Recent action plans of the European Commission aim at strengthening citizens’ education, e.g. with regard to media literacy in the digital age. Moreover, in the past years, the EU Council has adopted a Recommendation on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning based on Commission proposals, providing a European reference framework on key competencies or policymakers, education and training providers, social partners and learners themselves.

The EU will support activities in its Member States with EU funding, aiming to create partnerships among different stakeholders involved in the educational processes, providing a range of tools necessary for teachers and learners to take that first or next steps into education and pushing on the use of technology in teaching the EU. In the EU, the landscape of citizens’ education is, however, diverse, as well as the impact of new learning methods on the different educational systems in the Member States.

It is fundamental to understand the use of media and emerging technologies in educational program and their impacts in post-truth society, in order to explore if techno-interventions and lifelong learning systems can collectively promote and facilitate a more engaged EU citizenship.In order to better target EU level activities, it is necessary to better understand the specific structure and situation of citizens’ education at the national level. Therefore, WP eight aims at mapping citizens’ education in selected Member States, building up a database mapping how disinformation is addressed in national (in some cases subnational) curricula. It focuses on three major aspects: (1) citizens’ education’s contribution to strengthen liberal democracy; (2) the European dimension in citizens’ education; and (3) how citizens’ education addresses the challenges to liberal democracy identified in the other WPs. Moreover, it is structured along four key dimensions: a. European identity in students; b. digital literacy; c. learning to learn by experience and practice; d. social cohesion. The gender-sensitive lens will be applied in all aspects of the research, from the formulation of the research questions, objectives and methodologies to the outcomes and presentation of results.

Based on the mapping, WP 8 will analyse the contribution of citizens’ education to strengthen liberal democracy and give recommendations on how to increase its impact thorough student-centred toolkits and tailored methodologies. The policy recommendations include a critical assessment of the recently adopted EU-level policy instruments supporting citizens’ education.

The comparative approach to the results from database is useful to better analyse the different educational systems in Europe and to understand their impact on students’ soft skills, in term of participation in society.