Citizenship practices and political literacy in young people

The UNESCO Centre, Ulster University, in collaboration with ARK, developed module questions for inclusion in the 2018 Kids’ Life and Times (KLT) and Young Life and Times (YLT) surveys. The questions were designed to explore children and young people’s experience of citizenship, civic participation and political literacy, and are both relevant and timely. 2017 marked ten years since the introduction of a new curriculum which included the learning areas of Personal Development and Mutual Understanding (PDMU) at Key Stages 1 and 2, and Local and Global Citizenship (LGC) at Key Stages 3 and 4. 2018 marked 20 years since the signing of the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement; 2019 marked 50 years since the voting age was reduced to 18 years; it also marked two and a half years without a functioning Executive and Assembly, with local politics providing a less than wholly positive model of effective democracy. Within the divisive landscape of Northern Ireland (NI), it was envisaged that, by addressing themes of conflict, d diversity, democracy, rights and freedoms, the incremental roll-out of PDMU and LGC would equip young people with the knowledge, skills and aptitudes that might allow them to participate in the process of constructing what it meant to be a citizen in Northern Ireland in the twenty-first century.