Social Capital and Citizenship Education in Schools

Abstract

This paper provides preliminary evidence suggesting that Labour introduced citizenship lessons in schools because of its concern about perceived declining levels of social capital, and that the normative model of citizenship underpinning the curriculum is that which best corresponds to the concerns of social capital theorists. It also proposes an ideational approach to policy network analysis for analysing the introduction of the policy, with the concept of social capital, treated as a programmatic belief, regarded as the independent variable.