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Enacting citizenship research at The Open University's (OU) Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance (CCIG) is helping to re-define the idea of citizenship by contributing to policy and public debates across Europe. These research ideas are being used by European policymakers to reform European citizenship policies. Activists across Europe are increasingly using the research to give them a vocabulary through which they can understand their collective activism as European citizenship.
Through active engagement in policy processes, systems research at Lincoln produced a sustained change in governmental and third sector approaches to citizenship education and hence citizen participation. Translating and refining the initial concepts, a network of Third Sector organisations and universities (including the researchers) ran successful pilot projects to benefit more than 1,300 people. This led to the inclusion of the `Take Part' concept in three government White Papers. Pathways to impact were two national learning frameworks, an £8.7 million programme (2009-2011), and a £0.77m capacity building cluster (2008-2013). The programme reached over 18,000 people nationally, who became more effectively involved in local democracy.
Research by Davies and others at York has clarified the views and understandings of stakeholders of `citizenship' in the context of citizenship education, and developed the case for an approach that has a strong conceptual core (inspired by political literacy and incorporating influences that emphasise communities and identities at local, national and global levels) and which is contemporary, public, participative, and reflective. Through UK and international networking and community building exercises this characterization of citizenship education has impacted on: curriculum policy discussions; classroom practice through the development of teaching materials; teacher educators including initial and in-service teacher education; and the work of professional organisations concerned with citizenship education in schools and beyond.