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The Contributions of International Large-Scale Studies in Civic Education and Engagement
Abstract
Mathematic, scientific, and literacy skills have taken center stage in the field of international large-scale assessments, and country rankings have become ubiquitous. However, three studies since the 1970s have addressed the topic of measuring civic engagement and citizenship and have examined patterns of student achievement in attitudes and skills as well as knowledge. Because of the complexity of preparation for citizenship and workplace readiness in different democratic systems, these civic education projects have had an innovative edge in both assessment development and the analysis undertaken. Results from these studies have led to insights into political events, such as the difficulty of establishing civic education after a dictatorship, the rise of anti-immigrant parties, and changes in the political participation of young adults in Europe and the United States. These studies provide information about how students are able to get along with others in society, acquire norms, and participate via democratic means to implement change. In addition to considering civic studies in an international perspective, this chapter will present results of secondary analysis of Civic Education Study data to illustrate the utility of these studies, and will discuss analysis relevant for policy and for researchers in political science and psychology.
... Since Langton and Jennings (1968) first addressed the effects of civic education courses, the literature has not come to a definitive conclusion on their impact. For the last two decades, and in parallel with a growing concern about democratic backsliding and young people's disengagement, academics have renewed their interest in the potential of Citizenship Education (CE) to bridge the gap between politics and the young (Dassonneville et al. 2012;Garcia Albacete 2014;Kerr 2000;Nelsen 2021;Niemi and Junn 2005;Torney-Purta and Amadeo 2013;Whiteley 2014). Citizenship Education, understood as the subject area that is taught in schools with the aim of fostering democratic and civic values and skills, has been shown to have some positive effects on political knowledge and civic engagement (Dassonneville et al. 2012;Neundorf et al. 2016). ...
Both policymakers and scholars disagree about the effects and suitability of citizenship education standalone courses. Extant evidence about their effects is mixed and inconclusive. This article exploits the discontinuities generated by changes in Spanish education policies to identify the long-term effects of civic education on multiple outputs usually set as the policy goals of these courses: political engagement, institutional support and political values. In 2007, a new standalone citizenship education subject was introduced in the Spanish school curricula. This subject was then progressively removed from the curricula until its disappearance in 2017. These changes gave rise to exog-enous variation in exposure to civic education between young individuals born in different years. In this article these policy changes are exploited to identify the effects of citizenship education through a regression discontinuity design that draws on a 12-wave panel survey. The results point to the emergence of a generation of critical-yet passive-citizens as a result of the implementation of a standalone citizenship education subject in Spanish schools.
... Civic learning takes places in a variety of settings, including within schools, families, and communities. As formal curricula, civic education is more often taught within particular subjects (e.g., civics, government, or social studies), and it sometimes involves reflective service learning and leadership development opportunities (Andrews et al., 2010;Carretero et al., 2016;Gould, 2011;Torney-Purta & Amadeo, 2013). ...
This chapter focuses on effective preparation for civic reasoning, discourse, and problem solving. It reviews literatures, including major synthetic reviews and studies from the science of learning and development (SoLD), civics education, and mathematics education. Based on these reviews, the authors make the case for a more comprehensive form of civic education in which reasoning, discourse, and problem solving permeate the curriculum across grades and subject matter. As an example, the authors illustrate how mathematical tools and techniques inform powerful fact-based civic reasoning and discourse and how SoLD informs both. This approach to learning engages students in politically relevant issues in a nonpartisan way as they prepare to become democratic decision-makers and problem solvers of the future.
... Evidence from civics and social studies education research suggests that an open classroom climate where students are encouraged to express their views, examine issues from multiple perspectives, and make ethical judgments about historical topics have several benefits. These include increased engagement and discussion, improved knowledge of and engagement in social and political issues, increased student confidence and ability to engage in democratic civil discourse with opposing viewpoints, and improved argumentation and reasoning ability (Barton, 2009;Goldberg & Savenije, 2018;Ho et al., 2017;Kahne et al., 2013;McAvoy & Hess, 2014;Torney-Purta & Amadeo, 2013). Nevertheless, research on controversial issues has found that many teachers are reluctant to teach about controversial issues because of a complex terrain of institutional and curricular constraints; societal discourse and expectations; national, group, and individual histories; local, state, and national policies; personal beliefs; and multiple and overlapping identities involving ethnicity and religion. ...
Ethics is the proverbial ‘elephant in the room’ in history education in settler-colonial nations. It is foundational to teaching and learning history and engaging with the ongoing effects of the past in the present. Yet its place in history curricula and teaching continues to be ignored, understated, confused, and challenged. This article illustrates how ethical judgment is central to four commonly identified rationales for teaching history in schools: citizenship education, historical consciousness, historical thinking, and difficult histories. The article urges more explicit attention to ethics as an organizing concept in history education to enable students to appreciate the complex lived realities that constitute history and to explore the diverse perspectives that have contributed to sometimes-difficult decisions. We argue that ethics can humanize history, enrich students’ historical understandings, and offer a usable past. However, given the varied approaches to ethical judgment across the four orientations to teaching history, we stress the need for the mindful deployment of ethical judgment in curriculum design. Using an example from the 2021 draft Aotearoa New Zealand’s Histories curriculum, we demonstrate what “ethical judgment” could be called upon to do, and the impoverished approach to history education that would exist without it.
... Pedagogies that encourage both independent and group work can facilitate students' development of research and public speaking skills. Students who take part in programs that integrate problem-solving, collaborative thinking, and cross-disciplinary approaches in their curricula can develop a greater sense of their own agency as civic actors (Atherton 2000;Tolo 1998;Finkel 2003;Torney-Purta et al. 2001;Torney-Purta 2002;Torney-Purta and Amadeo 2012;Lopez et al. 2006;Owen and Riddle 2017). ...
This study explores the proposition that knowledge of American government and politics is associated with heightened civic dispositions and skills. It find that quality civic education programs can increase civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Using middle and high school student data, the study establishes an empirical association between knowledge and dispositions, and to a lesser extent, civic skills. High-need students exhibited a strong connection between knowledge an dispositions. The association between knowledge and dispositions was stronger for high school students than for middle school students.
... In analyses of survey data from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Civic Education study of 90,000 adolescents from 28 countries, Torney-Purta and Amadeo (2012) reported that the explicit teaching of civic content and skills in school has a significant effect upon adolescents' SPD. In terms of how to teach such content and skills, scholars report that adolescents in secondary school classroom environments that foster free and open exchanges of ideas demonstrate deeper understandings of social and civic issues (Campbell, 2008;Hess, 2009;Torney-Purta & Amadeo, 2012). Other scholars have found that youth exposed to political and social issues through simulations and role-plays (e.g., Levinson, 2012), community service learning (e.g., Seider, Gillmor, & Rabinowicz, 2012), youth participatory action research (e.g., Kirshner, 2015), and academic programming focused specifically on social and political issues (e.g., Cammarota, 2007) are more likely to express concern for such issues and a commitment to future involvement in addressing these issues. ...
Sociopolitical development refers to the processes by which an individual acquires the knowledge, skills, and commitment to analyze and challenge oppressive social forces. A growing body of scholarship reports that high levels of sociopolitical development are predictive in adolescents of a number of key outcomes including resilience and civic engagement. The present study explored the role that urban secondary schools can play in fostering adolescents’ sociopolitical development through a longitudinal, mixed-methods investigation of more than 400 adolescents attending “progressive” and “no-excuses” high schools. Analyses revealed that, on average, students attending progressive high schools demonstrated meaningful growth in their ability to critically analyze racial and economic inequality, while students attending no-excuses high schools demonstrated meaningful growth in their motivation to challenge these inequities through activism. Qualitative interviews offered insight into youth’s perceptions of the programming and practices at their respective schools that contributed to their sociopolitical development.
... Since the turn of the new Millennium, scholars and politicians have been concerned about the apparent withdrawal of citizens from democratic participation across a range of established democracies (e.g. Norris, 2001;Furlong and Cartmel, 2011;Torney-Purta and Amadeo, 2013;Albacete, 2014;Henn and Foard, 2014;Kisby and Sloam, 2014;Sloam, 2014;Bechtel et al., 2015;Fesnic, 2015;O'Toole, 2015;Henn and Oldfield, 2016;Keating and Janmaat, 2016). In particular, attention has often centred on young people, whose levels of electoral and party engagement tend to be lower than that of the population in general, and indeed of previous youth generations (Henn and Foard, 2012b). ...
Over the past two decades, there has been a wide-ranging debate about the impact of citizenship education on young people’s political engagement and participation across Britain. Using data from a survey of 1025 young people aged 18 years at the time of the 2010 General Election, we examined the impact that studying for a formal qualification in General Certificate of Secondary Education in Citizenship Studies has on young people’s political and civic engagement. Drawing from the hypothesis that those young people who took the course would be more engaged than those who did not, results demonstrated that there are many differences between the two groups in terms of their political perspectives as well as their past and future patterns of political participation.
... Besides its inclusion in the curricula of schools and universities, citizenship has also made itself present in educational assessment. At an international level, tests have been constructed and administered at least since 1971 (Torney-Purta and Amadeo, 2013). In Colombia, the Colombian Institute for the Assessment of Education (ICFES) has been testing citizenship competencies in school children in grades 5 and 9 since 2003, and since 2012 in university students who are about to graduate. ...
This chapter reports on a research project that analyses the ideological implications of various choices made in the construction of the national tests of citizenship competencies in Colombia, through the lens of Chantal Mouffe’s conceptualisation of the inherent tensions of liberal democracy. At the same time, it develops such conceptualisation based on the study of the case of the Colombian citizenship education tests. In particular, I argue that the open space produced by the tensions between liberalism and democracy end up being filled out by decisions guided by political conceptions that inevitably deviate from the ideals of liberalism, of democracy, or both. In the chapter I also discuss the interpretive choices and principles involved in the process, such as going from the general to the particular and vice versa, the partly insider’s and partly outsider’s perspective that gave me being involved in the tests construction and adopting a philosopher of education’s perspective, the interpretation of a work or element of public policy instead of the intentions of its authors, and the impossibility of meaningfully distinguishing between first order and second order interpretations.
This research provides a complete bibliometric analysis of scholarly publications on civic engagement in public decision-making between 2014 and 2024. Using the PRISMA methodology, the study reduced a corpus of 208 papers to 136 for further examination. The study examines how educational research enables citizens to participate in public decision-making. The data demonstrate an increasing trend in research that focuses on incorporating civic engagement activities into educational curricula. One major finding emphasizes the positive impact of civic engagements initiatives on instilling civic duty and decision-making in pupils. This increases the chance of future community involvement and informed voting. The study also identifies a gap in research on effective strategies for reaching underserved communities. The findings can be used to create curricula that provides students with the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to actively shape their communities. Policymakers can use this knowledge to create educational initiatives that promote a culture of informed citizenship. Researchers acquire a platform for future research into bridging the equity gap in civic engagement education. Finally, this research emphasizes the critical importance of education in fostering a dynamic democracy. Keywords: educational research’s contribution, civic engagement, public decision making, bibliometric overview
Engaging Youth for Positive Change is a local civic engagement program focused on youth and young adults in the U.S. state of Illinois, and guides them through the process of adopting a local ordinance by working with their local city councils or other governing bodies. Researchers collected two waves of data from EYPC participants to quantitatively assess associations between program participation and changes in a variety of key factors relating to civic engagement. Initial findings indicate participants reported significant increases in variables associated with civic participation, including teamwork, leadership, and internal political efficacy. Furthermore, participants at more rigorous implementation sites reported significantly higher levels of critical civic engagement indicators compared to their peers at less rigorous implementation sites. This paper discusses EYPC in detail, findings from analyses and program evaluation, and concludes with a discussion on next steps regarding how EYPC and similar programs may enhance civic engagement among youth and young adult populations.
This convergent, mixed-methods research presents a site-level assessment of a civic engagement program geared towards middle and high school students (i.e. young people). In Illinois, a majority of young adults (ages 18-29) report discussing sociopolitical issues with friends and family, mimicking national trends. Simultaneously, approximately one in four young people in Illinois physically voted in 2018 elections, and less than 10% reported contacting or visiting public officials. These discrepancies allude to the importance of empowering younger people to engage actively in civic and electoral discourse and processes as a means to improving their communities. Engaging Youth for Positive Change (EYPC) is one example of a civic engagement program for adolescents and young people in the United States. The curriculum guides middle and high school aged people through civic processes including adopting local ordinances by working with city councils or other governing bodies. Researchers collected site level data from EYPC implementation sites (N=122) across Illinois and there were significant correlations between outcome scores and both number of activities implemented and implementation indices. This manuscript delineates site level aspects of EYPC in detail—including quantitative and qualitative findings from site-level analyses—and discusses implications regarding how EYPC and similar programs may promote civic engagement among youth and young adult populations.
This study explored college students’ civic education ideologies in an entry-level elementary education course using Q methodology. The study asked the students to sort previously developed survey items measuring ideology onto a pyramid ranging from agree to disagree. The analysis found four patterns among students, which were labeled critical multiculturalist, nationalist, disaffected, and institutionalist. A lesson was developed where participants completed the q-sort and studied how their beliefs could influence their instructional practices and classroom discussions. The students also completed reflections on the q-sort, where they expressed that the activity developed a more in-depth understanding of their own beliefs while also illuminating their classmates’ ideological diversity. The study also demonstrates Q methodology’s utility, beyond being a research method, which can provide a powerful instructional tool to translate research into practice.
Commemorations are events or actions that honour and memorialize significant events, people, and groups from the past. In recent years there have been numerous contentious debates about commemorations of historical events and people in countries around the world, including Canada. In this article I argue that commemoration controversies should be an essential part of teaching and learning history in K–12 schools because they have the potential to be meaningful and relevant for students, they address civic education competencies central to history and social studies curricula in Canada, and they provide rich opportunities for advancing students’ historical consciousness and historical thinking. In the final section of the article I describe how six second-order historical thinking concepts can be used to invite students to think historically about commemorations. Keywords: historical commemorations, public history, history teaching and learning, citizenship education, history education, historical consciousness, historical thinking, social studies education
Both policymakers and scholars disagree about the effects and suitability of citizenship education standalone courses. Extant evidence about their effects is mixed and inconclusive. This article exploits the discontinuities generated by changes in Spanish education policies to identify the long-term effects of civic education on multiple outputs usually set as the policy goals of these courses: political engagement, institutional support and political values. In 2007, a new standalone citizenship education subject was introduced in the Spanish school curricula. This subject was then progressively removed from the curricula until its disappearance in 2017. These changes gave rise to exogenous variation in exposure to civic education between young individuals born in different years. In this article these policy changes are exploited to identify the effects of citizenship education through a regression discontinuity design that draws on a 12-wave panel survey. The results point to the emergence of a generation of critical – yet passive – citizens as a result of the implementation of a standalone citizenship education subject in Spanish schools.
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1917153 .
This quantitative study tests the relationship between ideological classroom composition and perceptions of open classroom climate. Using data from the 2016 International Education Association’s International Civic and Citizenship Study, the study uses latent class analysis and multilevel regression modelling across five countries. First, latent class analysis identified students as low or high socioeconomic status. To assess ideological polarization, the gap between support for gender equality and ethnic rights was calculated between groups. Finally, a multilevel regression model measured the relationship between ideological polarization and students’ perception of open classroom climate. Across three countries, results found negative associations between increased polarization and perception of an open classroom climate. Additional testing identified that polarization modified the relationship between student socioeconomic status and perceptions of open classroom climate in Croatia.
Recent decades have witnessed increased empirical and policy interest in children’s citizenship, particularly since the ratification of the United Nations Declaration of Children’s Rights. However, support for children’s active citizenship is often hindered by the pervasiveness of discourses that characterise children as innocent, developing, and free from responsibility. Public and governmental decision-making largely excludes children’s consultation and contributions, often determined by age alone. To quantifiably assess the amount of public support for children’s political participation, we commissioned a Likert scale survey question on degrees of support for children and youth (across four age groups between 3 and 18 year olds) having the opportunity to influence government decisions, in the Australian and New Zealand 2016 versions of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). Analysis of responses to this question in relation to demographic survey data indicate variation in preferences for different age groups, and that age, gender, and political party preference of respondents were variables of significance for both nations. These variables point to potential predictors of attitudes toward political participation of children and youth which have relevance for policymakers and educators in relation to provision of programmes that will increase the engagement of children and youth in government decision-making.
Protest is a common, if somewhat contested, form of political engagement. Little is known, however, about the decision to participate in illegal protest as a form of civic engagement. Using data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2009 (ICCS 2009) (Schulz et al. 2010), the current study explored Hong Kong adolescents’ intentions to engage in protest activities. Mixture Rasch modelling was chosen for data analysis. Two latent classes with different participation patterns were identified and labelled ‘Radicals’ and ‘Rationals’. Multilevel logistic regression was used to assess key predictors of group membership. Student-level results indicated that citizenship-efficacy, corruption acceptance and the use of connections were the predictors for inclusion in the Radical group. Parents’ political interests, good student–teacher relationships, positive attitudes to good citizenship, support for gender equality and traditional cultural values predicted membership of the Rational group. School-level results indicated that in less SES advantaged schools, students’ endorsement of illegal protest was higher.
Reinforcing citizenship and social integration are important goals of schools worldwide. In most educational systems, school are free to design their civic and citizenship education curricula and pedagogical objectives and practices may vary. Understanding the possible influence of school factors on civic and citizenship competences remains a difficult task. This dissertation aims to shed some light on the contribution of schools and the wider learning environment to the acquisition of civic and citizenship competences in lower secondary education. We use a theoretical framework based on educational effectiveness research and present empirical findings estimated across several educational systems and democratic contexts. The results show that citizenship learning depends strongly on students’ background, their motivation, the opportunities they have to learn, discuss and practice democracy outside school, as well as on aspects of the school quality. Although the school appears to play a modest role, we find that school experiences are promoting the acquisition of cognitive outcomes (civic knowledge and skills) and to a less extent the acquisition of non-cognitive outcomes (attitudes, values, behavioral dispositions). The findings tend to suggest the possibility that different school characteristics may be linked to different civic competences and that curricular approaches that foster simultaneously all outcomes are difficult to develop. Nevertheless, we find that stimulating a democratic classroom climate in which free dialogue and critical debate on controversial political and social issues are encouraged is highly important in promoting effectively all types of civic competences.
States are beginning to restructure their U.S. history assessments from previous multiple-choice based assessments to include written-response questions that have higher levels of academic language demands. These higher-order thinking and analytical items pose challenges to linguistically and culturally diverse students. The purpose of the current study is to investigate how the restructuring of a U.S. history state assessment is associated with English Learners' (ELs) achievement over time. The author incorporates 3 years of data from the Tennessee Department of Education, and utilizes multi-level modeling (Hierarchical Linear Modeling) to examine and compare the association between school percentage ELs and U.S. history achievement on Tennessee's (TN) U.S. history state assessment. Findings indicate that the restructuring of the TN U.S. history state assessment in the 2015-16 school year is significantly and inversely associated with ELs' achievement on this assessment. At the same time, there are no significant associations for the 2012-13 and the 2013-14 school years. This suggests a negative inverse association between the restructuring of the TN U.S. history state assessment and ELs' performance. In addition, this suggests that ELs' lack of U.S. history reading and writing ability may have contributed to the negative association.
During adolescence, individuals begin to form ideas about human rights as part of the development of a sense of self. The outcomes of these processes are influential in the stability and peace in postconflict societies. However, there remain many questions about how these youth construct ideas about human rights and how they become oriented toward promoting these in society through a developed human rights consciousness. This study investigates how adolescents in an underexplored area of postconflict societies—where past violence was not intimately experienced—understand human rights. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 25 fifteen-year-olds across five schools in Tacna, Peru. These adolescents understand human rights as related to respect, protection, and needing personal advocacy, but they do not integrate ideas about human rights into concrete practice—the foundation of human rights consciousness. While the majority of respondents assert that human rights must be understood and enacted in order to become reality, they do not connect these ideas to concrete issues in Peruvian society. This gap may have emerged from postconflict political developments in the Peruvian education system. For a group of female respondents, human rights are about identity, which may demonstrate the ways that local gender contexts and developmentally salient concerns shape these understandings. These findings could provide important empirical support for policies and programs fostering human rights consciousness in postconflict youth.
In the late 1980s, Cummings and associates highlighted a renaissance of interest in values education across the world. Their book, entitled The Revival of Values Education in Asia and the West (Cummings et al. 1988, p.3), contained rich information about how values education had penetrated the curriculum in 90 countries. Values education continued to ‘revive’, leading to another book entitled Values Education for Dynamic Societies, edited by Cummings and another group of associates (Cummings et al. 2001a). The book presented a study of values education in 20 settings in the Pacific Basin, showing in one way or another how values education remained a major concern to educational leaders. Asian scholarship has also contributed to the theme with a trilogy on citizenship education in Asia and Pacific (Lee et al. 2004; Grossman et al. 2008; Kennedy et al. 2010).
It is commonly understood that democracies need actively engaged democrats and that adolescence is a significant period in life for educating engaged citizens. Whereas previous quantitative studies in the field have primarily focused on the relationships among participation-related variables, the research reported here aims to categorize secondary school students according to their civic orientations. Thus, the present study proposes a different strategy of analysing quantitative data, namely a person-centred statistical approach, which is well suited when the research focuses on heterogeneous populations. It utilizes attitudes towards the importance of citizenship behaviours and employed latent class analysis using two cohorts of the Australian National Assessment Program: Civics and Citizenship. Analyses yielded four groups for both the importance of conventional citizenship and the importance of social movement-related citizenship. About one-third of all students were ‘political enthusiasts’, as they were likely to endorse all kinds of citizenship behaviour. These patterns were stable across cohorts, but some latent class sizes varied between both cohorts. The findings of this innovative approach to the study of good citizenship are linked to previous research, and possible explanations for the differences between both cohorts—cohort, lifecycle, and period effects—and the potential of person-centred quantitative research for civics and citizenship education and policy are discussed.
This study used short-term longitudinal data to examine the contributions of democratic teaching practices (e.g., the Developmental Designs approach) and equitable school climate to civic engagement attitudes, beliefs and behaviors among 515 Black and Latino middle school students (47.9% male). Concurrent experiences of democratic homeroom advisory, classroom practices, and equitable school climate were associated with higher scores on each civic engagement component. The relation between classroom practices and civic attitudes was more robust when school climates were seen as more equitable. Longitudinally, homeroom advisory practices and equitable school climate predicted higher civic attitudes one year later. Discussion focuses on civic attitudes and future research on school experiences that support civic engagement among youth of color.
Secondary datasets, large-scale studies, and big data are attractive information sources that have the potential to broaden the scope and influence of social studies research. Using large-scale samples and complex sampling frames, secondary datasets offer greater external validity, considerably more variables, and more representative samples than primary data. Other advantages of secondary datasets are accessibility, time and cost savings; however; analyses of these datasets require knowledge of a wide range of statistical methods and modeling. Positioning the value of large datasets in examining the vox populi and the underutilization of large-scale studies and secondary data analysis in social studies, authors discuss possibilities big data offer the field, democratization of data, and repurposing of data. Limitations of working with large-scale datasets and statistical considerations to avoid pitfalls of secondary data analyses are presented. Authors conclude with the potential wisdom of democratic judgment derived from large-scale, data-informed thinking in social studies.
Along with the leo.-Level-One, PIAAC, and CiLL studies, large-scale assessments (LSA) have entered the field of adult and further education. Achievements and limits of internationally comparative LSA, which constitute a key instrument of educational reporting in the program of an evidence-based educational reform, were and still are discussed intensely in the school sector. On the other hand, educational-scientifically oriented research on adult education has so far hardly made use of data and results from LSA. On the basis of some exemplary theoretical and empirical questions, the author reveals the potential of LSA for research on adult and further education interested in the effects of pedagogical support for education and competence development over the lifespan. To this end, possibilities of re-analyzing LSA are shown and information on supplementary or more comprehensive studies is given, in line with the multi-level structure of adult and further education.
The present study investigated how school climate, school connectedness and academic efficacy beliefs inform emergent civic engagement behaviors among middle school youth of color. These associations were examined both concurrently and longitudinally using a developmentally appropriate measure of civic engagement. Data were drawn from two subsamples of a larger study of social/emotional development in middle school (cross-sectional sample n = 324; longitudinal sample n = 232), M = 12 years old, 46 % female, 53 % male. Forty-two percent (42.2 %) of the sample self-identified as African American, 19.8 % as Multiracial or Mixed, 19.4 % as Latino, 11.6 % as Asian American or Pacific Islander, 11.6 % identified as Other, and 5.2 % as Native American. The study tested and found support for a latent mediation model in which more positive perceptions of school climate were positively related to school connectedness, and this in turn, was positively associated with civic engagement; school climate was also positively associated with academic-self-efficacy beliefs, but such beliefs did not mediate the climate-civic engagement association. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.
Purpose
– This paper presents a moderated discussion on popular misconceptions, benefits and limitations of International Large-Scale Assessment (ILSA) programs, clarifying how ILSA results could be more appropriately interpreted and used in public policy contexts in the USA and elsewhere in the world.
Design/methodology/approach
– To bring key issues, points-of-view and recommendations on the theme to light, the method used is a “moderated policy discussion”. Nine commentaries were invited to represent voices of leading ILSA scholars/researchers and measurement experts, juxtaposed against views of prominent leaders of education systems in the USA that participate in ILSA programs. The discussion is excerpted from a recent blog published by Education Week. It is moderated with introductory remarks from the guest editor and concluding recommendations from an ILSA researcher who did not participate in the original blog. References and author biographies are presented at the end of the article.
Findings
– Together, the commentaries address historical, methodological, socio-political and policy issues surrounding ILSA programs vis-à-vis the major goals of education and larger societal concerns. Authors offer recommendations for improving the international studies themselves and for making reports more transparent for educators and the public to facilitate greater understanding of their purposes, meanings and policy implications.
Originality/value
– When assessment policies are implemented from the top down, as is often the case with ILSA program participation, educators and leaders in school systems tend to be left out of the conversation. This article is intended to foster a productive two-way dialogue among key ILSA actors that can serve as a stepping-stone to more concerted policy actions within and across national education systems.
International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) have been used to draw comparisons among countries on a variety of topics in education and, more broadly, for example, in adolescent development. These assessments can inform the public about influential factors on the micro and macro levels, foster interdisciplinary and international collaboration, and provide important data for studying the context and processes of education and development. In short, their potential is great. However, there are also challenges, in particular with the validity of using country rankings to estimate educational achievement of students within countries and the unintended consequences of this use. Promising directions for analysis and reporting are identified in this article - including secondary analysis informed by a conceptual framework that focuses on the context and processes of education. Examples of secondary analysis using data from an ILSA in civic education are given.
Researchers in comparative education have suggested different ways in which their field of study can be enhanced by considering units of analysis at different levels rather than focusing on a single level such as the nation-state (Bray and Thomas, 1995; Torney-Purta and Barber, 2011). The study reported here seeks to contribute to this area of interest to comparative researchers. It does so by identifying groups for comparison that are not predefined in advance of any analysis but which emerge during the analytic process itself. Drawing on data from ICCS 2009 (Schulz et al., 2010), the intentions of 14-year-old students in five Asian societies to participate in future civic related activities are analyzed with a focus on the students’ responses to specific questions. The results show that there is considerable variation within each of these societies when it comes to type of future civic engagement. At one end of the spectrum are groups of students who are classified as “Radical Participators” while at the other there are the “Minimal Participators” and there are other clusters of students in between. Groups such as these exist in each society, although not in the same proportions. The implications of these results are discussed, especially with reference to how comparative research can be enhanced by identifying groups through person-centered analytic techniques.
International large-scale assessments are now part of the educational landscape in many countries and often feed into major policy decisions. Yet, such assessments also provide data sets for secondary analysis that can address key issues of concern to educators and policymakers alike. Traditionally, such secondary analyses have been based on a variable-centred approach that gives rise to league tables. In the study reported here, a person-centred analysis is used as an alternative to the traditional approach. Data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) were analysed to investigate Asian students' attitudes to their future civic participation. Cluster analysis with validity measures showed that 4 distinct groups of students were identified within the societies studied thus highlighting the diversity within the samples. These results cannot be achieved with a conventional variable approach to analysis, and they suggest the usefulness of exploring alternative approaches to secondary data analysis.
The valorization of humanity and diversity are ongoing global processes that pose new challenges to nationalism and the mono cultural narrative once favored in schools and universities. This paper focuses on an exploratory analysis of textbooks, indicating a growth of cosmopolitan and multicultural emphases. Students are increasingly exposed to world issues and international initiatives calling for greater global citizenship consciousness. Students are also further exposed to a depiction of their own societies as ones filled with validated diversity along many dimensions.
This study assessed whether participation in Swedish youth recreation centres (Fritidsgardar) is related to long-term criminality assessed from late childhood to mid adulthood. A prospective, longitudinal investigation of a representative cohort of 498 boys from a medium-sized Swedish community was employed. A pattern-analysis identi” ed ” ve configurations of boys who showed different profiles of social and academic competence at the age of 10. The configurations were compared with respect to juvenile and adult criminality for boys who did, and who did not, make the decision to participate in a youth recreation centre at age 13. Results showed that participation in youth centres was nonrandom. Boys with a multiple problem profile of both social and academic problems in school at age 10 showed more frequent participation in recreation centres at age 13. The frequency of criminal offending increased for all configurations of boys who became involved in a recreation centre. Frequent participation in youth centres was linked to high rates of juvenile offending and persistent offending (i.e., registered for one or several offences both as a juvenile and as an adult). These ” ndings held after controlling for individual, family, and economic factors prior to involvement in the youth centre. The limitations of the ” ndings and their implications for social policy are discussed.
The upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act provides an opportunity to reconsider what factors school performance-reporting systems should include. Critics of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) have pointed to the narrowing effects of the law's focus on mathematics and reading achievement, and they have called for efforts to broaden the measures used to rate schools. This report poses and addresses questions regarding expanded measures of school quality to reflect the multiple goals of schooling. The authors convened a panel of five experts on school accountability policies, scanned published research about expanded measures of school performance, conducted ten semistructured phone interviews with staff from local or state education agencies and research institutions, and reviewed the measures employed in each state that publishes its own school ratings in addition to those required under NCLB. After classifying the measures state education agencies use to develop their own school ratings, they then describe categories of measures that research indicates are the most rapidly growing in usage by state and local education agencies. They supplement categories of measures with more detailed examples of localities that have adopted them, examining why they adopted the measures and how the measures are employed. This report describes promising directions for expanding the set of measures that schools have at their disposal while acknowledging the need for more research on how the availability of such measures affects educational practice and student achievement.
The technical complexities and sheer size of international large-scale assessment (LSA) databases often cause hesitation on the part of the applied researcher interested in analyzing them. Further, inappropriate choice or application of statistical methods is a common problem in applied research using these databases. This article serves as a primer for researchers on the issues and methods necessary for obtaining unbiased results from LSA data. The authors outline the issues surrounding the analysis and reporting of LSA data, with a particular focus on three prominent international surveys. In addition, they make recommendations targeted at applied researchers regarding best analysis and reporting practices when using these databases.
Through a rigorous process of selecting educational psychology’s most useful affective constructs, the OECD constructed the Students’ Approaches to Learning (SAL) instrument, which requires only 10 minutes to measure 14 factors that assess self-regulated learning strategies, self-beliefs, motivation, and learning preferences. Here we evaluate SAL responses from nationally representative samples of approximately 4,000 15-year olds from each of 25 countries (N = 107,899)—OECD’s PISA database. In one of the largest and most powerful cross-cultural comparisons of diverse educational psychology constructs, we used multiple group confirmatory factor analyses to show that SAL’s a priori 14-factor solution is well-defined and reasonably invariant across the 25 countries, as are relations between SAL factors and four criterion variables (gender, SES, math and verbal achievement). The results support posited relations among constructs derived from different theoretical perspectives and their cross-cultural generalizability. SAL provides a standard set of educational psychological measures that have been translated into many languages with nationally representative norms that have been validated across the world. These should be a useful focus or supplement in diverse educational psychology research settings, and should provide the longitude and latitude against which to map new and existing educational psychology constructs.
This essay is a critique of the scientific and policy rationales for transnational standardization. It analyzes two examples of policy export: early childhood standards in one of North America’s oldest Indigenous communities and the ongoing development of international standards for university teaching. It examines calls for American education to look to Finland, Canada, and Singapore for models of reform and innovation, focusing on the complex historical, cultural, and political settlements at work in these countries. The author addresses two affiliated challenges: first, the possibility of a principled understanding of evidence and policy in cultural and political-economic context, and second, the possibility of a mediative educational science that might guide policy formation.
This article examines trajectories of nationalism in twentieth-century Argentina, Mexico, and Peru through the analytical lens of schooling. I argue that textbooks reveal state-sponsored conceptions of nationhood. In turn, tile outlooks and practices of teachers provide a window for understanding how state ideologies Were received, translated, and reworked Within society. During the late nineteenth century, textbooks in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru conceived of the nation as a political community, emphasized civilization for having achieved national unity, and viewed elites as driving national history. During the twentieth century, textbooks eventually advanced a cultural understanding of the nation, envisioned national unity to be achieved through assimilation into a homogeneous national identity, and assigned historical agency to the masses. Yet teacher responses to the textbooks varied. In Mexico, under Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940), teachers predominantly embraced textbooks that promoted a popular national culture. Teachers in Argentina under Juan Peron (1946-1955) and in Peru under Juan Velasco (1968-1975) largely opposed the texts.
In 2 related studies framed by social constructivism theory, the authors explored a fine-grained analysis of adolescents' civic conceptual knowledge and skills and investigated them in relation to factors such as teachers' qualifications and students' classroom experiences. In Study 1 (with about 2,800 U.S. students), the authors identified 4 cognitive attributes (dimensions) underlying the test items of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement Civic Education Study: basic conceptual knowledge, advanced conceptual knowledge and reasoning, and 2 civic-related process skills. Using cognitive diagnostic modeling they identified 4 achievement profiles suggesting that basic conceptual knowledge is essential for the attainment of advanced conceptual knowledge, but not necessarily for skills. In Study 2, 1,332 U.S. students were examined from 68 schools in which 1 of their teachers of a civic-related subject had been surveyed. Students' mastery of concepts and process skills was associated with the extent of traditional classroom activities, open discussion climate, exposure to social studies concepts, and teachers' in-service training.
The widespread and increasing use of cooperative learning is one of the great success stories of social and educational psychology. Its success largely rests on the relationships among theory, research, and practice. Social interdependence theory provides a foundation on which cooperative learning is built. More than 1,200 research studies have been conducted in the past 11 decades on cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts. Findings from these studies have validated, modified, refined, and extended the theory. From the theory, procedures for the teacher’s role in using formal and informal cooperative learning and cooperative base groups have been operationalized. Those procedures are widely used by educators throughout the world. The applications have resulted in revisions of the theory and the generation of new research.
The last 6 decades of empirical research on civic engagement among young people living in democracies and of the recognition of international human rights have seen the achievement of many milestones. This article focuses on some connections between these 2 areas and examines the ways in which everyday settings such as neighborhoods and the schools that exist within them can foster support for human rights (especially the practice of participatory rights) among adolescents. Secondary analysis of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement Civic Education (CIVED) Study (data collected in 1999 from nationally representative samples of 14-year-olds in 28 countries) is presented. A cluster analysis of 12 attitudinal scales in 5 countries sharing the Western European tradition (Australia, England, Finland, Sweden, and the United States) is presented. A new conceptual model is also introduced, a modification of Super and Harkness's Developmental Niche. This model frames an analysis unpacking some findings from the CIVED Study and focusing on the everyday experiences and neighborhood niches for the development of participatory human rights. The larger message is that research on social justice attitudes among young people is a valuable form of social advocacy and action.
During 1999, researchers surveyed nearly 90,000 14-year-old students in 28 countries. Findings for this age group were released in 2001 and reported in Citizenship and Education in Twenty-eight Countries: Civic Knowledge and Engagement at Age Fourteen (Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald, & Schulz). In the following year, over 50,000 upper secondary students (ranging in age from 16 to 19 years) from 16 countries received a similar test and the same survey of civic concepts and attitudes. Findings for the upper secondary students were released in 2002 and reported in Civic Knowledge and Engagement. An IEA Study of Upper Secondary Students in Sixteen Countries (Amadeo, Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Husfeldt, & Nikolova). This latest technical report will enable fellow researchers in the field to evaluate published reports, monographs and articles based upon these data and to conduct their own analyses of the international data sets available from IEA. This volume includes detailed information on instrument development, translation procedures, field operations, quality assurance procedures, sampling design, data management, database construction, weighting procedures, scaling methodology and reporting of data from the survey.
The SAGE Handbook of Education for Citizenship and Democracy brings together new work by some of the leading authorities on citizenship education, and is divided into five sections. The first section deals with key ideas about citizenship education including democracy, rights, globalization and equity. Section two contains a wide range of national case studies of citizenship education including African, Asian, Australian, European and North and South American examples. The third section focuses on perspectives about citizenship education with discussions about key areas such as sustainable development, anti-racism, and gender. Section four provides insights into different characterizations of citizenship education with illustrations of democratic schools, peace and conflict education, global education, human rights education etc. The final section provides a series of chapters on the pedagogy of citizenship education with discussions about curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment.
This book is for those who believe that good government should be based on hard evidence, and that research and policy ought to go hand-in-hand. Unfortunately, no such bond exists. Rather, there is a substantial gap, some say chasm, between the production of knowledge and its utilization. Despite much contrary evidence, the authors propose there is a way of doing public policy in a more reflective manner, and that a hunger for evidence and objectivity does exist. The book is pragmatic, drawing on advice from some of the best and brightest informants from both the research and policy communities. in their own voices, researchers provide incisive analysis about how to bridge the research/policy divide, and policymakers provide insights about why they use research, what kind is most useful, where they seek it, and how they screen its quality. The book breaks through stereotypes about what policymakers are like, and provides an insiders’ view of how the policy process really works. Readers will learn what knowledge, skills, approaches, and attitudes are needed to take research findings from the laboratory to lawmaking bodies, and how to evaluate one’s success in doing so. The book’s balance between theory and practice will appeal to students in graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses in family studies and family policy, educational policy, law, political science, public administration, public health, social work, and sociology. This book will also be of interest to researchers who want to bring their ideas into policy debate and to those who work with policymakers to advance an evidence-based policy agenda.
With increasing globalization, countries face social, linguistic, religious and other cultural changes that can lead to misunderstandings in a variety of settings. These changes can have broader implications across the world, leading to changing dynamics in identity, gender, relationships, family, and community. This book addresses the subsequent need for a basic understanding of the cultural dimensions of psychology and their application to everyday settings. The book discusses the basis of culture and presents related theories and concepts, including a description of how cognition and behavior are influenced by different sociocultural contexts. The text explores a broad definition of culture and provides practical models to improve intercultural relations, communication, and cultural competency. Each chapter contains an introduction, a concise overview of the topic, a practical application of the topic using current global examples, and a brief summary. This up to date overview of psychology and culture is ideal reading for undergraduate and graduate students and academics interested in culturally related topics and issues.
This article discusses political socialization, focusing on the major turning points and developments in the field. It addresses the issue of the bull and bear markets of political socialization research and looks at the recent renewed interest in the dynamics of socialization. The role of the family as the main agent of socialization is examined as well. The article includes a discussion on the relevant contextual features that attend the socialization process. It concludes with several comments on a few missed opportunities to study the socialization processes and outcomes of pre-adults, as well as possible future fields of research.
Cross-national research in civic education spans four decades, moving from a controversial area of investigation to research providing respected evidence for international policy discussions. Of particular note is the IEA Study of Civic Education (CIVED), which assessed adolescents' civic knowledge, skills, attitudes, and activities in nearly 30 countries in 1999 and 2000 (IEA stands for International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Research). Among the most significant CIVED findings are the relationships between classroom climate and civic knowledge; the types of political participation appealing to adolescents; and the importance of covering more than historical/political knowledge. The findings from CIVED have been widely disseminated and have informed educational policy in several countries.
Xu and von Davier (2006) demonstrated the feasibility of using the general diagnostic model (GDM) to analyze National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) proficiency data. Their work showed that the GDM analysis not only led to conclusions for gender and race groups similar to those published in the NAEP Report Card, but also allowed flexibility in estimating multidimensional skills simultaneously. However, Xu and von Davier noticed that estimating the latent skill distributions will be much more challenging with this model when there is a large number of subgroups to estimate. To make the GDM more applicable to NAEP data analysis, which requires a fairly large subgroups analysis, this study developed a log-linear model to reduce the number of parameters in the latent skill distribution without sacrificing the accuracy of inferences. This paper describes such a model and applies the model in the analysis of NAEP reading assessments for 2003 and 2005. The comparisons between using this model and the unstructured model were made through the use of various results, such as the differences between item parameter estimates and the differences between estimated latent class distributions. The results in general show that using the log-linear model is efficient.
This paper introduces multilevel extensions for the general diagnostic model (GDM) following recent developments on extensions of latent class analysis (LCA) to hierarchical models. The GDM is based on LCA as well as discrete latent trait models and may be viewed as a general modeling framework for confirmatory multidimensional item response models.
The multilevel extensions presented in this paper enable one to check the impact of clustered data, such as data for students within schools in large scale educational surveys, on the structural parameter estimates of the GDM. Moreover, the multilevel version of the GDM allows study of differences in skill distributions across these clusters.
The International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) studied the ways in which countries prepare their young people to undertake their roles as citizens. ICCS was based on the premise that preparing students for citizenship involves helping them develop relevant knowledge and understanding and form positive attitudes toward being a citizen and participating in activities related to civics and citizenship. These notions were elaborated in the ICCS assessment framework (Schulz, Fraillon, Ainley, Losito, & Kerr, 2008). Regional contexts are important aspects of civic and citizenship education because they help us understand how people are differentially influenced to undertake their roles as citizens. Along with its regional module for Europe, ICCS included regional instruments for Asia and Latin America to supplement the data obtained from the international survey. This report from ICCS focuses on the 24 countries that participated in the study’s European regional module. It is based on the European ICCS student instrument that investigated specific European issues related to civic and citizenship education. The report also includes relevant data from the international student instruments that pertained to those countries. Readers should view this European report in the context of the international reports on the findings from ICCS (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Kerr, & Losito, 2010a, 2010b). The European module investigated students’ civic knowledge in a European context as well as their attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors in relation to European civic issues, institutions, and policies. More specifically, it considered European citizenship and identity, intercultural relations in Europe, free movement of citizens in Europe, European policies, institutions, and participation, and European language learning. This report examines variations across European countries in these measures and the associations of these measures with selected student characteristics. The findings reported in this publication are based on data gathered from random samples of more than 75,000 students in their eighth year of schooling in more than 3,000 schools from 24 European countries. These student data were augmented, where relevant, by data from over 35,000 teachers in those schools and by further contextual data collected from school principals and the study’s national research centers.
This article is based on the assumption that the right to vote in national elections is not an essential dimension of citizenship for early adolescents as long as adolescents’ other competencies and attitudes are nurtured in their everyday settings. The article addresses the issue of children or early adolescents and their political and civic participation from three perspectives. First, it examines how human rights and action in community settings have been viewed across the several decades in which political socialization research has been conducted. The idea of emergent participatory citizenship for young adolescents is introduced. Second, the authors examine findings from survey research to determine whether the socialization and developmental experiences of the majority of early adolescents entering the twenty-first century have resulted in attitudes and skills appropriate to being full citizens. The third section examines studies using qualitative methodologies—observations and interviews—to show how the spaces for adolescents to exercise participatory and deliberative capabilities can be enhanced.
This study used a diagnostic testing approach to compare the mathematics achievement of eighth-grade students across a sample of 20 countries, analyzing data from the Third International Math and Science Study–Revised (TIMSS-R, 1999). Using the rule-space method, student mastery was measured on 23 specific content knowledge and processing subskills (“attributes”) underlying students’ item scores, using 23 attributes previously defined and validated. Mean mastery levels for each attribute were compared for the 20 selected countries. Clear differences among the countries were found in patterns of subskill achievement. U.S. students were strong in some content and quantitative reading skills, but weak in others, notably geometry. Interestingly, success in geometry was found to be highly associated with logical reasoning and other important mathematical thinking skills across the sampled countries.
Both the 1999 IEA Civic Education Study (CIVED) and the 2009 IEA International Civics and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) sought to examine young people’s attitudes and behaviors as related to civic engagement in addition to their civic knowledge. Now that both studies are completed, questions can be asked about the extent to which the averages of outcomes across countries have stayed consistent or changed. The purpose of this article is to review the CIVED and ICCS studies to examine the potential for, and potential limitations to, such a comparison extending beyond the cognitive domain to some attitudinal and participatory outcomes. We compared guiding frameworks for each study, examined the similarities and differences among items in scales appearing in both studies, and provided a general discussion of the pitfalls of comparing IRT scales across cohorts. An item-level analysis explored whether young people’s average attitudes toward immigrants’ rights and institutional trust changed between 1999 and 2009 in five Nordic countries. Stability in support for immigrants’ rights and increasing trust are apparent in most countries, although exceptions to this pattern exist. Recommendations for secondary analysis of CIVED and ICCS are discussed.
This article elaborates a presentation made upon reception of the E. L. Thorndike Career Achievement Award in Educational Psychology from Division 15 of the American Psychological Association. It considers how value aspects of motivation apply to efforts to develop students' appreciation for school learning. Currently, we have only limited knowledge about situations that afford opportunities for learning school content with appreciation of its value, how to exploit those affordances, or even their benefits to learners. We need to develop our theorizing about the benefits that students may derive from learning in school and determine what curriculum makers and teachers might do to foster students' appreciation for these benefits. Teaching for appreciation requires ensuring that what is taught is worth learning, explaining the value of this content and modeling its applications, and scaffolding learning by engaging students in activities that allow them to experience its valued affordances. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)
The Board on International Comparative Studies in Education monitors U.S. participation in cross-national comparative studies in education and provides advice to sponsoring agencies. This document results from the Board's consideration of studies that would enrich plans for international studies. What the Board believes to be the value of international comparative studies and how to improve such studies are discussed. Establishing a more coherent and effective worldwide system for research and data collection in education is a priority that will require common indicators for describing educational accomplishments, research and syntheses of research, documentation of practices, dissemination of information, and archives and research reports. Establishing a data collection, reporting, and dissemination system must take into account the views of interested parties, the technical and substantive state of the art, and the promise of cross-national studies for responding to policy needs and advancing knowledge. (Contains 18 references.) (SLD)
The use of secondary data, or existing data that is freely available to researchers who were not involved in the original study, has a long and rich tradition in the social sciences. In recent years, the internet has made secondary datasets readily available at the click of a mouse. And yet, whether due to a lack of methodological training or as part of a broader indifference to alternative data collection strategies, psychologists have been surprisingly slow to utilize these useful resources.
Secondary
Data Analysis: An Introduction for Psychologists provides students and seasoned researchers alike with an accessible introduction to secondary analysis. The book is divided into two sections: Part I provides psychologists with a set of accessible methodological primers, including chapters on using short forms of scales; analyzing survey data with complex sampling designs; and dealing with missing data. (Readers are assumed to possess a working knowledge of multivariate analysis.) Chapters in Part II provide compelling examples of secondary data analysis in various kinds of psychological research, including development and aging, behavioral genetics, cross-cultural psychology, and the psychology of political affiliation. This wide-ranging yet practical book shows how the analysis of secondary data can provide unique and compelling opportunities for advancing psychological science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Though literacy has been measured throughout Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, and indeed, the world, we are still far from assessing a comprehensive set of competencies, particularly key competencies. The project
Definition and Selection of Competencies: Theoretical and Conceptual Foundations (DeSeCo), under the auspices of the OECD, is led by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office in collaboration with the US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Its goal is to conduct research that will help foster the development of the needed framework for defining and selecting key competencies. The contributions published in this volume represent the result of the scholarly work conducted during the 1st phase of the DeSeCo project. This book sounds out perspectives on competencies from different academic principles, as well as from various areas of policy and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Presents findings from a comprehensive study of the political education of young people in 10 countries, each of which has a systematic educational program designed to produce well-informed, democratically active citizens. Sampling and methodological procedures, the development of the Civic Education Cognitive Achievement Test and attitudinal outcome measures in civic education, and data on students' perceptions of political system are presented. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Introduction Survey Research in Political Socialization and Civic Engagement Improving Research in Civic Engagement by Improving the Framework for Generating Research Questions Improving Research in Civic Engagement by Using Multiple Methods Contrasting Quantitative (Survey) and Qualitative (Focus Group) Methods in Studying Civic Engagement Conclusions and Policy Implications
An understanding of human rights among young people forms a foundation for future support and practice of rights. We have used data from 88,000 14-year-olds surveyed in the 1999 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Civic Education Study to examine country differences in students' knowledge pertaining to human rights compared with other forms of civic knowledge, and in students' attitudes toward promoting and practicing human rights. A hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analysis examines student-level predictors (e.g., gender and school experiences) and country-level predictors (e.g., history of democracy) of rights-related knowledge and attitudes. Countries with governments that pay more attention to human rights in intergovernmental discourse (i.e., dialogue between nations and international governing bodies) have students who perform better on human rights knowledge items. Students' experiences of democracy at school and with international issues have a positive association with their knowledge of human rights. Significant gender differences also exist. Looking at rights-related attitudes, students with more knowledge of human rights, more frequent engagement with international topics, and more open class and school climates held stronger norms supporting social movement citizenship, had more positive attitudes toward immigrants' rights, and were more politically efficacious. Implications are drawn for psychologists and educators who wish to play a role in increasing adolescents' understanding, support, and practice of human rights.
The topic of teacher credentials and student performance is revisited in an international setting using the TIMSS-99 data. The lack of consistent positive link between credentials and performance can be explained via three routes: measurement problem of “teacher quality” input, measurement problem of “student outcomes”, and the production function form that is assumed to link the input and the output. Although there is a small literature focusing on student outcome measurement problems, suggesting the use of cognitive achievements rather than test scores, in most cases those cognitive measures are nothing but math and science scores. This study contributes to the literature by borrowing from the measurement and psychometrics theories to decompose single scores into three categories of cognitive abilities. The hypothesis is that teachers may play a crucial role in the development of some student cognitive skills while not in the others. Using a “rule-space” model, this article identifies three cognitive skills: the process skill, the reading skill and the mathematical think skill. The study finds that: (1) in general teacher credentials have no effect on any type of cognitive skill development as well as on the test score, and (2) the within-teacher variance of student performance is much larger than between-teacher variance in Japan and Korea, whereas the reverse is true in the US and the Netherlands. The phenomenon of “private tutoring” is quoted as an explanation of this pattern.
This volume reports the results of the first phase of the Civic Education Study conducted by International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). During 1996 and 1997, researchers in 24 countries collected documentary evidence on the circumstances, contents, and processes of civic education in response to a common set of framing questions. They also solicited the views of experts on what 14-year-olds should know about a variety of political and civic issues. Each chapter provides a summary of these national case studies and highlights pressing issues or themes of current importance within civic education. This volume will give educators and policy-makers cross-national information to enhance consideration of the role and status of civic education within their countries, especially in light of growing concerns about youth participation in democratic society. Chapters include: (1) "Mapping the Distinctive and Common Features of Civic Education in Twenty-Four Countries" (Judith Torney-Purta; John Schwille; Jo-Ann Amadeo); (2) "Reconstructing Civic and Citizenship Education in Australia" (Murray Print; Kerry Kennedy; John Hughes); (3) "Education for Citizenship in the French Community of Belgium: Opportunities to Learn in Addition to the Formal Curriculum" (Christiane Blondin; Patricia Schillings); (4) "Challenges in Developing a New System of Civic Education in Conditions of Social Change: Bulgaria" (Peter Balkansky; Zahari Zahariev; Svetoslav Stoyanov; Neli Stoyanova); (5) "Canadian Citizenship Education: The Pluralist Ideal and Citizenship Education for a Post-Modern State" (Alan M. Sears; Gerald M. Clarke; Andrew S. Hughes); (6) "Education for Democracy in Colombia" (Alvaro Rodriguez Rueda); (7) "National Identity in the Civic Education of Cyprus" (Constantinos Papanastasiou; Mary Koutselini-Ioannidou); (8) "The Changing Face of Civic Education in the Czech Republic" (Jana Valkova; Jaroslav Kalous); (9) "Re-examining Citizenship Education in England" (David Kerr); (10) "Toward a Dynamic View of Society: Civic Education in Finland" (Sirkka Ahonen; Arja Virta); (11) "Concepts of Civic Education in Germany Based on a Survey of Expert Opinion" (Christa Handle; Detlef Oesterreich; Luitgard Trommer); (12) "The Discourse of Citizenship Education in Greece: National Identity and Social Diversity" (Dimitra Makrinioti; Joseph Solomon); (13) "Controversies of Civic Education in Political Transition: Hong Kong" (Lee Wing On); (14) "In Transit: Civic Education in Hungary" (Zsuzsa Matrai); (15) "Citizenship Education in a Divided Society: The Case of Israel" (Zsuzsa Matrai); (16) Italy: Educating for Democracy in a Changing Democratic Society (Orit Ichilov); (17) "National Identity and Education for Democracy in Lithuania" (Irena Zaleskiene); (18) Citizenship Conceptions and Competencies in the Subject Matter 'Society' in the Dutch Schools" (Henk Dekker); (19) "The Specific Nature and Objectives of Civic Education in Poland: Some Reflections" (Andrzej Janowski); (20) "Civic Education Issues and the Intended Curricula in Basic Education in Portugal" (Isabel Menezes; Elisabete Xavier; Carla Cibele; Gertrudes Amaro; Bartolo P. Campos); (21) "Cohesion and Diversity in National Identity: Civic Education in Romania" (Gheorghe Bunescu; Emil Stan; Gabriel Albu; Dan Badea; Octavian Oprica); (22) "The Challenge of Civic Education in the New Russia" (Leonid N. Bogolubov; Galina V. Klokova; Galina S. Kovalyova; David I. Poltorak); (23) Citizenship in View of Public Controversy in Slovenia: Some Reflections" (Darko Strajn); (24) "Abandoning the Myth of Exceptionality: On Civic Education in Switzerland" (Roland Reichenbach); and (25) "Challenges to Civic Education in the United States" (Carole L. Hahn). (LB)
This current publication, Citizenship and education in twenty-eight countries, presents the first results of Phase 2 of the study. It follows a style similar to that traditionally used by IEA, and it complements the more qualitative approach of the first volume by reporting quantitative information from the tests, surveys and questionnaires. Together, the two publications provide a complete and remarkable picture of civic education policies, practices and results across countries in the late 1990s. Having identified and discussed the outcomes of our respective countries in an international context, we know that the time has arrived to pay special attention to the factors that merit consideration and possible action. Wise action requires a deep knowledge of the field. The comparative view helps us set our reflections in a context that allows us to interpret and to explain. In this manner, the value of an international approach can be truly realised. It is this realisation that is exactly the kind of contribution IEA can make to the development of education and educational systems. In the end, our activities can only be justified if they contribute to the advancement of societies made up of better-developed individuals.
After a brief history of the Committee on International Relations of the American Psychological Association, 3 points are made about international psychological research that matters. First, it matters when the definition of the research problem area and the findings can potentially be reflected in policy change, in the practice of educators or psychologists, or in the mindsets of a new generation of researchers. Person-centered analysis of adolescents' social and political attitudes has this potential and can complement variable-centered analysis. A cluster analysis of the IEA Civic Education Study's data in 5 Western European and 5 Eastern European countries illustrates this. The following 5 clusters of adolescents were identified: those supportive of social justice but not participative, those active in conventional politics and the community, those indifferent, those disaffected, and a problematic cluster of alienated adolescents. Second, research that matters is situated in a cultural context. It is proposed that publications using data from any single country be required to include information about the cultural context in which the research was conducted. Finally, it matters that attention be given to the dynamics of the collaborative international research process, not only to research results.
The rapid economic growth of Japan since World War II has resulted in Japan becoming a reference point for developing nations and the West. This remarkable growth results from a combination of factors, one of which has been unyielding attention to education in order to cultivate the human talent necessary to provide the productivity for economic growth. The Japanese education system emphasizes quality of instruction and rewards hard work. Some of the principles of the system are outlined together with a summary of the content of the curriculum, the quantity and quality of instruction, and the influence of culture and environment.