Civic Engagements

Based upon a three-year multi-disciplinary international research project, Political and Civic Participation examines the interplay of factors affecting civic and political engagement and participation across different generations, nations and ethnic groups, and the shifting variety of forms that participation can take. The book draws upon an extensive body of data to answer the following key questions: Why do many citizens fail to vote in elections? Why are young people turning increasingly to street demonstrations, charitable activities, consumer activism and social media to express their political and civic views? What are the barriers which hinder political participation by women, ethnic minorities and migrants? How can greater levels of engagement with public issues be encouraged among all citizens? Together, the chapters in this volume provide a comprehensive overview of current understandings of the factors and processes which influence citizens’ patterns of political and civic engagement. They also present a set of evidence-based recommendations for policy, practice and intervention that can be used by political and civil society actors to enhance levels of engagement, particularly among youth, women, ethnic minorities and migrants. Political and Civic Participation provides an invaluable resource for all those who are concerned with citizens’ levels of engagement, including: researchers and academics across the social sciences; politicians and political institutions; media professionals; educational professionals and schools; youth workers and education NGOs; and leaders of ethnic minority and migrant organizations and communities.

This book offers a broad overview of many issues related to assessment in higher education, with specific application for understanding the impact of service-learning and civic engagement initiatives. This revised edition includes an additional chapter that explores recent changes in the assessment landscape and offers examples and resources for designing assessment strategies for community engagement in higher education. The original text includes narrative addressing assessment issues and strategies; a detailed discussion of learning from multiple research projects performed over the past two decades about impact on multiple constituencies –students, faculty, communities, and institutions; and a discussion of strategies for data collection, analysis, synthesis, and reporting. Specific assessment instruments for use with each constituency are provided, including suggestions for administration, preparation, and data analysis. This volume will be helpful for individuals seeking a comprehensive resource on assessment issues in higher education.

Civic Education Across the Curriculum offers faculty in all disciplines rationales and resources for connecting their service-learning efforts to the broader goals of civic engagement. Campuses promoting engagement are beginning to tie service-learning practices to their civic mission of preparing students for participation in a diverse, democratic society. There are, however, few resources for faculty—especially those in fields not traditionally linked with civic education—to think about how civic engagement might be incorporated into their own disciplinary perspectives and course goals. This volume distills a wide range of disciplinary perspectives on citizenship into usable conceptual frameworks. It provides concrete examples of course materials, exercises, and assignments that can be used in service-learning courses to develop students’ civic capacities, regardless of disciplinary area. This volume will assist faculty in their own curricular work as well as enable them to combine their individual initiatives with others across their campus.

This book addresses contemporary issues on civic and citizenship education, challenging not just schools but society as a whole. It highlights emerging social influences on civic engagement and democracy in the third decade of the 21st century and analyzes the interaction between these influences and their impact on society. It demonstrates that changes are so complex and the challenges so new that an entirely revised agenda is needed for civic and citizenship education. The book takes society and the changes occurring within it as the starting point and assesses the implications of these changes for schools.

This book intends to theoretically conceptualize and empirically investigate upcoming and established practices of community-based initiatives in various countries in which both citizens and governments join efforts and capacities to solve wicked issues. It aims to include and compare cases from various countries, departing from the notion that community-based initiatives take place in an institutional context of governmental structures, rules, procedures, regulations, and routines. This leads to government involvement in these initiatives and sharing the public space. Furthermore, the editors take into account what kind of leadership roles, knowledge, and resources are present and how they evolve in this collaborative or coordinative effort, which in turn can enhance the capacities of community-based initiatives. This book joins excellent researchers from renowned universities all over the world, aiming for a balance between upcoming scholars and renowned scholars in the field of community-based initiatives and governance capacity. Contributors were carefully selected on the basis of their experience in the field of community-based initiatives, citizens’ engagement and governance capacity approaches. Aimed at researchers and academics, this volume will be of interest to those in the fields of business, economics, public administration, political science, social enterprise, sociology and third sector studies.

This book offers a much-needed appraisal of two key social change movements within higher education: civic engagement and social innovation. The authors critically explore the historical and contemporary contexts as well as democratic foundations (or absence thereof) of both approaches, concluding with a discussion of possible future directions that may make the approaches more effective in fulfilling the broader democratic mission of U.S. higher education. This is an essential resource for those in higher education who wish to promote and advance social change, as it provides an opportunity to critically examine where we are with our civic engagement and social innovation approaches and what we might do to best realize their promise through changes in our educational processes, pedagogical strategies, evaluation metrics, and outcomes.

Provides an original and challenging contribution to contemporary debates on the civic purpose of higher education, exploring its manifestations through practices of teaching and research. Offers critical perspectives on the role of higher education institutions in terms of realizing civic missions, especially in current global market conditions.

What exactly is civic and political participation? What factors influence young people’s participation? How can we encourage youth to actively participate in their own democracies? Youth Civic and Political Engagement takes a multidisciplinary approach to answering these key questions, incorporating research in the fields of psychology, sociology, political science and education to explore the issues affecting youth civic and political engagement. Drawing on evidence that has been obtained in many different national contexts, and through multinational studies, this book provides a theoretical synthesis of this large and diverse body of research, using an integrative multi-level ecological model of youth engagement to do so. It identifies unresolved issues in the field and offers numerous suggestions for future research. Youth Civic and Political Engagement is an invaluable resource for researchers, teachers, youth workers, civil society activists, policymakers and politicians who wish to acquire an up-to-date understanding of the factors and processes that influence young people’s civic and political engagement, and how to promote youth engagement.