Pedagogy & American Government: Affects on Civic Literacy & Engagement

• In Event: Evaluating Pedagogies for Civic Literacy and Engagement

Abstract

In this paper we use a data set of over 3000 undergraduate students in the American Government courses of about two dozen instructors at a dozen institutions of higher education. We submit them to a pretest/posttest assessment of their civic literacy and civic engagement entering and exiting the American Government course. We then ask the instructors of the course to complete a pedagogy assessment. This allows us to explore variations in students' civic literacy and engagement and how the instructors' teaching styles affect those changes. We expect best practices like the flipped classroom, deliberation- and discussion-oriented classes, active learning classrooms, etc., to have a more positive impact on civic literacy and engagement than traditional lecture. We also expect that traditional lecture remains the more common choice for American Government among most instructors. Such examination and findings are essential to learning not just what works best generally educationally, but what works best in the core general education course of political science. Our findings will be essential to promoting political scientists becoming more effective instructors in their discipline.

Authors

• Michael T. Rogers, Arkansas Tech University

• Donald M. Gooch, Stephen F. Austin State University