multigroup latent class model to produce five classes based on students’ endorsement of different citizenship norms indicators. These profiles were labeled as comprehensive, socially engaged, duty-based, monitorial, and anomic. Such profiles can be compared across countries, permitting the study of similarities in endorsement of youth norms across the participating contexts. Overall results show that most of the students fall into the comprehensive, socially-engaged, or duty-based profiles. In contrast, a minority of students are classified as monitorial or anomic reflecting their medium and lower endorsement to different citizenship norms respectively.

The comparability of the profiles provides an empirical basis to study how contexts shape students’ distribution in these different norms configurations. General findings show there is high variability between countries regarding the rates of each citizenship norms profiles. In this way, it is clear that the distribution of profiles requires contextual explanations regarding why different countries and societies differed in their rates of citizenship norms endorsement (see Chap. 4). Furthermore, general findings show high variability of student profiles between schools (see Chap. 5). The median odds ratio of these differences is 1.5, which means students’ citizenship norms configuration may change due to school membership across countries. The schools’ median odds ratio is larger than all considered students’ attributes, including students’ sex, immigration status, and family SES. The big exemption in this regard is students’ political interest. Students more interested in politics are between 1.64 times and two times more likely to endorse citizenship norms in a comprehensive manner than the rest of the other citizenship norms profiles. The studied school attributes explored in this book account for 43% of the between-school variance. Overall, the present work contributes to a better understanding of how citizenship norms relate to countries, schools, and students’ characteristics.

Due to the contextual nature of citizenship, in the present book, we posed specific research questions on topics that were relevant for countries in the different regions included. In Asia, youth seem engaged in protest to guard democracy, but their understanding of threats to democracy varies largely due to their differing levels of civic knowledge. In Latin America, civic knowledge and open classroom discussion are protective factors for tolerance of corruption and for authoritarianism endorsement. In Europe, monitorial, anomic, and socially-engaged students show lower levels of support for equal rights of immigrants than comprehensive students.

In the following section, the key findings per chapter are presented.

3 Key Findings Per Chapter

Chapter 2 surveyed the literature on youth citizenship. The authors assert that this research literature includes political participation and obeying the law as a crucial aspect of good citizenship. In contrast, there is less emphasis on citizenship norms related to solidarity, critical thinking, and the cultivation of civic culture (i.e., knowing the history of the country). Villalobos, Morel, and Treviño propose that “good citizenship” is an umbrella term, and not a unique attribute. Under “citizenship,” different expectations involving ethical, political, and normative aspects co-exist, qualifying citizens and prescribing how they should act. The key findings of a systematic review of the literature suggest that there is no single dominant definition of good citizenship across disciplines and that current conceptions are produced mainly in English-speaking countries and valued in Western countries with comparatively higher income levels. Despite this lack of agreement on the definition of good citizenship, most of the empirical studies include a shared set of indicators, including normative aspects relative to follow the rule of law, participate in national elections, and more personal aspects such as working hard. In this regard, ICCS 2016 includes a varied battery of indicators, including essential concepts present in the last 70 years of academic discussion. The indicators battery covers notions such as conventional citizenship, social movement citizenship, and personal responsibility citizenship (Köhler et al. 2016). In this sense, good citizenship indicators present in ICCS 2016 are related to normative, active, and personal aspects. These definitions do not include current discussions on global (Altikulaç 2016) or digital citizenship (Bennett et al. 2009). These latter concepts are part of the ongoing debate on good citizenship. These are essential areas that need to be the subject of future international studies.

In Chap. 3 Torres Irribarra and Carrasco, revisit the work of Hooghe and Oser (Hooghe and Oser 2015; Oser and Hooghe 2013) and specified a structurally homogenous multigroup latent class model to uncover the endorsement of citizenship norms among adolescents across different countries. With the presented approach, the authors produced five distinguishable latent classes of citizenship norms endorsement, comparable between countries. These latent classes are:

  1. (a)

    Comprehensive: CI95 [38%, 39%] of students fell into this label in which adolescents show a consistently higher probability of answering “Important” to all the citizenship norms indicators. This included manifest forms of participation such as voting, extra parliamentary actions, peaceful protest, and social involvement such as helping in the local community (Ekman and Amnå 2012).

  2. (b)

    Anomic: CI95 [3%, 4%] of the students fell into this category with the lowest probability of answering “Important” across all items. The labeling comes from the idea of anomie, from the Latin “lack of norms” or normless (Schlueter et al. 2007), “a condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals” (Macionis 2018, p. 132). This profile expresses the lowest endorsement to all included citizenship norms. Young people within this class might be described as those with a loss of internalized social norms (Srole 1956).

  3. (c)

    Monitorial: CI95 [12%, 13%] of the students fall into this profile that values a mix of conventional forms of participation such as elections and non-institutionalized forms of political participation (Amnå and Ekman 2014), such as protest, while disregarding engaging in political parties (Hooghe and Dejaeghere 2007).

  4. (d)

    Socially engaged: about one third of the students were classified in this profile CI95 [33%, 34%]. They showed high probabilities of considering important elements related to the protection of the environment, the protection of human rights, participation in activities that benefit the local community, obedience to the law, and respect for government representatives, while showing lower probabilities of participating in political discussions and joining a political party.

  5. (e)

    Duty-based: CI95 [12%, 13%] of the students were classified in this profile. They showed high support for obeying the law, working hard, respecting government authorities, and voting. Simultaneously, they show low levels of support for social and political participation and activities aimed at protecting the environment, benefiting people in the local community, protecting human rights, participating in peaceful protests, political discussions, and joining a political party.

There are contextual differences across countries that seem to be related to the distribution of students across the profiles. In Chap. 4, Villalobos, Morel, and Treviño find that there are common patterns across countries such as the low proportion of students in anomic profiles, and the high proportion of comprehensive and socially-engaged profiles. However, there are significant differences between geographic location and type of political regime, as well as national income and the use of social media to read and share political content. The two most salient findings show that, on the one hand, the relationship between national income and profiles of good citizenship does not support the generalized growth of post-materialist values in the wealthiest countries. However, the most holistic profiles are found in European countries with high national income, such as Norway. On the other hand, the relationship between the political use of social media and profiles of good citizenship confirms the transformative potential of these technological tools in contemporary society. Although these are relevant topics for political science and sociology, these discussions are missing in the educational field, so these results can be understood as an invitation to include these in civic education research.

Schools can shape students’ citizenship profiles through their current practices and organization. In Chap. 5, Treviño, Carrasco, López Hornickel, and Zúñiga find that school characteristics explain a non-ignorable portion of the variance of students’ citizenship norms endorsement. There are two key findings in this chapter. First, schools that offer more civic learning opportunities, open classroom discussions, as well as participatory and friendly environments (Claes et al. 2017; Sampermans et al. 2018) promote a comprehensive endorsement of citizenship norms. These results stand above students’ socioeconomic background and students’ civic background across countries. Second, the composition of the student body in schools is a key factor for explaining the distribution of profiles. Schools with higher SES are more likely to have socially-engaged and duty-based students than those in the comprehensive profile. Additionally, schools with students with higher political interest present higher chances of endorsing comprehensive citizenship norms, instead of socially-engaged norms. Finally, students in schools with peers who use more social media to look for and share political content are less likely to endorse duty-based norms, in contrast to endorsing all citizenship norms.

From Chap. 6 onwards, the book examines specific regional contextual topics related to citizenship. Focusing in Latin America, Miranda, Miranda, and Muñoz analyze the relationship between the political culture and citizenship norms due to the long history of interrupted democracies, civil war, human rights abuses, and military dictatorships the 1990s that have suffered the region. The findings suggest significant support for authoritarian governmental practices in younger age groups in Latin America, especially among students classified in duty-based and comprehensive profiles. Such a result contrasts with monitorial and anomic profiles, which are less likely to support these governmental practices. In terms of authoritarianism endorsement, the difference among profiles is more considerable among students with lower levels of civic knowledge, in contrast to students with higher civic knowledge—those who reject the traditional norms of citizenship embrace, to a lesser extent, the authoritarian culture. Overall, students with higher levels of civic knowledge show lower support for authoritarianism. As Altemeyer (2003) indicates, authoritarianism supporters adhere tightly to social conventions, which seems to be when students have low levels of civic knowledge. This idea is consistent with previous research about the authoritarian personality indicating that less informed/educated people (or in this case people with less civic knowledge) tend to support authoritarian regimes or practices (Schulz et al. 2018).

Carrasco and Pavón Mediano analyze the tolerance of corruption among students in Latin America in Chap. 7. The 2010s decade in this region was marked by anti-corruption reforms. These reforms require an active involvement from its citizens to identify, condemn, and denounce corrupt acts. The findings suggest that civic knowledge and authoritarianism are the main predictors of tolerance of corruption among young people, accounting for 49% of the variance at the population level. Open classroom discussion is also a protective factor against tolerance to corruption (Carrasco et al. 2020). Citizenship norms profiles account for a small portion of the variance. Monitorial students tend to endorse a higher tolerance of corruption than their peers. Contrary to our expectations, the anomic group seems to be more critical and expresses less tolerance of corruption than their classmates. Finally, a higher concentration of duty-based students in schools is positively associated with higher tolerance of corruption, regardless of students’ own citizenship norms endorsement. This later result conforms to a contextual effect, where students who attend schools with a higher proportion of students with a more conventional view of citizenship are at higher risks of condoning corrupt acts. The authors discuss the interlink between anti-corruption reforms and civic education, and the role of schools to promote anti-corruption norms among students.

Chapters 8 and 9 focus on European issues such as immigration and tolerance among European adolescents. In Chap. 8, Isac, Claes, and Sandoval-Hernández analyze how the citizenship norm profiles relate to students’ immigration status in the nine European countries that participated in ICCS 2016. The study reveals that in most countries, native-born and immigrant youngsters tend to endorse similar configurations of citizenship norms, and both are concentrated in the comprehensive and socially-engaged profiles. Two patterns emerge from this study. First, immigrant students are less likely to be socially engaged and hold more comprehensive norms in four out of the nine European countries (Denmark, Sweden, Malta, and Belgium (Flemish)). Second, in two countries, Sweden and Belgium (Flemish), adolescents with an immigrant background are less likely to endorse duty-based norms. At the same time students in Malta are less likely to classify as monitorial. These findings are aligned with insights from previous research (Oser and Hooghe 2013; Reichert 2017), showing that immigrant students tend to be supportive of all citizenship norms and mostly in the comprehensive group.

In Chap. 9, Sandoval-Hernández, Claes, Savvides, and Isac study the relationship between citizenship norms and tolerance among European adolescents. The study, which focuses on 14 European countries, finds two clear patterns in relation to attitudes to equality of rights for immigrants. On one hand, students classified within the comprehensive citizenship profile deal well with the ambivalence present in the definition of tolerance, especially regarding equal rights for immigrants. Second, students within the other citizenship profiles (socially engaged, duty-based, monitorial, and anomic) show significantly lower support for equal rights for immigrants than the students classified as comprehensive. These groups do not seem to accept the paradox of giving equal rights to people or groups regardless of whether you agree with their opinion or behavior. The authors hypothesized that monitorial and anomic groups may show lower support for immigration because these two types of citizens seem to be more focused on the local, personal level (Westheimer and Kahne 2007) rather than opening themselves to a larger, globalized, more diverse world. This situation seems to be similar to the socially-engaged group. Theoretically they are described as being concerned about social needs, human rights and the environment (Dalton 2008; Barber and Ross 2018). These concerns focus on their local (maybe more homogenous) community, rights, and the environment, and that they seem to “hunker down” (Putnam 2007). This suggests they are engaged in their own group, but not inclined to be open to more equal rights for immigrants than the comprehensive group.

Kennedy and Kuang study the predictors of Asian adolescents’ democratic understanding in Chap. 10. They point out that studying youth’s understandings of democracy is as important as studying democratic processes such as participation and engagement, while the latter elements have dominated the current literature. Such a question is of importance for Asian countries with a long history of sharing Confucian values that are often seen to be the basis of conservatism that characterizes parts of the region (Fukuyama 1992). The study analyzes students’ understanding of democracy in Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, and Korea through a confirmatory factor analysis, which results in a two-factor structure in which one factor is related to Threats to Democracy and the other factor measures Rights and Responsibilities. Then, the study predicts the understanding of democracy using variables related to cognition, student engagement, and student experience in school. The study finds that school-based civic learning is the strongest school-based predictor of students’ understanding of democracy regarding rights and opportunities. On the other hand, students’ engagement in political discussion outside the school is the main predictor of students’ ability to identify threats to democracy in the three countries. The authors suggests there is missed opportunity by schools, where the understanding of democracy, including both dimensions could benefit from informal learning opportunities already in place. The authors discussed that formal civic learning might not be enough to reinforce democratic understanding to students. As such, if Asian students are to be fully knowledgeable about democracy, formal and informal opportunities might need to be promoted to help students understand different aspects of democracy, including threats to and features of democracy.

In Chap. 11, Kennedy and Kuang focus on analyzing Asian students’ intentions for civic engagement, broadly conceived to include different forms of protest, specifically in Hong Kong, Korea, and Chinese Taipei. Legal and illegal protests involving young people have been common in Hong Kong, Korea, and Chinese Taipei since 2014, a phenomenon spread worldwide to pressure political systems. The findings suggest that more and more, both legal and illegal protests are being used to secure civic goals, whether it is the removal of a President as in Korea, advocating for universal suffrage as in Hong Kong, or protecting Chinese Taipei’s independence. On average, protests are often considered as the least preferable form of engagement. Yet for some students protests seem to be a preferred form of engagement to be used, perhaps when other forms will not achieve desired social or political objectives. More research is needed to study whether young people are aware of the possible consequences and the likelihood of protests. This scenario is worrisome when one of the main influences on current civic engagement is social media, which remains largely unknown (Kennedy 2019). Young people immersed in social media, for example, need to learn how to recognize the “echo chamber” (Quattrociocchi 2017) and “filter bubble” (Curkovic 2019) effects so they can make decisions based on a broad range of information and available options for engagement. Engaging in illegal protest is not an insignificant matter. Young people need to understand in detail what is involved, make informed judgments about it, and be sure that this form of engagement will help them secure their civic objectives.

4 Discussion and Implications

Citizens in the 21st century require a broad range of knowledge, skills, and attitudes to respond to local and global challenges. The research findings confirm that defining and understanding citizenship based on norms can only begin to reveal the picture of citizenship globally. First, and against conventional wisdom, most adolescents in the ICCS 2016 sample can be classified into comprehensive, duty-based, and socially-engaged profiles. These multiple configurations across societies indicate that young people endorse citizenship norms in different ways entailing different duties and forms of participation. This confirms the notions established in the mainstream literature (Dalton 2008). Moreover, the citizenship norms profiles presented in this book are difficult to classify into an all-encompassing “good citizen” category. For example, socially-engaged students in Europe do not support equal rights for immigrants at the same level that comprehensive and duty-based students do. In Asia, citizenship norms profiles are not necessarily related to the understanding of democracy. In this region, students in the comprehensive profile are more willing to engage in political action, including illegal protests. In Latin America, comprehensive and duty-based profiles lean more positively towards authoritarianism endorsement, especially at lower levels of civic knowledge. School environments with a high proportion of duty-based students tend to be more tolerant of corruption, regardless of students’ own citizenship norms endorsement. These different findings suggest the importance of understanding the endorsement of citizenship norms and the extent to which such endorsement could pose problems for different democratic ideals.

The research findings reported here challenge the common sense view that youth are not interested in politics. Most students are classified in the comprehensive profile that highly endorses discussion and reading about politics, while simultaneously endorsing conventional and less conventional forms of political participation. Thus, the present profile defies the either/or approach on citizenship norms (Hooghe and Oser 2015; Hooghe et al. 2016). Indeed, some students lean towards the duty-based profile, which contrasts with those who lean towards the socially-engaged profile, disregarding the more conventional forms of political participation. Nevertheless, the comprehensive students share with the socially-engaged profile most of its endorsement on civic engagement, without the need to disregard conventional forms of civic engagement, such as participation in national elections. The current results suggest that the contrast between de duty-based and engaged citizenship norms profiles found in the previous literature (Dalton 2008) need to be reviewed.

Presenting a comprehensive profile that may be regarded as nearer to the ideal of good citizenship, does not necessarily mean that students fare well in other dimensions of citizenship. Students in Latin America, in the comprehensive and duty-based profiles, are more likely to support authoritarian governments. Also, in this region, monitorial and anomic students show lower levels of support for authoritarian practices. Comprehensive students in Europe show higher support for equal rights of immigrants. In contrast, duty-based, anomic, and monitorial students in Europe are not supportive of equal rights for minorities. In Asia, students show high levels of understanding of democracy in terms of threats and rights, but their level of understanding is not related to the profiles based on norms. Finally, when analyzing the likelihood of Asian students to take part in protests, it seems that comprehensive students do not see protest as the only way of engaging in politics, but as one of the tools available to push for political changes. It seems that while students may have an image of the ideal good citizen, it does not imply other desirable citizenship features. The interplay between citizenship norms endorsement, attitudes, democratic beliefs, knowledge, and civic engagement is not simple and requires further study.

Citizenship norms are not endorsed in a vacuum. Different national characteristics are related to the citizenship profiles, suggesting that country features may help to shape citizenship norms. Variables such as the type of regime or the region of the country, a distal proxy of culture, may be associated with how students endorse citizenship norms. Therefore understanding cultural and political contexts is essential in modeling citizenship. Definitions of good citizenship need to be understood against the background of these contexts.

Considering how the different profiles relate to other citizenship variables is essential for the development of education and youth policies. These findings call for a broader notion of civic education beyond civic knowledge, which includes opportunities for developing better attitudes towards others. In the same vein, these findings also call for a careful balance in the school curriculum, in which civic knowledge, understanding of democracy, the critical use of social media in politics, and global citizenship issues are an integral part of the preparation of citizens for the 21st century.

School practices are shown to be important for citizenship norms endorsement across different regions. Open classroom discussion and civic learning opportunities seem to promote more complex forms of citizenship norms endorsement. These two factors also promote civic knowledge among students, which helps students understand democracy better and protect them from endorsing anti-democratic beliefs and tolerance of corruption. Thus, these school practices help to prepare students for the citizenry life.

Political regimes around the world may not respond to the needs and expectations of their societies. In such contexts, the use of protests is a tool that society and youth have at hand to exert pressure on political systems when they lack governmental transparency, experience corruption, suffer from human rights violations, and substantially depart from democratic ideals. Protests, while not always the most preferred form of civic engagement, are a political and democratic tool demanding governments to act in specific directions. Its democratic role should be recognized, and civic and citizenship education should include it as a relevant topic.

Finally, the findings on the relationship between school variables and the student profiles suggest substantive lessons for education policy. First, it is necessary to change approaches to schooling, considering it as an essential place for both the development of future citizens and the action of pre-adult citizens. Students should be able to participate in lively classroom discussions, experience civic learning opportunities at school, and engage in school processes that represent opportunities to exercise citizenship skills. In order to accomplish this, it is necessary to develop programs that allow schools to become more open to the development of different participatory processes in different instances—not only in governing student bodies. However, it is also necessary to improve research in this area to ensure that any decision is based on empirical evidence about the efficacy of different programs. Moreover, as explained below, developing robust theories and empirical evidence about how different dimensions of citizenship are interconnected is crucial to improve the design and implementation of programs aimed at students’ citizenship.

At the same time there needs to be a renewed focus on nurturing civic knowledge as well as decision-making skills related to social media and political engagement. A key challenge in doing this is the use of effective pedagogies both in school (with more open classroom discussion and learning opportunities) and outside the school (promoting discussions with peers and families). Participation is an important civic skill but it needs to be informed whether it is about active participation in the community or participation through social media.

5 Limitations and Future Research

The research reported here has limitations that should be taken into account. First, the results presented here are observational and not experimental, which means they show associations between variables. As such the study design does not guarantee causal interpretations. Second, the analysis focused on specific contextual issues considered of high importance due to the current challenges faced by the different regions in the political and social arenas. As a result, it was possible to pose relevant questions for each region. Among the many relevant topics, the authors decided to study those considered more important according to their knowledge and priorities. These priorities are likely to change over time and what was found in each region, may not be generalizable to other regions.

Further research is needed to better understand how citizenship across countries and regions, interplays with the national versus the global notions of citizenship. Finally, it is important to note that the results presented here represent a picture taken at one point in time. The research community does not have abundant evidence on how young people change their disposition towards good citizenship as they grow up. Besides, the research has focused on the notions of good citizenship presented in ICCS 2016. What is needed in the future is longitudinal research that can address the issue of development of citizenship norms over time.

Future research in this area requires further theoretical and empirical developments. First, it is necessary to produce theories, and conceptual models explaining the relationship between the different aspects of citizenship, including civic knowledge, support for authoritarianism, understanding of democracy, tolerance to corruption, and support for equal rights for minority groups, among other research topics. The research reported here has made a start on this agenda, but further work is needed.

In the same vein, it is necessary to propose more sophisticated theoretical models and research methods to test how school variables relate to citizenship outcomes. Research on citizenship and civic education involves the interest of different disciplines, including political science, law, sociology, education, psychology, and philosophy. As such, conceptual problems on citizenship topics may require researchers to move outside their discipline boundaries and undertake interdisciplinary research. The logic of hypothesizing mainly linear and direct relationships between school characteristics and citizenship outcomes may be a strategy that ignores the interplay of school and student. Additionally, our conceptual models should carefully weigh the context in which youth and schools live, how political cultures and practices impose a limit on what schools can do when the law, institutions, and societies as a whole are far from the ethical ideal of democracy.

All in all, the study of citizenship is not simple. The nuances and complexities of this topic should not be sacrificed in favor of mere parsimony. In this scenario, the craftsmanship of explaining results and ideas, are key. Researchers are exhorted to be creative to handle this complexity, and carefully express themselves to get their points across. Otherwise, simplistic models will be used to produce the wrong policy recommendations, aiming to shape student’s citizenship. Increasing knowledge of citizenship through research requires a conceptual and methodological effort, the present book aimed to honor such a task.