Building Civic Bridges: Community-Centered Action Civics

LeCompte, Karon; Blevins, Brooke

doi:10.1080/00377996.2015.1059792

Cited by 19 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Our quantitative analysis, which is able to control for many individual variables, such as gender, socioeconomic status, and family political socialization, provides additional support for the impact of many of the best practices in civic education on positive outcomes such as gains in anticipated political engagement. For example, the data from this study add empirical evidence to the notion that student autonomy, or the practice of allowing students to choose topics of importance to them, is directly related to their outcomes (e.g., Kahne & Middaugh, 2008;LeCompte & Blevins, 2015), a finding that holds up here when various predispositions are taken into account.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

“…Although research on action civics is still emerging, there is a growing repertoire of studies of single programs that establish a link between action civics curricula and a host of promising outcomes, including civic skills such as public speaking and community mapping, social capital, political efficacy, and content knowledge. The research—which includes case studies on a schoolwide initiative in Massachusetts (Berman, 2004), the Building Civic Bridges program (LeCompte & Blevins, 2015), the iEngage summer civics institute (Blevins, LeCompte, & Wells, 2016), Project 540 (Battistoni, 2004), the We The People curriculum (Walling, 2007), the Constitutional Rights Foundation’s City Works Initiative (Kahne, Chi, & Middaugh, 2006), and the Student Voices program (Feldman, Pasek, Romer, & Jamieson, 2007; Syvertsen et al, 2009)—identifies positive outcomes associated with key action civics components such as an emphasis on student voice and the creation of open classrooms where students discuss and debate current events and are encouraged to speak their minds. In addition, in many of these programs, which are implemented with diverse populations across the United States, students engage with civic leaders and the broader community, often as part of a service-learning opportunity.…”

Section: High-quality Civic Education Practices and Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fostering Democratic and Social-Emotional Learning in Action Civics Programming: Factors That Shape Students’ Learning FromProject Soapbox

Andolina

Conklin

2019

American Educational Research Journal

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This research examines the factors that shape high school students’ experiences with an action civics program—Project Soapbox—that fosters democratic and social-emotional learning. Drawing on pre- and postsurveys with 204 students, classroom observations, teacher interviews, student work samples, and student focus group interviews, the study illuminates how specific features of the curriculum and its implementation are linked to its promising outcomes. Our findings indicate that the curriculum’s emphases and structure, along with instructional decisions and context, play key roles in influencing student outcomes. Project Soapbox’s power lies in its alignment with many well-established civic education best practices and in its intentional linkage with key social-emotional learning practices, many of which are newly recognized as having particular civic import.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Section: High-quality Civic Education Practices and Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fostering Democratic and Social-Emotional Learning in Action Civics Programming: Factors That Shape Students’ Learning FromProject Soapbox

Andolina

Conklin

2019

American Educational Research Journal

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Section: Informed Civic Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Informed and authentic civic action is an essential element of effective civic education (Boyte, 2003;Duncan-Andrade, 2005;Ginwright, 2011;Hipolito-Delgado and Zion, 2015;Lecompte and Blevins, 2015;Levinson, 2012;Watts and Flanagan, 2007). When students are engaged in "action civics" through their schools, they are learning the knowledge and tools of civic-minded individuals and groups (Lecompte and Blevins, 2015). Effective citizens identify issues that are important to the community, conduct research to better understand the dimensions of the problem, build alliances with individuals and groups, act in thoughtful ways that produce results, and reflect and evaluate on the process.…”

Section: Informed Civic Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Creating something out of nothing: Enacting critical civic engagement in urban classrooms

Schmidt

2021

Citizenship, Social and Economics Education

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Critical civic engagement (CCE) is a pedagogical framework for civic education in urban settings. CCE as a pedagogical approach engages student lived experience, develops critical thinking, and facilitates informed civic action projects. In this phenomenological study of teachers in four urban high schools in a large urban school district, the author seeks to understand how teachers experience the enactment of CCE elements in schools with majority African American or Latinx student populations. The author argues that CCE practices can and should lead to the development of civic identity as a critical outcome for students in contrast to more formal measures of academic achievement. Civic identity is the foundation upon with engagement in public life is built. The study suggests that the enactment of CCE elements provides a powerful learning and identity formation experience for students and a pedagogical process that inspires teachers and their student-centered practices.

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“…Based on research from previous iterations of the camp (Blevins et al, 2016;LeCompte and Blevins, 2015), which showed that students had fairly surface level understandings of community issues often resulting in personally responsible or participatory citizenship solutions, in 2016 we revamped the iEngage curriculum to focus more specifically on teaching students to investigate community issues by examining root causes and identifying target audiences for advocacy (Millenson et al, 2014). To aid in the iEngage curriculum revision process, we utilized the Generation Citizen Advocacy Hourglass, a graphic shaped like an hourglass that shows stages in the action civics process.…”

Section: Iengage Curriculum Changesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing students’ understandings of citizenship and advocacy through action civics

Blevins

LeCompte

Bauml

2018

SSRP

Self Cite

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Purpose In the wake of the 2016 US presidential election and the political turmoil that has ensued since, the need to prepare youth as active, well-informed citizens is self-evident. Middle and high school students have the potential to shape public and political opinion and encourage others to engage in collective, grassroots civic efforts to enact positive change in their communities through social media and face-to-face communication (CIRCLE Staff, 2018). Action civics has emerged as a promising civic education practice for preparing young people for active and informed civic participation. By providing students with the opportunity to “engage in a cycle of research, action, and reflection about problems they care about personally while learning about deeper principles of effective civic and especially political action” (Levinson, 2012, p. 224). The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach This interpretive qualitative case study utilized Westheimer and Kahne’s (2004) citizen typology to examine 30 fifth through ninth graders’ conceptions of citizenship, civic action and advocacy as a result of their participation in an action civics inquiry project that took place during summer civics camps. Findings Findings show that overall, students’ conceptions of citizenship remained relatively unchanged after participating in the summer civics camps; however, students did develop increased understanding of advocacy and were more readily able to identify the “root causes” of community issues. Originality/value Implications of this study add to a small but growing body of literature on the outcomes of action civics programs and may inform the design and implementation of these kinds of programs.

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Building Civic Bridges: Community-Centered Action Civics

Cited by 19 publications

References 12 publications

Fostering Democratic and Social-Emotional Learning in Action Civics Programming: Factors That Shape Students’ Learning FromProject Soapbox

Fostering Democratic and Social-Emotional Learning in Action Civics Programming: Factors That Shape Students’ Learning FromProject Soapbox

Creating something out of nothing: Enacting critical civic engagement in urban classrooms

Developing students’ understandings of citizenship and advocacy through action civics

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