Civic Engagement in Three Cultures: Experiences and Perspectives of American, Brazilian, and Turkish Siblings

• In Event: Beyond Borders: Exploring Civic Engagement through Comprehensive Data

Proposal

“Children’s civic learning happens with or without our intentional participation” (Hauver, 2019, p.17). What children learn and perceive in this process is dramatically affected by race, socio-economic status, and gender. Instead of preparing children for future adult citizenship, we should concentrate on how young children develop their civic identities and give meaning to their experiences based on their early interactions with others (Hauver, 2019).

Young children are highly capable of civic engagement (Kelly, 2009), which is defined as “how an active citizen participates in the life of a community in order to improve conditions for others or to help shape the community's future” (Adler & Goggin, 2005, p. 241). However, scholarship on how it develops and is reinforced is limited, especially for children aged 3-12 (Evans, 2010; Halvorsen, 2017; Koh, 2010).

This study aims to explore civic awareness of young children from three countries, Brazil, Türkiye, and USA. Interviews with two siblings, ages 6-12, from each country were conducted to explore their experiences with and understandings of civic engagement.

Theoretical Framework

This study is grounded in the frameworks of critical civic education for young children (Swalwell & Payne, 2019), ecological systems theory (Brofenbrenner, 1977), and the three-dimensional space of civic growth (Hauver, 2019) because they bring together three important elements of civic engagement: (1)critical perspective taking, (2)knowledge, skills, and motivation for action, and (3)interactions with people in direct and indirect ways.

Swalwell and Payne (2019) talk about critical civic education at the early childhood level because they believe children are already aware of their surroundings and capable of thinking and acting about existing problems and injustices to create a better society while improving their knowledge, skills, and perceptions. To provide critical civic education to young learners, we should start by looking at their already existing understandings about civic engagement, which is the core of this study.

To civically engage, children should be able to apply critical perspective taking to various systems surrounding them and act in just ways in their relationships with these systems. Ecological systems theory explains the complex system of interactions within multiple levels of a child’s environment (Bronfenbrenner, 1977). Our conversations revealed various interactions between these levels.

Taking action with a critical perspective requires children to be at a certain developmental level in different areas. Hauver (2019) introduces a framework for covering a child’s civic development in three developmental areas: interpersonal, extrapersonal, and intrapersonal growth (p. 30). This study is an extension of her work and meets the need to explore civic identities of children outside of school settings (Hauver, 2019).

Overall, my conceptualization of civic engagement at young ages is a combination of critical awareness, skills, and motivation for individual and collective action leading to the creation of just communities starting from the closest to the broadest.

Research Design

Adopting a comparative perspective helps to see patterns, counter cases, and push researchers to think beyond borders (Altbach, 1991). Data collected with three siblings from different cultures can provide valuable information about how children develop civic identities in different contexts and help to answer two research questions:

1)What are children’s ideas, interpretations, and experiences related to concepts about civic engagement?
2)What are the differences in these ideas, interpretations, and experiences across children’s race, gender, religious background, SES, and nationalities?

My overall study is basic qualitative research with interviews (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). As Merriam and Tisdell (2016) explain “qualitative researchers conducting a basic qualitative study would be interested in (1) how people interpret their experiences, (2) how they construct their worlds, and (3) what meaning they attribute to their experiences” (p. 24).

I prepared the interview protocol with a short scenario and drawing activity based on Jennifer Hauver’s (2019) book. The interview protocol includes three parts: 1) rules, 2) being right or wrong and protecting the environment, and 3) fairness and civic action. I did thematic analysis and created some codes, categories, and themes based on the research questions and interview questions.

Findings

The initial data analyses have yielded a range of similarities and differences among children’s perceptions of and experiences with civic engagement. Here I focus on one theme, civic action in children’s everyday lives, that captures the unique points and aligns with the theme of CIES 2024. Protecting the environment, helping others, and protesting were the most commonly mentioned civic actions. For example, Adriana, the 12-year-old Brazilian girl who moved to the U.S., participated in various protests for abortion in the U.S. and for clean water in Brazil. Mike, the 12-year-old White American boy, said he would go to a protest if it was peaceful. Can, the 12-year-old Turkish boy, mentioned the lack of opportunities for protesting, especially for children. All children indicated their willingness to participate in protests and saw protesting as a powerful means for change although their experiences and knowledge about protests were at different levels.

Based on the contributions from three frameworks and my conservations with children, I identified three components that are connected to children’s civic engagement. First, children’s developmental dispositions are important indicators. Second, their surroundings have an impact on how their worldview and developmental characteristics are shaped. Third, within these surroundings, civic education with a critical perspective can enable children to act as engaged citizens for justice for all. In this study, I tried to understand interactions between these components in children’s lives from three cultures.

Contribution

This study supports the necessity of critical civic education for children (Swalwell & Payne, 2019). The issues that affect communities might be different, but what is the same is children’s awareness, constant observation, and capabilities to actively engage with their communities. Our conversations showed that young people have the potential to think and discuss greater issues if developmentally appropriate opportunities are provided to them. We, as adults, parents, teachers, and researchers, should leave the deficit-based perspectives about capabilities of children behind and remind ourselves that “Even at a young age, children engage as thoughtful civic agents whose performances are shaped by many factors” (Hauver, 2019, p. 139).

Author

• Betul Demiray Sandiraz, Michigan State University