Citizenship education in teacher training: A systematic review

Abstract

Highlights:

– Research on citizenship education in teacher education is a broad and complex field.

– There is a need for systematic reviews of the studies developed at the international level in which areas they are being deployed.

– The results of this review (years 2017-2022) indicate five thematic dimensions in the studies.

– The most frequent are those linked to teaching strategies and resources or teacher conceptions.

Purpose: The aim of this article is to present a systematic review of empirical research developed in the field of citizenship education in teacher education.

Design/methodology/approach: This study performs a systematic review, descriptive and critical in nature, of 62 studies present in the Web of Sciences and Scopus after a comprehensive analysis, using a decision tree, of what was published in the years 2017-2022.

Findings: The results show five major thematic dimensions in the selected studies: teaching strategies and resources; teachers’ conceptions; teaching content; teacher education programs; and design of teaching resources. The studies are unevenly distributed in the dimensions described, with the majority focusing on teaching strategies and resources.

Practical implications: This research offers an analysis of the issues addressed in research on citizenship education and teacher education, which allows us to know the field of research in-depth and to outline the less explored topics.