Development of a Citizenship Education Program fostering Political Literacy in Junior High School

The purpose of this paper is to propose a lesson design in the civics field of junior high school social studies that will help students develop an awareness of sovereignty and the ability to participate in society through the cultivation of their political education. As effective learning methods, we focused on making a campaign pledge and mock voting, and developed a class. High school students who will have the right to vote while still in school and junior high school students who do not yet have the right to vote naturally differ in their awareness of sovereignty, and it is necessary to create a style of sovereignty education that is appropriate to the developmental stage of junior high school students. We believe that rather than educational learning that focuses on voting behavior with the aim of increasing voter turnout, learning that raises students' awareness of their role as shapers of society is more effective. In promoting sovereignty education, it is important to ensure political neutrality. In particular, it is necessary to create an environment in which each student can freely express his or her own political views without being restricted in the relationship between the teacher and the students, who have a great deal of influence. For this purpose, it is necessary to cultivate the ability to fairly criticize real politics and to accumulate learning to find a point of agreement and make decisions in collaboration with peers who have different ideas. Based on this idea, we designed a class in which students form imaginary political parties, make promises of government, and have opportunities to vote for each other. The students first read each other's campaign pledges and compared them with each other to see what each party was focusing on. Next, the students formed their own political parties, each of which chose its own leader and name, and formulated a major policy on where to focus their efforts to solve the country's five issues. Each political party allocated its budget to each of the five issues based on its major policy, and presented its proposed budget in a pie chart. Based on the proposed budgets, each party made a campaign pledge for each issue, which was summarized on a single slide. Then, all the students voted for the political party they wanted to support through Google Forms. The students also voted on the five promises, and the promise that received the most votes in each category was also selected at the same time. Students were also asked to submit their reasons for their choices. By leaving it to the students' discretion, it was evident that they were thinking about what was necessary for the creation of a new country and trying to solve problems in a creative manner. When we analyzed the students' reasons for their votes, we found that many of their statements were based on, quoted from, or referred to real political events. We feel that the experience of gaining new insights and proposing new ideas through dialogue with others, rather than sticking to their own ideas, led to the students' willingness to participate in politics and influence public affairs.