Conference Program

Formal Civic Education and Democratic Education Through Direct Experience Within the School Place : a Productive Tension or Virtuous Interplay? A Qualitative Survey in 10 French-speaking Belgian Schools.

Building on the results on a one-year sociological research on school democracy pedagogical practices and devices in French-speaking Belgium, our contribution focuses on the relationship between formal civic and democratic education (formal teaching of rights, institutions, and rules of citizenship distributed across various subjects) and democratic education through practice (direct experience of participation, actual engagement in projects, speaking out, collective decision-making).

In relation to the theme of this symposium, our contribution seeks to broaden the analytical lens by examining the interplay between formal education practices and the concrete participatory devices designed to foster the direct experience of democracy in schools (a dimension which has been politically promoted in French-Speaking Belgium in recent years, since the “Pacte pour un Enseignement d’Excellence” was voted).

Based on a qualitative survey conducted in ten (primary and secondary) schools, through observations, in-deph interviews with principals, teachers, and focus groups with students, we demonstrate that these two approaches coexist to varying degrees in schools without ever fully harmonizing. These ten schools were grouped into four clusters based on their degree and modalities of implementation of democratic principles, highlighting the tensions, obstacles, and dynamics at work in contrasting settings.

To the question of formal democratic education and education through action, our research reveals that these two approaches constitute a dialectical tension that runs deep in the way all schools conceive, organize, and implement democracy. This tension manifests itself in very different ways depending on the contexts observed. The contexts in the schools in the first cluster (those that are relatively new to democratic issues) focus mainly on formal learning; civic language is used, but opportunities to practice democracy remain marginal or symbolic. In intermediate configurations, projects exist but are not always linked to formal learning or existing mechanisms. In the most advanced schools, the two approaches mutually reinforce each other: participatory mechanisms are used as venues for civic learning, and formal learning gives reflexivity to lived practices. This virtuous interplay produces both firmly rooted learning and experienced notions of lived democracy.