Teaching democracy for political action : on the aims of democracy education in Palestine

Abstract

This paper aims to identify and explicate the aims of democracy education, and to reach some agreement on the importance of these aims. It is divided into two parts. In the first theoretical part, a brief review of the works of some scholars who examined education and democracy is conducted in order to identify some of the important aims of democracy education. Subsequently, a classification of the aims of democracy education, emphasising teaching democracy for empowerment and political involvement, is presented. In the second empirical part, a report is presented on using the Delphi technique to reach consensus among key Palestinian educators about the important aims of democracy education in Palestine. It was found that two groups of independently working educators – namely, university professors and school teachers – shared the author’s priorities for democracy education.