Learning Knowledge or Participation in Civic Activity?: What can be done to promote students’ future civic engagement at school?

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 7:45 am - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Educating for Democracy in International Contexts

Abstract

Formal schooling is a key institution tasked with preparing students to become engaged citizens. This study aims to examine the relationship between civic-related school experience and students’ future civic outcomes by using data from the International Civics and Citizenship Study in 2022. Civic-related experience is represented by two indicators, learning civic knowledge and participation in civic activities at school, to run multiple regression models with the outcome variable, students’ expected civic engagement. Additionally, this study explores the third indicator, openness of classroom climate (OCC), as an interaction term. Results suggest both knowledge and activities are positively associated with students’ future civic engagement, even after accounting for individual background factors. However, OCC did not show statistical significance in changing the associations.

Author

• Shinui Kim, Johns Hopkins University