Citizenship as Privilege and Power: Australian Educators’ Lived Experiences as Citizens

Citizenship and citizenship education have been topics of considerable debate in many countries over the past 2 decades in both public and academic discourses. Scholars have raised concerns that increasing diversity in multi-cultural societies and globalization challenge current conceptualizations and practices of citizenship. Policy makers and the public in the United States and in many other countries, such as Australia, are debating the rights of citizens and the changing nature of the polity due to increasing immigration. The scholarly and public debates are an attempt to reconceptualize citizenship and citizenship education to address these concerns. This article contributes to this debate by describing how educators, as mediators of constructions of citizenship in the education system and specifically in the classroom, perceive their lived experiences as citizens in an era of globalization. In essence, understanding educators' lives as citizens, their political, civic, and social acts, may lead to greater understanding of how they can connect citizenship as a public, engaging experience with the curriculum and classroom. (Contains 14 footnotes.)