The purpose of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) is to investigate, in a range of countries, the ways in which young people are prepared and consequently ready and able to undertake their roles as citizens. In pursuit of this purpose, the study will report on student achievement, student activities, value beliefs, behavioural intentions and attitudes related to civic and citizenship education. The collection of contextual data will help to explain variation in these outcome variables. This paper describes how the learning context for civic education is explored in the ICCS survey. It outlines the conceptual framework, the design of the study and the assessment instruments for students, teachers and school principals, as well as a national context survey collecting data on the national contexts for civic and citizenship education. Some preliminary results from the first data collections undertaken in this study are included at the end of this paper.