Competences for a democratic culture and intercultural dialogue News

London Met’s School of Psychology presents a research talk on a new education initiative by the council of Europe.

Date: 17 November 2015

Emeritus professor of psychology Martyn Barrett from the University of Surrey presents a talk on the new education initiative which aims to enhance the levels and quality of democratic engagement as well as active citizenship among young people across Europe.

His paper attempts to answer the question; how can national educational systems be more effectively harnessed to encourage democratic engagement and active citizenship among young people who are growing up within culturally diverse societies?

Professor Barrett’s research paper reports on a project currently being run by the Education Department of the Council of Europe. The project is developing a reference framework of the competences that young people require for active participation in democratic culture and intercultural dialogue, and a set of recommendations and guidelines on how the framework may be used in formal education to enhance participation among young people.

The work on the project began in 2014 and will continue until 2017 as it develops in four phases.

Phase one involved the development of a conceptual model identifying the competences citizens require to participate in democratic culture and intercultural dialogue. Phase two (currently under way) involves the development and validation of behavioural descriptors for each competence.

Phase three will be devoted to scaling these descriptors and in phase four documentation will be produced to explain how the competence model and the descriptors can be used to assist curriculum design, the design of instructional methods, and the development of new forms of assessment.

On completion, the reference framework will be presented to the education ministries of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe, who will be able to use and adapt the framework for use in their own education systems.

Professor Barrett’s paper will describe the model that has been developed so far, how national education policymakers have inputted to the project, and will consider the contribution the framework will make to the preparation of young people for active citizenship across Europe in the future.