Civic Education and the Acquisition of Asian American Partisanship

• In Event: Innovative Pedagogies for Inclusive Classrooms

Abstract

The development of partisanship is often viewed as a key indicator of political integration. Recent scholarship notes that Asian Americans are “late to the party” because they lack parental partisan socialization (Carlos 2018). In turn, a growing body of research has begun to investigate how they develop partisanship outside of the home. We contribute to this literature by theorizing about the ways in which collegiate civic education can assist Asian Americans in acquiring partisan leanings. Civic education provides an opportunity for Asian Americans to learn about politics and socialize with their peers in an educational setting with an explicitly political bent, which may culminate in a greater affiliation towards a major political party. Absent parental transmission of partisan cues, such minorities may also have more room to be influenced by their political science instructors and professors who stand in as "opinion leaders (Zaller 1992)." In order to examine the relationship between civic education and the formation of a partisan identity, we present results from an original pre-course and post-course panel study (n=1,226). In this cross-racial study, we find that Asian Americans demonstrate the strongest levels of growth in terms of reaching partisan maturity after completing an introductory political science class, compared to Whites, Latinxs, and African Americans. The results underscore the importance of an under examined factor, civic education, in welcoming Asian Americans to a political party.

Authors

• Benjamin James Hoyt, UC Irvine

• Nathan Kar Ming Chan, University of California, Irvine