Democratic citizenship and human rights education: A case of action research

The purpose of this research is to reveal new methods to improve the adults' skills of participation in democratic processes as active citizens. Correspondingly, the main research question of the study is whether an education to be given within the framework of the "A Manual on Human Rights Education with Young People" which prepared by the Council of Europe, can be used to improve the participation skills of university students in Turkey's condition. In this respect, our hypothesis is that democratic awareness and participation skills can be developed, especially among young people, through the trainings prepared within the framework of this manual. The manual, which was structured around sixteen different human rights issues, include forty-nine activities in order to develop the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes of young people on human rights. In this regard, our research aims to select the activities which are directly related to participation within forty-nine activities, to apply the selected activities to the students studying at the department of Political Science and Public Administration at Akdeniz University, then to evaluate the results obtained from this application, and thus, it aims to measure whether the applied trainings improve the awareness of participation on the students. In this study, the "action research" method, which is one of the qualitative research technique, was adopted as a method. By means of researchers and participants produce information together, action research method allows to shape the manual according to the needs, wishes and suggestions of adults during the project. The research was carried out on students studying in the department of Political Science and Public Administration at Akdeniz University. Five activities, which are directly related to the concept of citizenship and participation skills, are selected from the "A Manual on Human Rights Education with Young People" to be implemented in the research. In order to measure the effects of the activities about the participation skills of the students, semi-structured interviews were conducted before and after the training. In accordance with the data set obtained as a result of these interviews, the factors which affecting the democratic participation levels of the participants like; political knowledge, political interest, political self-efficacy, sense of civic duty, attitudes and values, willingness to participate in democracy etc., it has been determined that there is a positive change in these factors. The importance of this research is that it aims to present new methods for the development of students' participation skills. Because the only way for democracies to function in a healthy and effective way is to train the persons as citizens who are aware of their rights and responsibilities and have the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes. In this regard, the necessity of improving the participation skills of citizens is also included in the 11th Development Plan of the Republic of Turkey, the Copenhagen Criteria and the Recommendations of the Council of Europe. As a result of the thesis and in the light of the data obtained from the relevant manual; we can suggest that this manual can be used as an adult module in order to develop adults' awareness of participation, responsibility and solidarity, to provide them with entrepreneurship, discussion and reconciliation skills, and to enable them to comprehend the importance of their votes in elections. Keywords: A Manual on Human Rights Education with Young People, democratic citizenship and human rights education, citizenship, participation, action research.