Pearson Education Canada - Citizenship: Issues and Action

Citizenship Home > Support Material > Unit Description

A multi-week plan that uses experiential learning to teach about the three kinds of citizenship.Teams of 3-4 students use their rights, responsibilities and experience as citizens to accomplish something for the common good. They start by choosing an issue they all care about, pick a goal and plan how to reach it. In planning their action, they learn about how society works. In carrying it out, they learn to use all of their skills and experience, and all the differences between a textbook and the real world. The teacher needs to be flexible about the order in which the contents of the course is presented, but the format actually requires less preparation time that a traditional series of classes about civics. The unit also can integrate information from a number of classes, including history and Canadian and international studies.

The class can be divided into at least 5 groups, working on making some change at the organizational, local, provincial, federal and international levels. Once those groups are created, there is classroom time for teamwork, as well as class-wide learning strategies. The political actions can be used for the volunteer requirement for high school.

Prior Learning Required

All content specific to Civics is listed in suggested themes. Each activity described below lists prior learning necessary. In general, the unit is intended to build on general knowledge.

Time Required

As stated in activities' guide, for a total of 13 hours, excluding classroom lectures, readings, films, and student reports.

Definition of Political Action

Political action is a planned series of acts that are carefully thought out and then carried out in order to change something in the political system, broadly defined. It is a way of doing things that is particularly helpful to those people who have little power or money. It can be used by anyone. It calls on an individual's analytical intelligence, but also creativity and practicality. It makes for better citizens, more involved people who have a sense of their own power, but it doesn't make life easier for politicians, who have a lot more people to keep happy.

Components of political action:

Goal: what the students would like to see changed. Examples: having a bike lane on a street, having more money for the school library, getting the provincial voting age lowered, asking for a recount in a federal election.

Tactics: what the students actually do to get something changed. Examples: presenting their case to a meeting of the city council, asking the principal or the school board to change the budget, writing the Attorney General of Ontario, writing the Chief Returning Officer of Canada, or organizing a protest, putting up a website to take a poll, etc.

Core idea this is the image or slogan that students use to help them remind themselves of what they are trying to achieve, and be better able to roll with the punches without losing track of the goal. Examples: Gandhi's 'Quit India' slogan for getting the British to leave in 1948; McDonald's corporate slogan 'We do it all for you'; Churchill's 'We shall attack the underbelly of Europe' for the second (winning) invasion of Europe during WWII.

Values: what is motivating the students, what is important to them. Examples: extra-curricular activities were important to Montreal high school students, and they had massive demonstrations in the streets. Martin Luther King Jr. wanted justice for African-Americans, and he knowingly gave his life for his people.

Strands and Expectations

Expectations/Strands	Informed Citizenship	Purposeful Citizenship	Active Citizenship
Overall Expectations	demonstrate and understanding of the reasons for the decision at issue	reflect on the various motivations of all the players involved in the decision at issue, including values, rights and responsibilities	strategies of research, inquiry and action, critical and creative thinking, decision making, conflict resolution and collaboration
Specific Expectations	demonstrate an understanding of the decision-making and policy-making process at the level of government or organization in question	reflect on the personal reasons for commitment to the action and on the values, both individual and shared by the group, that support that commitment, on the meaning of the experience of actualized rights and responsibilities	construct a reasoned plan of research into the issue, develop a plan of action that is founded on facts, evaluate formal and informal sources of information, evaluate the information's completeness, reliability and validity, choose appropriate methods of cooperation or confrontation