Civic Education in Italy: Intended Curriculum and Students' Opportunity to Learn

Abstract

Civic Education is considered in Italy as one of the most important aims of school education as a whole. Nevertheless, available researches show the existence of a gap between intended curriculum and students' experience at school. Official Civic Education curricula, teaching practices and students' participation in the school life are presented with reference to official documents and to research results. Particular attention is paid to the results of the IEA Civic Education study that involved two different probability samples of students of lower and upper secondary school. The study results show that the Italian students of those school levels have an acceptable knowledge of the main principles governing the functioning of democratic societies, but not a sufficient grounding in certain fundamental aspects of the Italian political and institutional system.