Ian Davies, Geoff Hatch, Gary Martin and Tony Thorpe seek to theorise - and to support teachers in their own theorising - concerning the purpose of citizenship education and criteria for good citizenship education. They aim for a professional precision that will be helpful to teachers, getting us beyond the vague feeling that something ‘worked’. Equally, they are eager to avoid mechanistic assessment structures that could actually detract from professional reflection on quality. Avoiding the trap of lip-service to nice-sounding words, they explore what the practice of rationality, participation and toleration might actually mean for students developing and displaying these qualities in the classroom. In an ingenious link between history and citizenship they require pupils to ask themselves if their contemporary views will appear quite so obviously true and liberal to others in the future.