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Fostering Civic Participation Through Youth Town Councils in Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

Luigina Mortari
Luigina Mortari*
Affiliation:
University of Verona
*
†Department of Education, University of Verona, via San Francesco 22, 37129 Verona, Italy. E-mail: luigina.mortari@univr.it
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Abstract

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One objective of environmental education is that of educating the young to play an active role as members of civil society. A way of promoting this kind of learning is that of engaging the young in participatory activities in which they can contribute to the conception and planning of a better quality of urban life.

This paper presents an educative experience based on the assumption that in order for the young to be empowered to become responsible citizens, it is important to grant them the role of “young citizens”, who actively contribute to the construction of a new way of thinking about the quality of urban life and where they are engaged in the production of ideas to be realised in the urban environment.

The educational research is framed in the phenomenological-hermeneutic theory of inquiry. The data have been collected from the analysis of the ideas expressed by the participants both in individual written reflections and in conversations in the classroom.

Keywords

civic responsibilitya good quality of lifeparticipationlaboratory of thinkingweb of schools.
Type
Viewpoint
Information
Australian Journal of Environmental Education , Volume 19 , 2003 , pp. 47 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2003

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