Citizenship Education in the European Curricula

Recent comparative studies made in different European countries, emphasize the inclusion of citizenship in the curriculum as a specific topic, using different approaches and learning methods. According to Eurydice (2005), this topic can be offered as an independent subject that can be mandatory or optional, or integrated in one or more subjects. It also includes the ability to teach the contents in a cross-curricular way, so that the citizenship education's principles appear in every area of the curriculum. Likewise, the citizenship education's objectives are formulated in a different way in each country, according to the national context, traditions, cultural heritage and above all, depending of the curricular approach. In this paper we analyze different European curricula, to know how they work with the citizenship education, and we establish reference frameworks that can be useful to be included in a curricular level.