Citizenship Educational Policy: A Case of Russophone Minority in Estonia

Nikolai Kunitsõn and Leif Kalev
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Nikolai Kunitsõn: School of Governance, Law and Society, Tallinn University, 10120 Tallinn, Estonia
Leif Kalev: School of Governance, Law and Society, Tallinn University, 10120 Tallinn, Estonia

Social Sciences, 2021, vol. 10, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: In the contemporary era, societies are divided, and political polarization is increasing. One of the most powerful instruments the government can use is general standard education, specifically citizenship education. We will look at the case of Estonia, because Estonia’s main political cleavage is the ethnic cleavage between the Estonian and the Russophone community. Our main research question is as follows: How would it be possible to use democratic citizenship education to decrease in the future the socio-economic inequality between different communities in Estonia? We will outline the context of ethnic socio-economic inequality in Estonia and show how these differences have been at least partially influenced by the current education system in Estonia and how citizenship education can be used to reduce these inequalities in the future. We will conduct an empirical analysis of the curriculum, and this will be followed by semi-structured qualitative interviews. In the discussion, we will make suggestions to the current Estonian citizenship education policy and offer various insights into tackling this issue.

Keywords: citizenship education; inequality; minority education; democratic citizenship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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