CHAPTER 3 Re-Discovering Democracy: Putting action (back) into active citizenship and praxis (back) into practice David Zyngier Introduction It is the duty of all teachers in State schools to foster in the minds of their pupils the sentiment of love of country, respect for its laws, and loyalty to its sovereign. ... It should be impressed upon the pupils that the greatness and stability of the Empire depend upon the production of a fine type of citizen, fit of body, fit of mind, and fit of soul. (Education Department, Victoria, 1905) National public discussion in Australia about citizenship, democracy and education is over 20 years old, beginning with a Senate inquiry precipitated ostensibly by the Bi- Centenary of White Settlement/Occupation in 1988. This resulted in recommendations for improvement in school curricula, pedagogy and teacher preparation. While the Federal government had no direct responsibility for these issues (as they were constitutionally devolved to the States), it formed a Civic Experts Group that prepared a strategic plan for a national program resulting in the development and implementation of the Discovering Democracy (DD) program. The debate over democracy in education (Lund & Carr, 2008) has been characterized in terms of representative versus participatory democracy, with the former highlighting electoral processes–thin democracy–and the latter focusing on critical engagement and social justice or thick democracy 1 . Thin democratic teaching focuses on activities such as students contributing food to a food drive or in a more active participatory manner organising a food drive for the poor while thick democratic teaching would explore why people are hungry, and then empower students to act to make decisions about and to solve its root causes (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004). The need to understand the perspectives, experiences and perceptions of teachers in relation to democracy in education Despite the significant investment of time and money in the Civics and Citizenship Education 2004–2007 Project and the Discovering Democracy 1997–2004 Project (Curriculum Corporation, 2009), many teachers and educators were found to have only a superficial conceptualization of what democracy is or should be (Gandin & Apple, 2002). The material produced by the Curriculum Corporation (CC) in that time was distributed nationally to every school, public and private at both the primary and secondary levels. Yet the focus of all this material was largely devoted to a thin democracy, namely the traditional emphasis placed on processes and systems. The programme was premised on: