A Lone Star State of Mind: Civics Education and Texas Teachers

• In Event: The Impacts of Standards and Curriculum on Education Policy Outcomes

Abstract

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis deemed the states, “laboratories of democracy.” As the second most populous state of the union, the Texas “laboratory” has an outsized influence not only on national-level education policymaking, but on developing civic attitudes in large numbers of students as well. In order for laboratories of democracy to work effectively, its residents need to be aware of when and how their participation may be required. Civics education, therefore, fulfills a crucial role in any state, and in Texas, especially because of its size.

Prior research has demonstrated that teachers’ beliefs have an impact on what and how they choose to teach their subjects (Chin and Barber, 2012). We hypothesize therefore that civics learning is impacted by teachers’ training, status as a freestanding subject, and teachers’ perceptions of their own ability and efficacy to teach the subject. Additionally, we hypothesize that Texas educators receive little formal training on best practices for teaching civics, that civics is mostly taught as part of other subject areas, and that teachers’ opinions with regard to teaching efficacy will be directly related to their own civic engagement, experience, and knowledge.

To fully understand how students’ civic learning and attitudes may be impacted as a result of teachers’ attitudes toward civic education, we conduct a large-N survey among Texas teachers. This survey addresses questions of teacher efficacy, using original survey questions about civics education, standard political opinion questions, and evidence based, previously used, measures of teacher efficacy. These questions tease out the distinct attitudes of educators tasked teaching civics, and considers how their own political opinions and feelings of efficacy in the classroom impact their assessment of the importance of teacher education. We also consider how teachers perceive their own training, their assessment regarding the relative importance of civics education, and what additional training and resources they believe would be beneficial.

We argue that student learning varies considerably from classroom to classroom and district to district, often in relationship with socio-economic characteristics of students. This has important consequences for students’ ability to effectively participate in not just their home state’s democracy laboratory, but on the national level as well. It suggests that the systematically disparate quality of civics education students receive in middle and high school will have long term impacts on who is represented in politics, since civic participation is the foundation of representation.Our research suggests that investing in a well-rounded civics education may increase teachers’ aptitude as civics educators, yield a more enthusiastic young electorate, and ultimately increase representative equality.

Authors

• Clare Brock, Texas Woman's University

• Wouter Van Erve, Texas Woman's University