Citizenship education, truth and learning: some thoughts on professional deliberation

Through consideration of a classroom context observed as part of a PGCE student teacher’s professional development, reading as a learning activity is considered. It is proposed that ‘learning to read’ engages pupils in a critical social-cultural-political project. Through further analysis of a pupil response identified as ‘wrong’, learning in citizenship education is considered through the prism of realist and constructivist perspectives. Finally, current educational ‘good practice’ is identified as offering more than just ‘things to do in the classroom’; aspects are shown to be concordant with elements of constructivist thinking, thinking which potentially offers professionals a prism through which to examine practise. In short, this paper does not propose that teachers ‘become’ constructivist in orientation; rather it offers, as an example, how adopting various theoretical positions from which to deconstruct education can and does provide for alternative perspectives both on educational policy and personal-professional viewpoints.