Political participation is seriously unequal. For example, young adults who finish college vote at almost three times the rate of contemporaries who have dropped out of high school. That gap translates into disparities by race and class. Effective civic education can reduce such inequality and make our democracy more representative. Teaching…

Weather phenomena across the United States have provided heightened attention to climate change in headlines such as "Heavy Rain and Floods: The 'New Normal' with Climate Change?" ("Christian Science Monitor," Aug. 14, 2014); "Delay Action on Climate Change by 10 Years and Costs Rocket 40%"…

This article examines the impact of problem-solving and creativity exercises on student interest in public policy making and behavior related to civic engagement. Researchers have long described policy making as a function of problem solving. Creativity has also been identified as an important component of the process. While these skills are…

Research suggests that teachers play a role in the type of citizenship education implemented in schools. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore how two high school teachers understood and enacted their civic identities as a dimension of their teacher identities. Findings suggest that factors contributing to an individual's civic…

As the adoption and execution of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have steadily increased, the debate community is presented with an opportunity to be more forward thinking and sustainable through the translation to curriculum planning and next-generation assessment as a movement towards Performance-Based Assessments. This paper focuses on…

In light of the U.S. Senate's designation of March 15, 2016 as "National Speech and Debate Education Day" (S. Res. 398, 2016), it only seems fitting that "Communication Education" devote a special section to the role of speech and debate in civic education. Speech and debate have been at the heart of the communication…

When school choice policies position young people to compete with one another to access public educational resources, students stand to experience these policies in not only academic, but also civic dimensions. Young people's very encounters with competitive school choice policy through their day-to-day schooling constitute a civic experience.…

Building on work by Dubinsky, Haskins, and Simmons and Grabill, this article explains how a technical communication instructor used Isocrates and informal usability testing to help guide a service-learning project involving the One Laptop Per Child XO-1 notebook. For the project, engineering students received feedback from peers and elementary…

As scholarship has become increasingly narrow and disconnected from public life, Kettering research has documented an intense sense of malaise in higher education, what Harry Boyte has called a loss of civic agency. Surprisingly, however, faculty at a few campuses have begun to self-organize to integrate civic work into their teaching and…

Service-learning courses are credit-bearing educational experiences that deepen course content, meet identified community needs and use reflection to help students connect their service with the learning. These experiences give students an increased level of civic attitude and increased networks, which increases social and human capital. Research…

Calls for revitalization of civic education and civic learning are multiplying, but notions of work as a site of citizenship--for "citizen teachers" or "citizen faculty members," for example--have largely disappeared. This paper begins with an overview of the dominant approaches to civic education and learning:…

The article asks whether political anger has a legitimate place in a democracy, as this is a political system designed to resolve conflicts by peaceful negotiation. It distinguishes personal from social anger and political anger, to focus explicitly on the latter. It argues that both the feeling and expression of political anger are subject to…

The mission and vision of adult education is to provide every individual in Illinois access to Adult Education and Literacy services. In Illinois, more than 1.15 million adults have less than 12 grades of formal education, approximately 2.8 million Illinois residents speak a language other than English in their home, and more than 350,944…

Civic knowledge is critical to interpreting various policy and candidate issues that are necessary to participating in certain political activities, such as voting in elections or attending public demonstrations. Various studies have examined students' perceptions of classroom openness, which reflects perceived levels of political discussion…

In this paper we tell a story about how we partnered with a Chicago high school in order to turn the school inside out by displaying larger-than-life teacher portraits and statements at street level throughout the community. This paper explores how public art and activism can help teachers and students develop notions of civic literacy and…