Measuring the Impact of a Supplemental Civic Education Program on Students’ Civic Attitude and Efficacy Beliefs

Ferdinand S Piñgul

doi:10.11114/jets.v3i2.600

Abstract

This study examines the impact of Project Citizen Philippines, an extra-classroom civic education program, on its 3 rd and 4 th year high school participants’ civic attitude and efficacy beliefs. Three hundred forty three participants and 107 non-participants from various public high schools in the Philippines’ National Capital Region were compared on their scores on relevant scales, using the Mann-Whitney U test. Qualitative data was also gathered and analyzed using randomly selected student reflection papers. Findings indicate that project participants scored higher in the efficacy and attitude measures used than non-participants. Passages from the reflection papers lend support to these findings. The results are discussed in relation to other findings in the literature, and in light of the country’s current and planned school-based civic education programs. An implication of the study is the need to promote extra-classroom activities to supplement curriculum-based civic education efforts and to reach as wide a student population as possible, and to systematically evaluate and document such efforts towards providing data in furthering civic education in the Philippines.

Highlights

IntroductionCivic education is generally understood as the formation of civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions for effective democratic participation (UNDP Democratic Governance Group, 2004), the same three elements enumerated by Branson (1999) citing the Center for Civic Education’s (1994) National Standards for Civics and Government
This study examines the impact of Project Citizen Philippines, an extra-classroom civic education program, on its 3rd and 4th year high school participants’ civic attitude and efficacy beliefs
Civic education is generally understood as the formation of civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions for effective democratic participation (UNDP Democratic Governance Group, 2004), the same three elements enumerated by Branson (1999) citing the Center for Civic Education’s (1994) National Standards for Civics and Government

Summary

Introduction

Civic education is generally understood as the formation of civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions for effective democratic participation (UNDP Democratic Governance Group, 2004), the same three elements enumerated by Branson (1999) citing the Center for Civic Education’s (1994) National Standards for Civics and Government. 2011) while skills have been shown to influence efficacy beliefs (Kirlin, 2002; Zaff, Moore, Papillo & Williams, 2003), which in turn may predict future civic participation (Solhaug, 2006) Such a construal of civic education calls for the adoption of teaching methods other than traditional classroom-based means, such as experiential learning activities. Project Citizen is an adaptation of We the People: Project Citizen designed by the Centre for Civic Education in the United States It is a step-by-step program that allows participants to take part in community problem-solving through policy formulation. The entire process is extra-classroom making students’ available free time a critical consideration in the selection of participants

Methods

Results

Conclusion