National curricula and citizenship education in populist times. The cases of Brazil and Spain

Abstract

Despite increasing attention to citizenship education since the turn of the 21st century, the recent spread of authoritarian populism worldwide has raised relatively little attention in educational policy and research. As a result, the possibilities and limitations that national curricula offer to educators to deal with this phenomenon are still rather uncertain. In this article, we develop an analytical framework based on the key features of authoritarian populism and critical citizenship education to compare the elements and scope for addressing populism in the national curricula of Brazil and Spain, two countries where national populism is particularly widespread. This paper examines the extent to which national curricula in these countries include goals and content that enable teachers to address the complexities of this phenomenon ranging from political polarisation through to the exaltation of national identities.