
These green doors mark the cadet entrance of 330 Danforth Tech Air Cadet Squadron, housed in Danforth Collegiate and Technical Institute, a secondary school in Toronto, Ontario. Originally an Army Cadet Corps, cadets have paraded at this location since 1940. Photo courtesy of author.
This is the fourth entry in a monthly series on Thinking Historically. See the Introduction here.
Rebecca Evans
Our conceptions about good citizenship vary. Context, particularly space and time, matter. In citizenship education, young people participate and deepen their understanding of how to make change in their communities. They do so across various domains, inclusive of formal politics, political advocacy, civic society, and grassroots/community participation. Scholars Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kahne developed the What Kind of Citizen framework to capture different orientations to the concept of good citizenship.[1] Debates persist however and scholars agree that more education for supporting democratic citizenship is needed – and that knowledge, skills, and participation are significant elements of citizenship education.
In this blog post, I share the preliminary findings from my study on experiences in the Air Cadet program related to core concepts of citizenship education – agency, responsibility, and civic engagement. I focus in particular on the different ways participants make change in their communities today and how they relate these enactments as citizens to their experiences as youth in Air Cadets. This was a qualitative study. Over one hundred adult participants completed a survey. From the respondents, seventeen diverse participants were selected for in-depth study, with a view of building a deeper understanding of how the program functions as a civic educator for participants of diverse identities, including Indigeneity, race, gender, sexuality, religion, socio-economic status, and ability.