Previous studies have not longitudinally assessed whether religion is related to individuals’ movement into volunteering activities across the adult life course. Using four waves of panel data, I present evidence that religion is associated with individuals’ movement into religious institution and nonreligious institutional forms of volunteerism—volunteering for a religious congregation or other religious organization, and volunteering for a nonreligious institution, respectively. I consider the general religious mechanisms of changes in motivation to volunteer through enhanced religious beliefs and increased opportunities to volunteer through greater religious service attendance and involvement. Increased religious belief and attendance result in a greater probability that individuals engage in religious institution volunteerism. Religious institution volunteering increases the likelihood of movement into other formal volunteering over the adult life course. This analysis offers evidence that religious institutions are feeder systems, as increased involvement yields more opportunities for formal volunteerism over the adult life course, irrespective of underlying personality traits. Additionally, the findings suggest that religious mechanisms may operate differently across Christian religious traditions.
The U.S. K–12 public education system is fundamentally unequal. What efforts can facilitate students to become deeply immersed in the realities of the system and to embody the need for social change? This article investigates scaffolded, semester-long writing assignments to demonstrate patterns in the three tenets of critical community-engaged learning (authentic relationship development, reducing power differentials, social change orientation). The assignments come from three cohorts of a Sociology of Education course in which undergraduates spent early mornings walking with elementary school children. As efforts were made to deepen the community-engaged partnership, there is corresponding evidence in (1) the ways students humanized social problems through authentic relationship development, (2) the ways they detailed moments of youth-led activities in which power differentials were diminished, and (3) how students’ reflective thoughts more frequently focused upon social change.
Over the past two decades, most states have adopted laws enabling charter schools, as charter advocates successfully presented charters as the solution to core problems in urban public education. Yet some states with large urban centers, notably Washington and Kentucky, resisted this seemingly inexorable trend for years. What explains their resistance? Furthermore, why did Washington-a state with a strong teachers' union and long-standing Democratic political control (resources for charter resistance identified in prior research)-ultimately adopt charters in 2012 while Kentucky has not? I use comparative-historical narrative analysis to trace differences in charter battles in the urban centers of the two states. I find that supporters framed charters as the solution in both cases but varied in their ability to name public schools as the problem in the first place. I identify the source of the discursive resources used by opponents of charter schools in state-level ''educational ecosystems'': the cultural and institutional legacies of a range of state educational policies.
Why have charter schools been embraced as an urban educational solution in many metropolitan areas, but not in others? I develop a theoretical framework whereby the "educational ecosystem" of metropolitan areas-formed through the social geography of school district boundaries and school integration plans-supplement existing perspectives, thereby aiding in the understanding of policy adoption variability. I provide an initial test to the theoretical framework through a case study of a metropolitan hub that continues to have no charter schools: Louisville, Kentucky. I demonstrate how Louisville's particular urban educational ecosystem, which diverges from the overall national pattern of racially and socioeconomically isolated urban systems, transformed the perceptions of the urban district and shaped the battles over an otherwise nationally popular school reform.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.