Making citizens in the classroom: an urban geography of citizenship education?

This paper considers the construction of young people’s experiences in city schools through a new curriculum subject, Citizenship Education, in secondary schools in England. It demonstrates how citizen identities are constructed through discursive practices in the classroom and are shaped by geographies of education. The placebased identities formed within urban schools both refl ect and refute the inequalities inherent in the selective education system which pertains in many UK cities today. A discussion of the urban context in which the research was undertaken is followed by an analysis of empirical research in two schools in and around Bristol, south-west England. This explores the ways in which particular place-based subjectivities are actively and knowingly enacted by teachers and pupils in the classroom through their talk about what constitutes the ideal citizen.