Civic Knowledge, Classroom Climate, and Expected Political Participation in Latin American Schools

• In Event: A Diversified or Homogenized Landscape in Cross-Cultural Education Systems?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to assess the influence of the school experience on students expected political participation in Latin American countries, focusing on two main schools’ aspects: the transmission of civic knowledge and the openness to discussion in the classroom. The combination of these two approaches would help bridging a research gap on the field given that usually knowledge and attitudes are treated separately: Is it the knowledge aspect or the democratic environment which impact the most on expected participation? Is there an interaction between both?


It is possible to highlight two main research focuses on civic knowledge and political attitudes. Research on civic knowledge – characterized by large scale assessments of students’ achievement scores – suggests that knowledge of how the political system works is relevant for a successful citizenship (Levinson, 2010; Owen, Soule, & Chalif, 2011; Quintelier, 2010; Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald, & Schulz, 2001), which relates to research in adults political knowledge and behavior (Cho & McLeod, 2007; Galston, 2001, 2004). On the other hand, it has been argued that an open classroom climate for discussing political issues is as much important as civic traditional instruction in promoting students’ democratic participation in future adult life (Campbell, 2007, 2008).


A series of multilevel models are estimated for the six Latin American countries in study, considering schools as level 2 unit. Both civic knowledge and classroom climate are regressed on a series of sociocultural background variables from students and schools. The estimation considers expected participation as dependent variable, regressed on background, civic knowledge and climate variables, which allows testing indirect effect of background variables on expected participation trough knowledge and climate indicators which act as (possible) mediators in the model.

The data analyzed is obtained from the International Civic and Citizenship Study (ICCS). The ICCS study was undertaken in 2009, with a sample of more than 140,000 8th grade students, 62,000 teachers and 5,300 principals, all from 38 countries (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Kerr, & Losito, 2010).The analysis considers the six Latin American countries that participated in ICCS 2009: Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, México and Paraguay.

The results support the findings of previous studies (Campbell, 2007, 2008), whereby an open climate within the classrooms allows students to acquire higher levels of civic knowledge, and furthermore it influences their expected political participation, becoming a powerful aspect to take into account when mitigating the political participation gap among students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Given the wide evidence in adult population regarding the link between resources and participation, it is certainly relevant to find out whether such link is already present at school age, as well as to evaluate the possible interactions of social background with civic knowledge and democratic classroom climate. If, for instance, it is possible to find evidence that social background has a higher impact on civic knowledge than on democratic climate that such information is certainly relevant at the time of proposing ways of decreasing the impact of social background on future political participation.

Authors

• Juan Carlos Castillo, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

• Daniel Miranda, The Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

• Cristian Cox, The Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

• Macarena Bonhomme, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

• Martín Bascopé, The Pontifical Catholic University of Chile