Learning Citizenship: How Adolescent Experiences Shape Political Understandings

• In Event: New Directions in Policy Feedback and Mass Publics Studies

Abstract

An increasingly large body of scholarship has demonstrated that there are social and civic consequences of experiences with government authority. Largely missing from these accounts is attention to the interactions that young people have with state actors and the way these interactions shape the civic and political attitudes of America’s youth. This gap in knowledge is salient given research suggesting that civic and political attitudes are particularly malleable during people’s younger years. In response, this paper embarks down two nascent paths in policy feedback research. First, it focuses on political lessons that are learned by adolescents through their interactions with the two state institutions that tend to be most visible in young people’s lives: schools and the police. Second, in contrast to the dominance of quantitative research in feedback studies, we use in-depth, semi-structured interviews to explore how young people themselves articulate learning about the government and their place as citizens through their experiences with public authority. Through this approach, we provide insight into the “civic collateral consequences” that arise from policies structuring criminal justice contact and school discipline, helping informs efforts to ensure a more civically-inclusive democratic future.

Authors

• Sarah Bruch, University of Delaware

• Justis Freeman Freeman, Research for Action

• Aaron Rosenthal, Simmons University

• Alyn Turner, Research for Action