Chapter 3: Re-Discovering Democracy: Putting Action (Back) into Active Citizenship and Praxis (Back) into Practice

National public discussion in Australia about citizenship, democracy, and education is over 20 years old, beginning with a senate inquiry precipitated ostensibly by the Bi-Centenary of White Settlement/Occupation in 1988. This resulted in recommendations for improvement in school curricula, pedagogy, and teacher preparation. While the federal government had no direct responsibility for these issues (as they were constitutionally devolved to the states), it formed a Civic Experts Group that prepared a strategic plan for a national program resulting in the development and implementation of the Discovering Democracy (DD) program.

The debate over democracy in education (Lund & Carr, 2008) has been characterized in terms of representative versus participatory democracy, with the former highlighting electoral processes—thin democracy—and the latter focusing on critical engagement and social justice or thick democracy.¹Thin democratic teaching focuses on activities such as students contributing food to a food drive or in a more active participatory manner organizing a food drive for the poor, while thick democratic teaching would explore why people are hungry and then empower students to act to make decisions about and to solve its root causes (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004).