Civic education - Portuguese students' perceptions

Civic Education (CE) as a non-disciplinary curriculum area is the focus of this study. Its main purpose is to understand how schools are facing CE and propose ways to overcome difficulties in the teaching and learning process of this subject. So as to characterize how CE is being handled, an exploratory study was conducted. Given the importance of students in this process, their points of view were obtained through a questionnaire. Respondents were 266 students attending low secondary education at a public basic school in Aveiro (Portugal) whose ages ranged between 12 and 16. Students' perceptions were analysed through descriptive statistics and organized in three different dimensions: conceptions, relevance and class management. An excessive attention to school life matters over other important activities for effective implementation of CE goals is evident. (c) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.