Journal of Emerging Trends in Educational Research and Policy Studies: Home

Article Title: Facebook as a Nation-Wide Civic Education Classroom Listening to the Voices of Egyptian Secondary School Students
by Mostafa M. Kassem

Abstract:
If established democracies can not flourish without democratic citizens, societies in transition to democracy are much more in need for democratic citizenship. Given the weak role of the Egyptian formal education system in preparing citizens for their roles in a democracy, that the author documented in a pervious study, he now makes use of the focus group method to identify the role of Facebook use in non-formal civic learning among a sample of general and commercial secondary school students, through listening to students' experiences. The study found that civic learning outcomes of secondary school students are now very much better than they were in 2005. Students' experiences showed that Facebook use is crucial to their civic learning. Most importantly, the Facebook was found to blur the differences in civic learning outcomes between general and technical secondary school students. Just as the Facebook helped the "Facebook revolution" of January 25, 2011 to succeed, it is now contributing to a greater revolution in children's and young people's political culture and civic learning.

Keywords: facebook, civic learning/education, citizenship education, secondary school students, Egypt.

Download full paper