Cultural Mythology in Citizenship Education: The Case of Alberta/Canada
Creators: Kim, Juhwan
Publisher: name: University of Alberta Library
Year: 2022

<p>The social studies and history education research communities have paid a great deal of attention to citizenship and citizenship education. This dissertation, as both theoretical and empirical parts of that scholarly attention, delves deeper into the ways in which we attend to good citizenship in and for Alberta/Canada by focusing on two interrelated levels of education: a) the provincial education policy and curriculum contexts and b) the ways in which social studies and/or history teachers interpret and imagine good citizenship in and for Alberta/Canada. Based within my theoretical (re)configuration that provides a philosophical base of the key terms I use (i.e., ideology, historical-individual agency, imaginary, and cultural mythology), this dissertation offers a critical discourse analysis of the collected data sources from un/official documents for Alberta education and six experienced teachers. In so doing, this dissertation seeks to illustrate three critical points: (1) the contours of a dominant imaginary of Albertan/Canadian with its constitutive cultural mythology and their ontological and epistemological presuppositions that rest substantially upon particular ideologies (e.g., liberalism, (neoliberal) capitalism, and colonialism), (2) the ways in which cultural myths (e.g., diversity), as elements of a particular cultural mythology, both disguise and disseminate a monolithic and depoliticized version (and vision) of Canadian citizenship based within that dominant imaginary as neutral, legitimate, and universal, and (3) (social studies and/or history) teachers’ ongoing struggles that stem from their fraught and ambivalent relationships with that particular cultural mythology. With these illustrations, I attempt to elucidate not only unequal relations of power in that specific conception of citizenship and its undergirding ontological and epistemological beliefs that perpetuate systemic inequality and social discrimination in (but not limited to) Canadian society, but also teachers’ (and our) ongoing struggles over that specific conception of citizenship and identity that might inaugurate a springboard to dismantle a dominant imaginary of Albertan/Canadian with its constitutive cultural mythology.<br>
With all my effort to make sense of the ways in which we attend to good citizenship in and for Alberta/Canada, this dissertation strives to reveal cultural assumptions and biases regarding citizenship we as educators presume to teach. In doing so, I offer some important insights into the issues at the heart of the K-12 citizenship education in and beyond Canada germane to identity, citizenship, globalization, ideologies, and their entwined relationships. The value of doing so is not limited to disclosing current various educational issues and dynamics entwined with citizenship. Rather, the value in doing so is to provide curriculum scholars and teachers with the critical ways to think outside our inherited cultural biases about the (prevalent) meanings of citizenship and citizenship education. These critical ways, I believe, are essential to address unequal relations of power in such cultural biases and their undergirding ontological and epistemological beliefs, which is crucial to disrupt systemic inequality and social discrimination we all strive to resist. </p>