Although education for democratic citizenship has long been a powerful rationale for social studies education, researchers still report a significant gap between this purpose and what is really taught in classrooms. Explanations of this phenomenon vary, but literature on citizenship education (CE) research has largely interpreted this gap as a result of (preservice) teachers’ political worldviews or lack of civic experiences. Other evidence, however, suggests that teacher socialization processes generate conventions about what is necessary, possible, and reasonable in CE that go beyond teachers’ political views and behaviors. This mixed-method study, developed at a Spanish university, aims to explore the understandings of CE shared by preservice teachers with different political ideologies and levels of civic engagement. The findings of this study have deep implications for teacher education courses aimed at fostering CE and the curricular inclusion of current social issues.

Current curricula, which organize initial teacher education programs, include, among their stated purposes, preparing teachers to help their future students to grow as global, participatory, and ethically engaged citizens. However, we know little about how teacher educators prepare their students to be citizens. This article analyses how a group of teacher educators from a public university in Spain understand citizenship education, exploring the net of metaphors and idealized visions they seem to share, regardless of their formal conceptualizations. The discussion of the findings considers the implicit hierarchies of these shared assumptions that define what is deemed as real, desirable, and possible in citizenship education. Implications for teacher education are also contemplated.

Las escaramuzas dialécticas provocadas por el flamante discurso de las "competencias" no han contribuido a sacar el debate sobre el conocimiento escolar de su atonía actual. Entre otras razones, por su insuficiente perspectiva, por sus notorias omisiones y por reducir los términos de este debate a un dualismo superficial y desmemoriado. Urge, por ello, seguir repensando y problematizando el curriculum. A tal fin, lo que este artículo plantea es ampliar la mirada con otros niveles de análisis que permitan hacer aflorar y "desfamiliarizar" las presuposiciones tácitas acerca de la naturaleza y la dinámica del curriculum que acostumbran a darse por sentadas. En este sentido, se argumentará en favor de la necesidad imperiosa de otro género de aproximación "ontológica", diferente de la convencional pero cautelosa asimismo con algunas derivas postconvencionales.

Este artículo pretende, en primer lugar, esbozar una interpretación original que dé claves para comprender la emergencia de la tradición curricular centenaria que ha defendido una enseñanza centrada en problemas sociales relevantes. Según se evidenciará, su nacimiento y desenvolvimiento no pueden entenderse al margen de la crisis del orden liberal decimonónico y de las luchas por una “democracia social”, que, entre otras aspiraciones, albergaban la de un sistema escolar más igualitario e inclusivo. En ese contexto, el currículum centrado en problemas surgirá como una alternativa global e integrada al academicismo disciplinar dominante en las aulas, en aras de la redefinición de la “educación general” de todos y todas en una democracia. En relación con ello, en estas páginas se intentará calibrar adecuadamente el sentido y alcance de esta alternativa dentro del campo de fuerzas en conflicto que ha sido, y sigue siendo, el currículum. En segundo lugar, se pasará revista a las reacciones y los obstáculos de distinto tipo (institucionales, gremiales, macro y micro-políticos) interpuestos en su camino. Finalmente, se lanzarán algunas reflexiones sobre su presente y futuro. This article aims, firstly, to outline an original interpretation that helps us to understand the emergence of the centenarian school tradition that has defended a problem-centered curriculum. As we will show, its birth and development cannot be understood apart from the crisis of the nineteenth-century liberal order and the struggles for a “social democracy”, which, among other aspirations, included that of a more egalitarian and inclusive school system. In this context, the problem-centered curriculum will emerge as a comprehensive and integrated alternative to the dominant disciplinary academicism, for the sake of redefining “general education for all” in a democracy. In relation to the above, these pages will attempt to properly appreciate the meaning and scope of this alternative within the field of conflicting forces that is the curriculum. Secondly, a review will be made of the reactions and obstacles of different types (institutional, professional, macro and micro-political) that have been placed in its way. Finally, some reflections on its present and future will be offered.

The current global context has been described by the scientific community as a time of both ecological and social emergency. In this scenario, a reform of the teaching profession is proposed, and its rationale is outlined in the Document of the 24 reform proposals for the improvement of the teaching profession of the Ministry of Education. Taking the aforementioned document as a reference, in this paper we try to reflect on and share some ideas about what a new teaching professionalism could be like, one that is aware of and co-responsible for alleviating the profound eco-social tensions we are experiencing. And we do so using everything we have learned in our university teaching over our years of experience, with a special focus on the last two academic years, in which we have implemented profound changes in our teaching, driven by the need and urgency of events. For this reason, our first proposal is not to discard everything we have learned during this time and to analyse which aspects of the new practices we want to preserve and to which places we would not like to return once the pandemic is over. In this article, we propose four elements for a new professionalism that, we believe, should be at the heart of the debate on new teacher training plans: care, experimentation and the reflective professional, collaboration and trust, and dialogue as a habitat for teacher work. El actual panorama mundial ha sido descrito por la comunidad científica como un momento de emergencia a la vez ecológica y social. En este escenario, se plantea una reforma de la profesión docente cuyos principios fundamentales se bosquejan someramente en el Documento de las 24 propuestas de reforma para la mejora de la profesión docente del Ministerio de Educación. Tomando como referencia al citado documento, en este escrito tratamos de reflexionar y compartir algunas ideas sobre cómo podría ser una nueva profesionalidad docente consciente y corresponsable en el trabajo de aliviar las profundas tensiones ecosociales que vivimos. Y lo hacemos utilizando todo lo aprendido en nuestra docencia universitaria en nuestros años de experiencia, con una especial atención a estos dos últimos cursos, en los que hemos implementado cambios profundos en nuestra docencia impelidos por la necesidad y la urgencia de los acontecimientos. Por eso, nuestra primera propuesta es la de no desechar todo lo aprendido en este tiempo y analizar qué aspectos de las nuevas prácticas queremos conservar y a qué lugares no nos gustaría regresar una vez superada la pandemia. En este artículo, nosotros proponemos cuatro elementos para una nueva profesionalidad que, creemos, debieran constituir ejes del debate sobre los nuevos planes de la formación de docentes: el cuidado, la experimentación y el profesional reflexivo, la colaboración y la confianza, y el diálogo como hábitat para el trabajo docente.

The international organizations that set the agenda for educational policies have incorporated among their principles the desirability of intercultural education. The current Spanish legislation (LOMCE) has accordingly done so, at least as a mere formality. At the same time, however, it has instituted an accountability regime based on standards and external standardized assessments. We wonder if such a «regime» actually encourages or deters intercultural citizenship education. Since this law is not yet fully operational in Spain, this article seeks evidence through an original historical analysis of two British curriculum projects, interrupted by the implementation of a similar institutional arrangement in England after the approval of the Education Reform Act in 1988.