About Us
citizED is an organisation, previously funded by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA). It is a collaboration within higher education for all providers of initial teacher education in England.
citizED is organised principally around teacher education in primary, secondary, cross curricular, post 16 and community involvement contexts with outputs in the form of conferences, seminars, workshops, research papers and practical resources for teaching. citizED is promoting a number of specific research initiatives, including work on assessment in teacher education for citizenship. An international journal of citizenship and teacher education was launched by citizED in July 2005. citizED is working in partnership with a wide variety of individuals and organisations including the Association for Citizenship Teaching (ACT).
We have published a brochure which details our success and achievements and also raises issues for our future work as a Citizenship association in higher education. This brochure (in PDF format) is available for download.
Those resources funded directly be the TDA are subject to the Open Government Licence Agreement http://www.tda.gov.uk/school-leader/school-improvement/teacher-development-hub/~/media/resources/teacher-development-hub/guidance-open-government-licence.pdf.
Main Contacts
citizED’s Director is Professor James Arthur, Head of School of Education, University of Birmingham (email j.arthur@bham.ac.uk). The Deputy Director is Dr Ian Davies of the University of York. (Tel 01904 433452, email id5@york.ac.uk). The website and its content are managed by Dr Andrew Peterson, Canterbury Christ Church University (Tel 01227 767700 ext. 3844, email andrew.peterson@canterbury.ac.uk).
Aims
Building on the many strengths of the ITT citizED PROJECT the following list outlines the general goals, purposes and principles of citizED:
- Improving the content and dissemination of materials for citizenship ITT;
- Strengthening ITT provision by providing student teachers with additional opportunities to improve their citizenship subject knowledge during and after the course (NQT year);
- Reviewing the extent to which the selection criteria of providers takes account of applicants experience and understanding of citizenship issues and activities;
- Developing a common self-assessment tool for early identification of the gaps in subject knowledge in student teachers of citizenship based on the statutory requirements of the Citizenship Order;
- Developing partnerships and links with the newly formed subject association in citizenship education together with the principal citizenship organisations;
- Providing resources that assist in training that go beyond presenting the knowledge content of citizenship by supporting active teaching and learning styles;
- Ensuring that citizenship education is effectively linked to the national priorities, e.g. for Key Stage 3, inclusion, special educational needs, literacy strategy, raising standards, cross-curricular themes, ‘education for character’, etc;
- Supporting all ITT providers to enable trainees to meet the needs of pupils from a wide range of diverse backgrounds;
- Consolidating and adding to the research base of what constitutes effective practice in supporting citizemnship teaching and learning needs;
- Developing partnerships and links between HEIs, SCITTs and other providers, with LEAs and schools;
- Continue to develop a systematic review of citizenship education in ITT (EPPI). 3 Objectives: These purposes and general principles lead to the following objectives:
- To review and build the professional knowledge base of teacher educators and develop the subject knowledge expertise of ITT providers to ensure high quality training in citizenship education;
- To identify effective practices in citizenship teacher education and review relevant research in the field, disseminating this to ITT providers in order to strengthen ITT provision and raise the quality of teaching citizenship education in schools;
- To develop strategies for how student teachers might be trained to manage active learning in school and community – given that there is less of a traditional teaching role and more of a co-ordination role working in partnership with others in and out of school;
- To provide a major web site for teacher educators in Higher Education (HE) and schools together with student teachers in citizenship education;
- To establish effective links electronically for shared ITT purposes and promote co-operative and interactive learning. This will also ensure that providers are informed about developments in citizenship education;
- To consider whether all teachers undertaking initial teacher training might be assisted with some citizenship training as part of either their subject area or professional studies and what forms this might take;
- Commission best practice projects/articles in citizenship that build national research capacity through the involvement of a range of experienced and inexperienced researchers and which raise the quality of practice in ITT contexts and in schools;
- Develop strategies for how trainee teachers might be trained in a wide variety of modes (‘traditional’, flexible, GTP, etc.) and contexts (both urban and rural) to manage teaching and learning in school that meets the needs of all pupils from whatever geographical, linguistic, cultural or socio-economic background;
- Address the needs of those who are new to teacher training, and those who are not supported in traditional institutions – those working in schools as mentors in GTP and RTP programmes and those in SCITTs