Date Thesis Awarded

5-2020

Access Type

Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only

Degree Name

Bachelors of Arts (BA)

Department

Government

Advisor

Clayton Clemens

Committee Members

Paul Manna

Mark Greer

Abstract

How government opinion can influence the creation of citizenship education content has long been a significant question in the field of political socialization. In recent years, the European Union has become a particularly relevant institution and target in this process, as the EU has grown in its political salience. But have governments attempted to influence the attitudes of citizenship education content about the EU for potential political benefits? In this study, I use a combination of spatial content analysis and textual analysis on party manifestos and citizenship education textbooks from England, Scotland, and Nordrhein-Westfalen to highlight whether political opinions on the EU of governments correlate with the opinions on the EU expressed in classroom materials, and if government opinions appear to have an attitudinal influence on citizenship education about the EU. This study revealed that a positively correlation does exist on average between the attitudes on the EU in government manifestos and citizenship textbooks, but also that there are many exceptions to that overall relationship which highlight significant differences in the manner and details of that relationship. These differences further highlight that while the overall relationship may positively correlate, attitudes towards specific topics on the EU can vary significantly between the Government’s opinions and those of citizenship education.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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