Concerns about the resilience of democracy are accompanied by calls for schools to strengthen their citizenship education. This article describes the findings from the Dutch participation in an international comparative study in 2022 on the citizenship competences of young people in the second grade of secondary education. The findings are compared to countries similar to the Netherlands and to results from 2016. We focus in particular on social differences. Overall, the citizenship competences of Dutch students invariably lag behind those of peers in comparable countries. Regarding citizenship education, Dutch youth experience less of an open classroom climate for discussion than students in comparable countries. It is striking that there are relatively large differences between students in terms of sociodemographic background and educational track. Students’ citizenship knowledge strongly correlates with their perception of the openness of the classroom climate for discussion. Students’ expected electoral participation is most strongly correlated with indicators of their disposition toward engagement. The article concludes with a discussion of the findings and some policy recommendations.
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In urban areas space is limited. Different stakeholders can have very different ideas and visions on how a plot of land should be used. The R-Link research-project studies this topic. In this video, Dr. Melika Levelt (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences) will introduce a method from the R-Link project that takes into account the different views of stakeholders in urban space development. Melika will explain how this ‘stakeholder canvas’ may help stakeholders to ask each other the right questions, to identify new stakeholders, and to visualize views and visions in a coherent and helpful manner.
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The paper arguments that a design approach will be essential to the future of e-democracy and e-governance. This development is driven at the intersection of three fields: democracy, information technology and design. Developments in these fields will result in a new scale, new complexity and demands for new quality of democracy solutions. Design is essential to answer these new challenges. The article identifies a new generation of design thinking as a distinct new voice in the development of e-democracy and describes some of the consequences for democracy and governance. It argues that, to be able to design new solutions for e-democracy successfully, current approaches may be too narrow and a broader critical reflection is necessary for both designers and other stakeholders in the process.
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