Civic Participation of High School Students: The Effect of Civic Learning in School

Abstract

Building active and informed citizens is a major part of civics and citizenship education in order to enhance and sustain democracies. Civic learning and civic action opportunities within school contexts are commonly claimed to promote an active and informed citizenry. In the present research, we examine the meaning of formal civics education and the role of students’ participation in a range of curricular and extracurricular activities. Multilevel analyses yield quite stable results across two cohorts of Australian secondary students and reveal that schools account for a surprisingly small share in students’ willingness to participate in future civic and political action. Among the influences at the student level, formal civics learning, participation in student governance activities and in the community are the most significant predictors of intended future participation, but some effects vary conditional on whether more conventional or issue-related civic participation is the focus of active citizenship. Implications of these findings for democratic policy and practice are discussed.