Abstract:

In the 1990s, with the outburst of the concern for Citizenship Education, controversial issues again have become a focus of educational interest. Over the following years the curricula of various countries have launched public programs that recognize that the knowledge and skills taught in school are divorced from daily life situations of young people and complex problems of the modern world (Young, Commins and Kington, 2002). From Dewey, it has been claimed a teaching of the social sciences to promote the development of reflective thinking applied to real problems of society as a way of learning how to participate in democracy. In this regard, in recent years, Citizenship Ecucation has become an integrative concept of different educational goals that converge in an emancipatory learner-centered education.

Indeed, Education for participatory democratic citizenship as on educational purpose overcomes fragmentation transversalities of the different purposes and could become an element of curriculum integration. Within this new interest in educating for a democratic and participatory citizenship, it has focused on the treatment of social and environmental problems arising from the belief that education should be directed towards the formation of a critical and socially engaged citizenship, helping to understand social reality and its problems, to build social thinking to manage the complexity of this reality, and encourages participation in the construction of democracy and improving coexistence (Canal et al., 2012).