Since the demands of civic life are constantly increasing, there is an emergent call for citizens to actively engage in local and wide societal issues. To build the portrayal of the study participants' participatory citizenship attitudes, several research instruments were implemented in the educational community. A closer look at the data analyzed presents a portrait of low involvement of students, as far as participatory citizens is concerned, in the educational community they belong to. Recently, we have witnessed the emergence of technological innovations, the internet of things (IoT) being one of them. Although IoT is not considered to be a new technology, teachers are just scratching the surface on how to use it to enhance innovative and disruptive learning scenarios. This chapter looks at the development of participatory citizenship co-constructed guidelines, based on students' and teachers' perceptions of citizenship strategies.
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Quoting Aristotle, “it is not necessary that all the citizens in a good state should be good men.” (Aristotle, 1944, p. 1277a). The notion of citizens might vary among countries based on their own cultures, histories, ideologies and societies, still, (Council of Europe, 2021) point to the consensus in the legal relationship that exists between the citizen and the state, more specifically, a European form of citizenship, the one of nationality. Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Assembly, 1948) recognizes the right to nationality, a right to change one’s nationality and the right to not be deprived of nationality. Citizens have duties, and the state expects their fulfillment, as well as the community they belong to. Citizens should engage in neighborhood making it more livable and enjoyable, for instance helping local authorities in maintaining playgrounds, making them feel the sense of belonging to the community. Based on T. H. Marshall’s work, who distinguished between three different conceptions of citizenship - civil, political and social (Turner, 2009) - Demaine and Entwistle (2016) affirms the necessity of a loyalty community-based membership, a common possession, to achieve citizenship.
We are facing daily significant and complex challenges. The demands of civic life are constantly increasing, it is time for citizens to actively engage in society issues. Veugelers (2019, p. 7) reminds us that to achieve personal and collective empowerment, we need to look back to the 60’s and the 70’s, a time of huge social change, a time of hope in a better and peaceful world. But for citizens to feel willing to actively participate in these types of activities, they need to take pleasure in doing them, so they will be motivated (Besley et al., 2018).