Schools in general and social science education in particular, are assigned to prepare youths for life in democratic societies. Teaching that includes specific content knowledge as well as students' own experiences is expected to advance students' knowledge and prepare them for citizenship, i.e. to enable them to form civic meaning in contemporary societies (Reinhardt, 2016). However, research in the field of social science education has lacked a theoretical concept that can function as a framework for understanding the formation of civic meaning in social science teaching (Sandahl, 2015). In history education historical consciousness has established itself as a pivotal theoretical concept for researching the teaching and learning of history (Clark & Grever, 2018). The purpose of this paper is to outline a theoretical framework for civic consciousness starting from the concept of historical consciousness. We regard civic and historical consciousness to be aspects of the same mental phenomenon and understand the difference between these forms of mentality, not as primarily dealing with the past and the present, but as dealing with temporal and relational aspects of human existence. History teaching focuses on temporal aspects of human experience whereas social science focuses on the relational aspects of human society.We depart from Rüsen’s (2005) narrative paradigm where the learning process can be described as developing narrative competence while experiencing, interpreting and orienting in relation to societal phenomena. Elaborating on Pandel’s (1987) conceptual framework for historical consciousness, we suggest five dynamical aspects that describe key areas for how people relate to each other in society, both at an individual level and on a collective level, that are at the core of civic consciousness. Each aspect describes a continuum of tensions within which individuals in society need to orient themselves in order to understand their place in society and experience civic meaning.