Critical Civic Education Research Articles

Being a good citizen in a postcolonial context: Justice-oriented citizenship implications of Nigerian teachers’ civic education ideologies

ABSTRACT Drawing on a Nigerian example and framed around postcolonial theory, this study explored teachers’ conceptions of a good citizen and civic education ideologies in postcolonial hybrid-identity contexts, using qualitative data collected from 21 civic education teachers. Results revealed that personally responsible and participatory citizenship ideologies, along with a communitarian perspective, dominate teachers’ beliefs about good citizenship and civic education, with participation in traditional African sociopolitical systems omitted. Justice-oriented citizenship was rarely emphasized. Teachers’ reference to social change as a civic education goal emphasized individuals’ responsibilities with limited consideration of structural impediments. Lessons learned include that civic education is used to maintain power structures; ethnocentrism, violence, and government’s non-accountability limit teachers’ engagement with critical citizenship; structural violations are excluded from human rights classroom discourses; active participation is centered at national spaces; and teachers frame leadership as the only efficient avenue for meaningful active participation. Consequently, the author recommends a rethinking of critical civic education to incorporate Indigenous civic practices and the realities of challenging asymmetric structures to better position the subject for justice-oriented citizenship and democracy development.

The Influence of Cultural Values and Norms on Political Attitudes and Behavior: A Sociological Study

This paper examines the complex interrelationship between cultural forces and political attitudes and behaviors. Through an extensive literature review, expert interviews, and rigorous content analysis, the research illuminates how cultural values, beliefs, and norms fundamentally shape individuals' political ideologies, policy preferences, partisan affiliations, civic engagement, and voting patterns. Findings demonstrate adherence to traditional cultural values like religiosity and nationalism predicts conservative political orientations, while progressive values like secularism and multiculturalism predict liberal orientations. The study also uncovers how politicians and media strategically exploit cultural symbols and narratives to frame issues and manipulate public opinion to their advantage. Prevailing cultural attitudes regarding duties and efficacy as citizens are shown to influence voter turnout and election outcomes. Promising reforms to address cultural biases include increasing access to diverse perspectives and critical civic education, promoting inclusive institutions and cross-cultural dialogue, and fostering political literacy. This research underscores the need for democratic processes and policies attuned to diverse cultural standpoints to pursue shared interests equitably. It concludes that comprehending the cultural antecedents of political behaviors and interpretations is essential for just, effective governance in pluralistic societies.

“My People Wouldn’t Stand For This”: Ethnic Studies as Critical Civic Education

Using testimonio method and methodology, this paper provides the stories and narratives of three Chicanx teachers who developed and taught an Ethnic Studies course to Latinx students in a large urban high school. Long celebrated as a way to fill in missing history, art, literature, resistance, and knowledge of communities of color, this paper argues that Ethnic Studies is also a vehicle to grow and embolden student sense of critical civic literacy. Through the narratives that emerge from these three teachers, the curriculum and pedagogy offered by these teachers positively impacts and propels students to advocate for themselves and their communities through civic and political action. The purpose of this article is to highlight the curricular and pedagogical choices of three teachers teaching Ethnic Studies and how Ethnic Studies can be used as a tool to increase Critical Civic Literacy.

Divergent Fan Forums and Political Consciousness Raising

This article conducts a thematic analysis of 40 threads related to sociopolitical issues on two <em>Divergent</em> fan forums, one on Divergent Fans and another on Divergent Wiki, to determine whether these forums raise political consciousness, especially among young people. As scholars of civic imagination show, popular culture narratives may lead to the ability to imagine a better future. Utopian narratives in particular facilitate this process in a dialectical way by presenting us with an impossible world, and dystopian narratives may operate in a similarly dialectical fashion by offering a negative example or warning. Analysis of posts related to utopia and dystopia, the story world versus the real world, historical and contemporary parallels, governmental reform, and non-normative sexuality reveals that participants on <em>Divergent </em>fan forums discuss real-world issues and sometimes imagine a better world, but this does not conclusively raise political consciousness. We can account for these civic successes and failures by considering Dahlgren’s (2009) six elements of civic cultures: knowledge, values, trust, spaces, practices/skills, and identities. While fan knowledge, trust, and spaces are strong, and fan identities can be experienced as relatively static, values and practices/skills are important areas for intervention to cultivate political consciousness among young people. Critical civic education at the secondary school level could foster democratic values, and teaching media literacy and political discussion skills could improve students’ ability to think critically about entertainment narratives.

The Transforming Citizen: A Conceptual Framework for Civic Education in Challenging Times

This article presents The E3 Conceptual Framework for Civic Education as an approach for critical engagement with citizenship in a democratic society during challenging times. It consists of three phases that can be deployed to facilitate critical civic education: Exposure, Emergence, and Embodiment. The E3 Conceptual Framework for Civic Education offers guidance to those scholars and practitioners committed to envisioning higher education as transformative and emancipatory. This article also shares a vignette in which The E3 Conceptual Framework for Civic Education was used to design, teach, and evaluate an undergraduate sociology course. It is my hope that the reader will transfer the knowledge in this article to their own context as they transform themselves in order to transform society.

A Critical Civic Education. The Relationship with History

A Critical Civic Education. The Relationship with History

Museum-university collaboration to renew mediation in art and historical heritage. The case of the Museo de Navarra

We present an action research project in which a university and a regional museum of art and historical heritage collaborate. The objective of this project has been to design and develop a mediation plan and its interpretation resources. First, a description is provided of the historical context of the debate regarding the educational function of the museum and mediation actions for the interpretation of art. Next, we present the theoretical principles on which our approach to mediation in museums is based and explain the two phases of the action research project. Initially, an investigation of the mediation tools offered by the museum is carried out. Next, a description is provided of how the conclusions drawn are materialized in the “All Art is Contemporary” project that renews part of the permanent exhibition and that offers accessible, rigorous, pluralistic and stimulating mediation/interpretation resources (gallery text, museum labels, etc.) that allow visitors to participate in the discourse that the museum proposes, turning it into a site of social interaction, a negotiation of meaning and an encounter between different sensibilities and identities. In short, it is a tool for continuous and critical civic education.

Increasing Civic Engagement Through Civic Education: A Critical Consciousness Theory Perspective

There is a growing need for increased civic engagement in developing countries. We argue that civic education has not met this need in Nigeria because it is uncritical, but it can be reformed through critical consciousness theory emphasizing knowledge and critical thinking. However, for civic education reforms, we need to understand the relationship between sociodemographic factors and civic engagement. Therefore, we investigated the influence of six sociodemographic factors (gender, location, age, income, education, and ethnicity) on two civic engagement constructs—environmental civility and community volunteering—using the responses of 372 respondents on the Civic Engagement Scale. Results revealed that community volunteerism is mainly influenced by age, gender, and location, while environmental civility is mainly influenced by location and education, and there is a generally low level of civic engagement. The implications of these findings for a critical civic education aimed at increasing critical consciousness and civic action are discussed.

Critical Civic Education for Young Children

Conventional civic educational efforts in the lower grades often frame young children as “future” citizens who need to learn nationalistic patriotism, obedience to rules and laws, and trust in civic institutions to operate fairly toward all members of the community. In this paper we present a framework of “critical civic education” at the early childhood level that positions children as already civic beings with identities and experiences that inform their ideas about what problems matter and how they can be solved. We ask educators to help young children develop (a) a general understanding of current injustices (along with root causes) within their communities, (b) the ability to articulate and reflect on their own conception of an ideal society that advances human flourishing, and (c) strategies to advance their ideas. Through three vignettes we offer examples of how early childhood education can engage in this type of critical civic education.

The implications of ideology on teachers’ beliefs regarding civic education

This study analyzes data from middle and high school teachers in Missouri to determine their civic education ideology, across conservative, liberal, or critical notions within the United States' context. The researchers explored the relationship between teachers’ ideologies and system justification, as well as their beliefs regarding which civic behaviors should be emphasized the classroom. Findings indicate that stronger conservative and liberal civic education ideologies relate to greater levels of system justification while favoring teaching of more passive forms of citizenship. However, critical civic education ideology is negatively associated with system justification and aligned with active forms of civic participation.

Ideology in the schools: Developing the teacher’s Civic Education Ideology Scale within the United States

What ideological views toward citizenship education do teachers possess? Does a teacher’s Civic Education Ideology relate to how and what they teach? This study addresses these questions by developing a psychometric scale measuring teachers’ level of conservative, liberal, and critical Civic Education Ideology in one Midwestern state in the United States. After establishing the Civic Education Ideology scale, these views are compared to teachers’ reported practices inside of school and curriculum emphasized in the classroom. The findings indicate that both conservative- and liberal-oriented teachers were more likely to support curriculum based on civic institutions. In contrast, teachers with a critical orientation were less supportive of civic institutions and more likely to endorse curriculum based on social institutions and an open classroom climate. These findings indicate that a teacher’s ideology relates to their reports of how and what they teach. In addition to these findings, the goal is for the Civic Education Ideology scale to be adapted and applied in future studies to uncover important connections.

Teaching Who You Are: Connecting Teachers’ Civic Education Ideology to Instructional Strategies

This quantitative study uses survey data to test connections between 735 teachers’ civic education ideology (CivID) and their self-reported instructional practices. Analysis demonstrates teachers’ beliefs in relation to conservative, liberal, and critical civic education ideology as well as preference for instructional strategies, such as teacher–text and collaborative–research. Results indicate that high support for particular civic education ideologies are associated with preferences for particular instructional strategies. Endorsement of conservative civic education ideology was positively linked to teacher–text instruction, whereas liberal ideology held a negative association. Critical civic education ideology had a positive relationship with collaborative–research based instruction. Additional findings indicated differences in instructional preferences and CivID based on teachers’ gender, grade level, community type of school, racial makeup of school, and percent of students receiving free and reduced lunch.

Mind the civic empowerment gap: Economically elite students and critical civic education

Calls to close the civic empowerment gap have traditionally focused on improving and expanding civic education for students in high-poverty urban schools. While important, this recommendation implies that closing the gap is in and of itself a sufficient end and that the civic education of affluent youth is unproblematic. This paper calls for (1) an explicit aim for the gap to close in a way that moves US society towards radical democratic egalitarianism, and (2) a response to the gap that includes consideration of the civic education of affluent students. It suggests that an “activist ally” approach rooted in emancipatory social science, political compassion, affective motivations, and empathic listening may be a useful framework for a critical civic education curriculum with economically elite youth. It concludes with an example from an affluent private school to highlight the affordances and limitations of this framework.

American Politics and the Liberal Arts College

This paper argues that mainstream approaches to teaching American politics not only fail to give students the intellectual tools they need to become effective citizens, they also help to legitimize the market values that threaten liberal arts curriculums today. The American Political Development (APD) approach to teaching American politics is best suited for teaching a critical civic education and nurturing democratic values, such as civic engagement, public service, and social solidarity, at liberal arts colleges. Moreover, liberal arts colleges provide a particularly effective educational setting for taking an APD approach to American Politics.