CHAPTER 1 Introducing the Global Doing Democracy Research Project: Seeking to understand the perspectives, experiences and perceptions of teachers in relation to democracy in education David Zyngier & Paul R. Carr Introduction This book reports on the initial phase of research arising from the international Global Doing Democracy Research Project 1 (GDDRP), which currently has some 70 scholars in over 20 countries examining perspectives and perceptions of democracy in education in order to develop a more robust and critical democratic education among pre- and in-service teachers, teacher education academics, and educators, in general. Some of these scholars are actively researching while others perform supportive, advisory and consultative roles and tasks. The focus of the project is on how education supports, cultivates and engages in, and with, democracy. While there are many on-line networks created among academics for the exchange and sharing of ideas, the development of such an on-line activist research group focused on democracy and democratic education is uncommon. A major focus at this phase of the project involved using a collaboratively developed and locally contextualised on-line survey tool that collected both quantitative and qualitative data from diverse groups of education-students, academic staff, and practising teachers. Each researcher is responsible for the analysis of the data within the shared critical pedagogical framework that was originally developed by Carr (2010). The aim of the research, ultimately, is to compare and contrast these findings and implications across diverse political contexts, including the old democracies (countries such as the USA, Australia, Canada, England), emerging democracies (those countries coming out of autocratic, military or other dictatorships and or colonial rule), and what we have termed the new democracies (places and countries that are doing democracy differently as a result of public initiatives found in Latin America and elsewhere 2 ), highlighting the following themes: 1) The apparent predisposition among education-students (future teachers) and educators to understand democracy and politics in a thin way; 2) The potential for university education teachers and classroom teachers to do transformative or thick democracy in education; 3) The importance of understanding power and difference in relation to democracy; and 4) The cultivation of a critically and meaningfully engaged educational experience that links social justice to education and democracy. The Project began when we (Paul R. Carr and David Zyngier) met at the second Doing Democracy by Learning Conference held at OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), University of Toronto, Canada, in October 2008 3 . The conference call was very specific stating that: “In many places in the world, the practices and conceptions of democracy, citizenship, and citizenship learning are in transition. On the one hand, lower voter turnouts, declining citizen confidence in the political establishment, and criticisms about the ability of representative democracy to ensure social inclusion and equality of opportunity for all have sparked vigorous debates about how to address the “democratic deficit.” In the field of education, there have been paralleled growing concerns about the limitations of traditional civic education models that focus on the memorization of facts to nurture a critical, caring and engaged citizenry”.