The Effect Teacher Led Reflection Plays on Students' Civic Responsibility Perceptions Following FFA Civic Engagement Activities

Abstract

Civic engagement activities are utilized to enhance youth's citizenship skills and content knowledge, and to strengthen the community's status. Post-activity reflections can be utilized to strengthen the benefits of civic engagement activities but are often underutilized. This quasiexperimental study sought to determine the influence of guided reflection following FFA civic engagement activities on students' self-perceived civic responsibility. Through the use of a nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest design, four schools and students who participated in FFA civic engagement activities (n = 138) were randomly assigned to either a group discussion after reflection or a no-reflection group. It was found that throughout all time periods, students felt slightly connected to their community, community needs awareness, and civic efficacy. It was also found that the reflection treatment group exhibited statistically significantly higher community needs awareness and civic efficacy construct mean scores than the no-reflection group. It is recommended for FFA chapters to provide a wide variety of short-term civic engagement activities with reflection components.

Science Citizenship through Secondary Agricultural Education

“…Results showed that students who participated in reflection after civic engagement activities gained higher levels of self-perceived civic responsibility compared to students who just participated in the civic engagement activity (Bird et al, 2019). A review of the Journal of Agricultural Education in the present study revealed that the Bird et al, (2019) investigation is the only published work in the journal with the term "civic engagement". While this research is important and demonstrates the importance of reflection in relation to civic engagement, there is a large gap in the literature concerning civic engagement in Agricultural Education.…”

“…Aspects of civic engagement have been studied in the profession of Agricultural Education (Roberts & Edwards, 2018;Roberts & Edwards, 2015;Hoover et al, 2007;Bird et al, 2019), however, there is a dearth of literature concerning students' civic engagement and how agricultural education contributes to its development. Roberts and Edwards (2015) acknowledge that service-learning is still evolving in SBAE, and their historical study described the philosophical roots of service-learning as a method of instruction and how service-learning has been used in agricultural education.…”

“…In another study, Bird, Bowling, and Ball (2019) determined the influence of reflection after taking part in FFA civic engagement activities on students' (n = 138) perceived civic responsibility. Results showed that students who participated in reflection after civic engagement activities gained higher levels of self-perceived civic responsibility compared to students who just participated in the civic engagement activity (Bird et al, 2019). A review of the Journal of Agricultural Education in the present study revealed that the Bird et al, (2019) investigation is the only published work in the journal with the term "civic engagement".…”