Exploring the Republican Civic Education : focusing on the Political Approach by Biesta

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of republican civic education through three approaches of democratic education by Biesta. Biesta categorises democratic civic education into three: Kant's individual approach, Dewey's social approach, and Arendt's political approach which he introduces as a way of alternative democratic education in the post modern era. Drawing upon Biesta’s approaches has two advantages when we appropriate republicanism into the area of education. On the one hand, it helps to overcome the limitation of republicanism by interpreting Arendt’s republican idea in the post modern context of difference and plurality as Arendt’s core ideas are considered to boil down to republicanism. On the other hand, Biesta's perspective on democratic civic education presents an important pedagogical implication, especially when applying republicanism into the area of education where easily returns to the forms of production in modern education. This is expected to have a significant influence on the more delicate thinking about republican civic education by presenting subtle pedagogical points that should be considered separately from the political discourse when they are applied into education.