Schooling and Democratic Citizenship

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

As key institutions through which citizens come into contact with the state, public schools serve a critical role in individuals’ understanding and experience of democratic government. For students, schools are primary socializing agents that teach dispositions and skills. In turn, this civic education guides their civic engagement throughout their lives. Similarly, for parents, their children’s school enrollment can be an important direct experience with the state as a service provider. They, too, learn lessons about democratic citizenship from these encounters and, as voters in state and local elections, are able to subject their public-school systems to democratic accountability. Each of these points of contact between citizens and the state offer an opportunity for scholars to investigate the interplay between schooling and democratic citizenship. This panel brings together four papers that, together, provide a window into how public systems of education help shape and are shaped by democratic citizenship.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 25: Public Policy

Individual Presentations

• Schools and the Development of Civic Engagement in the Digital Age - Benjamin T. Bowyer, University of California-Riverside- Graduate School of Education; Joseph Kahne, University of California, Riverside

• How Deliberative Culture Shapes Public Evaluations of Local Government - Jonathan Collins, Brown University

• School Choice and Parents’ Political Socialization - Amy E. Lerman, UC Berkeley; Naomi Levy, Santa Clara University

• Education Policy, Performance, and Democratic Accountability - Paul Manna, College of William & Mary

Chair

• Naomi Levy Santa Clara University

Discussant

• Elizabeth C. Matto Rutgers University, New Brunswick