The Community Colleges’ Role in Developing Students’ Civic Outcomes

Abstract

Objective: Ideally, community colleges both democratize opportunity and develop in students the civic skills necessary to meaningfully participate in a democratic society. This national pilot study examines the individual and institutional factors associated with greater civic agency, capacity, behavior, and knowledge among students after at least 1 year of community college attendance. Method: Using survey data obtained from both community college students and administrators via a new civic outcomes survey and institutional questionnaire, this research utilizes both descriptive and multivariate statistics to identify associations between individual and institutional characteristics and behaviors leading to greater civic outcomes. Results: Holding students’ incoming characteristics and pre-college behaviors constant, this study shows that community college students’ academic and extracurricular behaviors, as well as institutions’ intentionality toward civic engagement, are associated with higher levels of civic agency, capacity, behavior, and knowledge. Contributions: Results of this study indicate that by making visible and measurable commitments to civic learning and democratic engagement on campus, and by creating opportunities for students to interact with one another, wrestle with thorny social or political issues, and engage in their communities, colleges can help create informed citizens who are skilled in democratic practices and committed to lifelong engagement. For community colleges, this is especially important, given their large population of students from groups historically marginalized in the nation’s education and political systems and their mission to both democratize opportunity and do the work of democracy.

A Promising Connection: Increasing Civic Life Learning through Simulated Civics Education Action

“…The difference indicated in the intention to become involved in the future in community services including volunteering and environment actions (i.e. civic action) and thus, triggering a favourable distinction for students residing in Greece in relation to their peers in Cyprus, is in line with previous ones that relate differences in civic and community knowledge, attitudes and skills experienced by mature students who assume active community membership to cultural interplay, origin and region track [1], [15]. Awareness of present local, national and global community and political issues (i.e.…”

“…Kisker, Weintraub and Newell [1] illustrate their survey on civic knowledge, attitudes and skills research involving 4.788 college students aged 20-24 in the United States, as follows: students enrolled in community colleges being oriented towards civic and community engagement, indicated advanced levels of intention to advocate the views of themselves and others, lend support to social and political changes, take on leadership roles in their community and (or) workforce, help others in need, understand people from different cultural background and voice responsible attitudes on civic, community and political topics (i.e. civic agency and civic capacity factors).…”

“…The scholarly debate about how we could define the informed, engaged and dutiful citizen seems to be rather prevailing and open in our society cross-nationally over the decades, both for youth and adults alike. Given a) the current emerging technological, economic, social, political and environmental forces apparent across countries that celebrate a globalized society rapidly accumulating issues of "diversity and cultural pluralism" [3 p. 10], b) the reported disengagement from civic and political interest and participation that young people tend to exhibit cross-nationally [4] and c) the contradictory findings as to the nature and extent of civic learning-related attitudes and skills for college students, in particular, which seem to rely extensively on community action and service programmes disregarding interactive forms of civics education programmes [1], as briefly described below, further exploration of age-associated civic and community engagement paradigms is deemed necessary [5]. In this context, therefore, the research study presented in the current paper pursues to extend the initial evidence of a case study performed at the Hellenic Parliament as part of a cross-cultural simulated civics education action, designated to investigate the participants' (i.e.…”

Fostering Democratic Participation at Community Colleges: Understanding the Relationship Between Voting and Student, Institutional, and Environmental Factors

“…These democracy-building activities (Kisker, Newell, et al, 2016; Kisker, 2016) are an important outcome of higher education (Saltmarsh & Hartley, 2011). While the vast majority of the research on democratic citizenship and civic engagement in American higher education has focused on 4-year institutions (e.g., Finley, 2011; Hillygus, 2005; Kushin & Yamamoto, 2010; Reason & Hemer, 2015), a growing body of scholarship explores and calls for a focus on community colleges and their students (Ginder et al, 2017; Kisker, Weintraub, et al, 2016).…”

“…These efforts have included voting competitions with other schools, campus-sponsored voting celebrations, institutionally funded civic engagement centers, dialogue-based classroom pedagogies, and inclusion of student voting in institutional rankings and classification criteria (Glastris, 2018; Swearer Center at Brown University, 2018; Thomas & Brower, 2017). While some research analyzes the influence of these types of initiatives or other campus organizational conditions at 4-year institutions (e.g., Benenson & Bergom, 2016), few studies focus on the civic engagement at community colleges (Kisker, Newell, et al, 2016; Kisker, Weintraub, et al, 2016), whose students account for over 40% of total enrollment at degree-granting institutions of higher education and who enroll marginalized students at a higher rate than their 4-year counterparts (Ginder et al, 2017).…”