A Comparative Analysis of Teacher Education Students' Views about Citizenship Education

Citizenship preparation is recognized as a main goal of education (Parker, 2009); however, some individuals believe that only social studies teachers are required to prepare students for citizenship. At a Southeastern university, 77 teacher education students consisting of 28 men and 49 women from various content areas were interviewed on civic education. As the theoretical framework, interviews were based on the cognitive strategy use model applied to civic activity (Martin, 2005). Descriptive statistics indicate that the various content majors viewed citizenship preparation with different lenses based on their national organizations' goals. Whereas some participants opposed citizenship preparation and emphasized a need to focus on only content, the majority discussed how citizenship preparation and mastery of content were congruent with their content area organizations' national goals.