Trust and Civic Self-Efficacy among Colombian Adolescents in Challenging Contexts

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Tuesday III)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Regional and national perspectives on the processes and outcomes of citizenship education

Proposal

Trust and Civic Self-Efficacy among Colombian Adolescents in Challenging Contexts

During adolescence young people undergo substantial civic development as they form more concrete attitudes and beliefs about themselves and society. These processes involve socialization in schools, families, and peer groups, but are also influenced by broader social structures and dynamics (Haste, 2004; Torney-Purta & Amadeo, 2011). In Colombia, those entering adolescence in the second decade of the twenty first century are becoming socialized into a very different political climate than previous generations. This era has been marked by a complicated web of violence that has included widespread armed conflict between the established government and number of leftist revolutionary groups, including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In recent years, the political climate has become even more complicated as optimism from peace talks between the government and FARC leaders has been diminished by other political concerns and polarization. For many Colombians, corruption became such a more prominent political issue that it overshadowed the peace process (Marcos, 2017; Transparency International, 2018).

The current study draws on datasets collected from representative national samples to investigate key questions about young people’s emerging citizenship. The datasets allow these quantitative analyses to be contextualized within national political changes in Colombia. Specifically, the study explores levels of trust, views towards corruption, and civic self-efficacy through a multi-group multilevel confirmatory factor analysis. This approach is used to compare the group means between Colombian adolescents in 2009 and 2016. The data comes from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s (IEA) International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) in 2009 and in 2016 (Schulz et al., 2010; Schulz et al., 2018). This location and time frame was chosen because of the changing national political context in Colombia during the 7 intervening years. In 2012 the Colombian national government began peace talks that led four years later to accords to end an internal war with FARC. Accompanying this hopeful political process, however, were two other significant developments: a growing polarization as a significant and vocal segment of the population opposed this process, and a number of major corruption scandals.

The comparison of Colombian adolescents’ civic self-efficacy, acceptance of corruption, and institutional trust across cohorts can extend understandings of how political events may relate to young people’s civic identity development. Furthermore, the findings can contribute to understanding civic education in conflict and post-conflict settings in two ways. First, the study provides empirical insights into how a societal transition and accompanying political context may relate to adolescents’ development as citizens. This finding can aid in developing more effective civic education policies in Colombia and other transitioning countries. Second, the research project suggests a contextualized approach for using international datasets to investigate adolescents’ civic identity formation in diverse contexts (Hahn, 2010). Future researchers could utilize this model and continue to add nuance and complexity to research with international datasets, with an ultimate goal of providing richer insights for educators.
 
References

Hahn, C. L. (2010). Comparative civic education research: What we know and what we need to know. Citizenship Teaching & Learning, 6(1), 5-23.
Haste, H. (2004). Constructing the Citizen. Political Psychology, 3, 413.
Marcos, A. (2017, October 19). La corrupción se convierte en una preocupación central en Colombia. El País. Retrieved from https://elpais.com/internacional/2017/10/16/colombia/1508167539_278882.html
Schulz, W., Ainley, J., Fraillon, J., Kerr, D., & Losito, B. (2010). ICCS 2009 international report: Civic knowledge, attitudes, and engagement among lower-secondary school students in 38 countries. International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Herengracht 487, Amsterdam, 1017 BT, The Netherlands.
Schulz, W., Ainley, J., Fraillon, J., Losito, B., Agrusti, G., & Friedman, T. (2018). Becoming citizens in a changing world: IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2016 international report. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Torney-Purta, J., & Amadeo, J. A. (2011). Participatory niches for emergent citizenship in early adolescence: An international perspective. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 633(1), 180-200.
Transparency International. (2018). Colombia corruption rank. Retrieved from https://tradingeconomics.com/colombia/corruption-rank

Authors

• Gabriel Velez, University of Chicago

• Ryan Knowles, Utah State University