Learning democracy in a new secondary school

Abstract

This article presents, first, the theoretical framework developed in a three-year research project that was designed to enable the authors to analyse the characteristics and quality of democracy in 10 centres (five primary schools for children aged from 3 to 12 and five secondary schools for children aged from 12 to 16). Second, students and teachers of one of the participating schools in the region of Barcelona explained their experience of participation as a way of living democratic citizenship education. Last, the article analyses what the authors have learned from this secondary school, as well as a number of research conclusions that allow one to understand some of the important aspects of how students live their condition of democratic citizenship in the school itself.