High School Service-Learning and Affective Partisanship

• In Event: "Democracy Needs Democrats": What Can Schools and Teachers Do to Provide Good Civic Education?

Abstract

Drawing on a survey of 3,554 individuals conducted during the 2016 United States Presidential Election, this paper examines the relationships identified between reported service learning experiences during high school and the degree to which surveyed individual’s tended to express affective polarization, a large gap between feelings towards the Democratic and Republican U.S. political parties. Potential moderating factors of these relationships such as partisan social identification are also considered.
Community service, and its integration into curriculum in the form of service learning, is a prominent pedagogy thought to directly impact young people’s civic engagement. Particularly, community service gives students direct experience in civically oriented activities, thereby developing the social and organizational skills necessary for such participation in the future (Kahne, Crow, & Lee, 2013; Youniss & Yates, 1997). Like other pedagogies, the efficacy of community service and similar activities often depends on implementation. Data on the outcomes of community service are often mixed (Wade & Saxe, 1996) and research on the various features of community service projects points to some elements effectively promoting civic outcomes (e.g., clear goals) while others (e.g., celebrating student work) have little effect (Billig, Root, & Jesse, 2005).
The core of many community service activities is typically interaction with groups of people that many students might not have otherwise encountered in a meaningful way. Social identity theory predicts that individuals favor groups with which they identify and exhibit dislike members of outgroups. In the U.S. ideological and partisan labels serve more as social signifiers than accurate summaries of an individual’s political beliefs (Huddy, Mason, & Aarøe, 2015). Further, social identification with a political party often leads individuals to reflexively side with their political team (Groenendyk, 2013) and adjusting their opinions to match those of their party leaders (Lenz, 2012).
Using a civic education experiences scale adapted from Kahn, Crow, & Lee (2013), I find that reported participation in community service experiences as a high school student is significantly associated with a smaller degree of affective polarization reported by U.S. adults surveyed. Further, in the multivariate regression models constructed for this analysis, community service experiences significantly interacted with respondents reported partisan social identity. In this case, reported community service experiences as a high school student are correlated with the greater reductions in affective polarization among individuals with strong partisan social identities at the time of the survey as compared to those with weaker partisan social identities.
In the full paper, I consider several explanations for the relationships found in the data. While social identity theory generally predicts dislike and discrimination against members of an out-group, service-learning experiences may have the benefit of expanding students’ in-groups by allowing them to identify with people they might not otherwise have been exposed to. Psychological research on mitigating intergroup conflict (Pettigrew, 1998; Sherif et al., 1961) supports the notion that working towards common purpose can reduce intergroup conflict. Thus, by having students conduct service learning projects, teachers may be supporting student dispositions that may reduce affective political polarization in later years.

Author

• Christopher H. Clark, University of North Dakota