Making Citizens Through Engaged Civic Pedagogy

• In Event: Pathways to Motivated Student Agency through Intentional Civic Pedagogy

Abstract

Civic education is the primary formal opportunity for students to develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed for democratic life. However, civics courses are often inadequate and unjust because they teach and assess knowledge of a narrow set of political facts irrelevant to the lives of many young people, particularly students from race-class subjugated communities (Soss and Weaver 2017). This paper tests the impact of engaged pedagogy on student political outcomes alongside a randomized curricular intervention of local compared to national content. All students in treatment and control feel more knowledgeable, efficacious, and trusting of government after the intervention, but effects are magnified for students who learn local content. While this research focused on advanced high school youth, the outcomes are applicable to college students and may be especially useful to consider how to make the first year of postsecondary political science education feel accessible, equitable, and empowering.

Author

• Abigail Dym, Providence College