Opinions of Some Nationals (North American, South Korean, Chinese, Indian, Turkish, and Latin American) on Some Concepts of Citizenship Education

Over years, the meaning of citizenship has changed. This change has occurred as a result of the 21st century the era of technology as well as changing social perception. Marshall [1] stated that citizenship as members of society and all of these have equal civil, political, social rights and duties. “Citizenship education defined as any conscious or overt effort to develop students’ knowledge of government, law and politics as those have evolved through history and presently operate in our society” [2]. Social and moral responsibility is essential for effective citizenship education. Therefore, children should learn self-confidence and socially and morally responsible behavior both in and beyond the classroom, as well as both towards those in authority and among each other [3]. Another essential concept for effective citizenship education is volunteerism, the act or practice of doing volunteer work in community service. A volunteer is a person who does works without getting financial benefits. In addition, diversity is considered essential in citizenship education. Diversity is the acceptance, valorization and understanding of differences among people, such as age, class, ethnicity, race and sex [4]. The purpose of this research is, to investigate the participants’ opinions on social and moral responsibilities, volunteerism and diversity. The study involves 28 participants of different nationalities which are namely Turks, North American, South Korean, Latin, Arabs, Chinese and Indian. The study adopts the qualitative research tradition. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed via descriptive analysis. It is seen that the participants were willing to be part of voluntary work. The participants stated that diversity is information exchange, a natural phenomenon in the world and variety means wealth and the participants generally felt responsible for a problem in the community they lived in and feel responsible about governmental issues.