The Relationship Between Social Science Learning Opportunities and Civic Outcomes Among High School Students

• In Event: Factors Shaping Participation and Outcomes of Participation From Childhood Through Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood

Abstract

This paper examines how social science education efforts can promote the development of civic commitments and attitudes in young people. Drawing on a unique panel dataset of middle and high school students in a large urban school district in the United States (N = 41,727 students from 595 schools) conducted in 2022 and 2023, we investigate the effects of two core priorities of social science classes, opportunities for inquiry and an emphasis on culturally responsive curriculum. These two sets of learning opportunities reflect distinct visions regarding both the aims and means of democratic education. Those emphasizing inquiry often prioritize the development of analytic and research skills and seek to provide opportunities to practice varied forms of scholarly, often historical, investigation. Those emphasizing culturally responsive curriculum, in contrast, often center attention on students’ identities and communities while foregrounding concern for relevance as a means of motivating civic engagement.
Although these foci receive substantial attention as part of reform efforts nationally and within this particular school district, there has been very little large-scale, systematic examination of how these differing opportunities are associated with desired outcomes. Thus, research into the effects of these approaches may yield important insights for those considering varied reform agendas.
The paper addresses this need by examining the effects of these learning opportunities on three outcome variables: students’ engagement with their social science class, their civic commitments, and their attitudes toward diverse perspectives. Multilevel models (students nested within cohorts that are nested within schools) are employed to estimate the effects of cohort-level learning opportunities on the three outcome variables. Each of the outcome variables is measured in both the 2022 and 2023 student surveys, allowing us to control for students’ lagged values on the dependent variables as well as demographic characteristics.
The empirical analyses make several important contributions to the understanding of how the development of civic attitudes and commitments during adolescence is shaped by social science education. In particular, we find evidence that these two distinct kinds of learning opportunities relate to outcomes in different ways. Opportunities for inquiry are strongly related to increased levels of student engagement, while culturally responsive curriculum is strongly associated with growth in civic commitments and reported levels of civic engagement. These findings provide some of the strongest evidence to date regarding the importance of both priorities. The size of the dataset, including both a large sample of students and of school contexts, provides the statistical power to differentiate between the effects of interrelated, yet distinctive, learning opportunities. Furthermore, the panel data allow us to account for differences between students that are causally prior to the learning opportunities, better allowing us to estimate the independent effects of social studies education on young people’s civic development.

Authors

• Joseph E. Kahne, University of California - Riverside

• Benjamin T. Bowyer, University of California - Riverside