Citizenship Education Practices of Politically Active Teachers in Porto Alegre, Brazil and Toronto, Canada

This research examined the ways politically active secondary teachers, involved either in formal politics or in social movements, practiced citizenship education in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and Toronto, Canada. My aim was to explore the complex ways and multiple spaces in which these teachers’ roles as both citizens and citizenship educators intersected within the local contexts. My premise is that the local political and educational contexts are critical in shaping citizenship education practices. These teachers are political actors, and it is in dynamic relation to local and national politics that they developed their political ideologies and values, particularly in terms of the ways that they understand the concepts of “democracy” and “citizenship” in relation to education. In this regard, I understood pedagogy as fundamentally political (see Ginsburg et al. 1992; Ginsburg 1995), which involves the values, ideologies, theories, and discourses surrounding teaching and schooling.