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Proposal Type: Individual Paper 
Domain: Teaching and Teacher Education 
SIG: Teaching and Teacher Education 
Type Submitted Paper 
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Title Rethinking a Deliberative Context for Teacher Education from the Aims of Citizenship Education in the New Quebec Education Program
Abstract The Quebec Education Program asks teachers to help students build and question – through a deliberative process – their own comprehension of history, society, and community life instead of insisting on an already established factual content, a dogma. This generates a public debate in Quebec about history teaching and citizenship education. In this condition, many teachers are reluctant to apply such a deliberative model of active learning. After describing this obstacle, we explain how future teachers can proceed to experiment by themselves the effectiveness of those methods, or how they can bring corrections and improvements to unanticipated weaknesses of methods that could be detected in concrete situations. We shall contend that no one can prepare future teachers to help students built their own comprehension without developing critical thinking and integrating this objective into teacher education programs. Indeed, it is not possible to cultivate deliberative and democratic virtues without permitting future teachers to think critically and collectively about different or contradictory interpretations of social, historical and political realities. Consequently, developing critical autonomy is one of the most important aims of teacher education, even though future teachers learn to become much more critical vis-à-vis all sorts of institutional authority and aware of their potential influence on the development of education programs. Some examples of critical deliberation will be derived from different pedagogical activities proposed to future teachers in a new course Education for Citizenship which has been implemented at Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres for more than two years.
Summary We can observe that the new high school Programme de formation de l’ecole quebecoise (hereafter Quebec Education Program) – progressively implemented (since 2005) throughout the province of Quebec (Canada) – puts a lot of emphasis on the development of cross-curricular competence to communicate appropriately according to a democratic procedure of deliberation. In such a condition, a large number of French-speaking universities are attempting to integrate new courses into their teacher education programs. Some universities now offer citizenship education courses whose aims are to initiate a new generation of high school teachers to democratic strategies: self-governing activities, decision-taking processes, etc. Indeed, the capacity to create a comfort zone for active learning and democratic deliberation in classrooms has become a significant objective for teacher education. From high school to university, a variety of lessons implemented in citizenship education are deliberation-oriented in their methods and their empirical results are often striking (Lefrancois, 2004; Schoem and Hurtado, 2001; Ravitch and Viteritti, 2001). However, we have to show how it is possible to prepare future teachers in such a way they teach the high school citizenship education program by referring to a deliberative approach and avoiding at the same time some obstacles. (1) An objection has been made against the new Quebec Education Program, and this criticism generates a permanent public debate in the province of Quebec about history teaching and citizenship education (Legault, 2006, p. A21): the new program invites teachers to help students build and question – through a deliberative process – their own comprehension of history, society, and community life – instead of insisting on an already established factual content – but teachers have not been prepared yet to assume all aspects of this new uneasy role. (2) Another criticism has been raised regarding the implementation of deliberation-oriented methods used by teachers with young persons (Barry, 2001, p. 229; Belzile, 1999, p. A13): there is an important danger of reproducing a high level of collective disorder and disturbance when students reason and discuss about their conflicting visions of community life and its evolution. In this condition, more than a few teachers are reluctant to apply such a deliberative model of active learning. After describing in detail these obstacles, we shall propose a solution to overcome each problem which has been identified. (1) Future teachers must be well-informed about individual, political and cultural rights, and the working of public institutions. This information is essential, but not sufficient to help future teachers question their own comprehension of history, society, and community life (Macedo, 2000; Gutmann, 1987). We shall contend that no one can prepare future teachers to help students built their own comprehension without developing critical thinking and integrating this objective into teacher education programs. Indeed, it is not possible to cultivate deliberative and democratic virtues without permitting future teachers to think critically and collectively about different or contradictory interpretations of social, historical and political realities. Consequently, developing critical autonomy is one of the most important aims of teacher education, even though future teachers learn to become much more critical vis-a-vis all sorts of institutional authority and aware of their potential influence on the development of education programs. Some examples of critical deliberation will be derived from different pedagogical activities proposed to future teachers in a new course Education for Citizenship which has been implemented at Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres for more than two years. (2) After presenting the well-known danger of collective disorder – which often occurs when teachers convert their classes into “communities of inquiry” (Lipman, 1988) and organize deliberative activities with their students – we will bring out two other difficulties to be solved: an elitist exclusion of certain participants while discussing, and a majority dictatorship that might lack consideration for dissident minorities. To prevent those problems, several teachers simply prefer not to start a free and open debate and keep full control of each step of the student learning process. But we think that it is the role of teacher education programs to offer an array of procedures and pedagogical strategies to which future teachers can refer to create a deliberative democracy in classrooms. Thus, we shall offer three methods to regulate the process of deliberation among students as free and equal participants: (a) inclusiveness as a procedural requirement, (b) ideal role-taking activities, and (c) second-order discussions on actual imperfections of public deliberation and intrinsic inequalities to be rectified in democracy. In addition, we shall explain how future teachers can proceed to experiment by themselves the effectiveness of those methods, or how they can bring corrections and improvements to unanticipated weaknesses of methods that could be detected in concrete situations. References BARRY, B. (2001), Culture and Equality. An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. BELZILE, D. (1999), “Qu’est l’enseignement devenu ? La panoplie de trucs developpes par les sciences de l’education deguise l’impuissance des institutions a offrir un rapport au monde significatif ”, in Le Devoir, May 8, p. A13. GUTMANN, A. (1987), Democratic Education, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press. LEFRANCOIS, D. (2004), “Sur quelle conception de la citoyennete edifier un modele de formation civique ? La reponse de la theorie de la democratie deliberative”, in F. Ouellet, ed., Quelle formation pour l’education a la citoyennete ?, Quebec, Les Presses de l’Universite Laval, p. 73-100. LEGAULT, J. (2006), “Education committee takes a dangerously political view of history”, in The Montreal Gazette, April 28, p. A21. LIPMAN, M. (1988), “Critical Thinking – What Can it Be ?”, in Educational Leadership, 16 (1), p. 38-43. MACEDO, S. (2000), Diversity and Distrust. Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press. Programme de formation de l’ecole quebecoise (Quebec Education Program) (2004), Gouvernement du Quebec, Ministere de l’Education. RAVITCH, D. and J. P. VITERITTI (eds.) (2001), Making Good Citizens. Education and Civil Society, New Haven, Yale University Press. SCHOEM, D. and S. HURTADO (eds.) (2001), Intergroup Dialogue. Deliberative Democracy in School, College, Community, and Workplace, Detroit, The University of Michigan Press.
Keywords Critical thinking
History education
Teacher education/development
Appendices
Authors
Name Surname Institution Country e-mail EARLI Number Presenting
David Lefrancois Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres Canada davidl@point-net.com   *  
Marc-Andre Ethier Universite de Montreal Canada marc-andre_ethier@sympatico.ca    
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