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Civic engagement means more than formal participation in the political process. Students can experience civic life across campus in ways that may not jump off the page as being relevant on first reading. Whether in the classroom through intentionally designed curricular experiences or through participating in a student organization focused on civic engagement, higher education should be helping develop students as active, participatory citizens. This chapter aims to provide the first look at how students across the United States are organizing on college campuses to participate in the political process.

The study seeks to understand the experiences and perceptions of the university youth regarding the democratic atmosphere of a public university located in Turkey. To this end, the objective of this research is twofold: (1) to investigate university students’ level of civic engagement regarding student activism, exercising rights, and interest in politics; and (2) to explore students’ perception of their university environment regarding the promotion of tolerance, respect for ideas, and participation in decision-making. This study was carried out at a public university located in the middle of Turkey. A mixed-method approach was employed, including both qualitative and quantitative data. A total of 332 undergraduate students participated in the quantitative part while 14 undergraduate students were interviewed in the qualitative part of the study. In quantitative data collection, two self-developed scales were used: Civic Engagement Scale and Perceptions of Democratic University Environment Scale. The results of the data analysis indicated that students’ overall civic engagement level was below the average level. In particular, the level of students’ activism was significantly lower than that of students’ interest in politics and exercising rights, respectively. In addition, the level of students’ interest in politics was significantly lower than that of students’ exercising rights. With respect to the students’ perception of democratic university environment, the data revealed that students’ overall perception of the university environment was slightly above average level. Specifically, the students’ perception of university environment regarding respect for ideas was significantly higher than that of university environment regarding participation in decision-making.

Civics, as a topic of study, prompts the adoption of research techniques that can be used on any range of topics. However, the techniques chosen also have to take into account the fact that civics, as a curricular subject, and unlike mathematics or even science, is hard to define. It was this consideration that pushed the Civic Education Study steering committee into adopting research methods and perspectives more commonly found within the broad and amorphous area of “qualitative research.” In doing so, they organized a type of study that offers a model for future studies of international achievement.In this regard, the results of the TIMSS case study and video project point to the likelihood that future such studies will require more complex research approaches than previously used. Even though the presence of “authoritative intended” curricula for subjects like mathematics and science seemingly “serve as reasonable starting points” for research in these fields, a growing number of studies suggests that cultural considerations also need to be taken into account (see, for example, Lee, Graham & Stevenson, 1996; Tsuchida & Lewis, 1996; Stigler, Fernandez & Yoshida, 1996). As international studies of achievement grow more complex, and the methods used to collect and analyze data more refined, the impact of various cultural domains (school culture, regional cultural and/or national culture) will play an increasingly important role in the entire research process. To fully understand how achievement is contextualized in a given nation requires not only sets of complex data but also a range of analytical methods that draw out conflicting views, contested areas and shared beliefs.The last decade has seen the continued call for more culturally sensitive (appropriate) analysis and interpretation of international educational data, particularly achievement data. There has been a growing expectation that researchers who use such data sets will be either experts in or have access to expert advice in the nations selected for comparison. However, this trend alone will not affect the basic collection of the data. If there is to be a significant change in the type of data collected — a change that will allow far more sophisticated qualitative analysis to be conducted — then qualitative data collection and analysis cannot be simply relegated to the “descriptive” mode. Both the Civic Education Study and TIMSS have demonstrated that rich qualitative data, analyzed using methods derived from current qualitative educational research, can have dramatic effects on the orientation of the research process.The use to which data gathered by TIMSS have been put also offers insights for future projects. One alarming trend has been the tendency for media and policy groups to use TIMSS's qualitative data as evidence of the “real” conditions in a given country. This is particularly true of the video study conducted by Stigler. Demonstration clips of the videos have been widely shown on the implicit assumption that educators and policy-makers can directly use this type of “data” even when it has not been “interpreted” by scholars. While the aim of creating straightforward data free of disciplinary jargon is a good one, qualitative data are perhaps more easily misinterpreted than quantitative data. The impact of a five-minute video clip or an evocative quote from an interview transcript cannot be denied, but this impact may be misleading. All data, qualitative or quantitative, are representations of reality. Experienced ethnographers know that five minutes after the camera or tape-recorder is turned off, drastically different events may occur or conflicting statements may be made. The presentation of qualitative data, then, must be carefully framed within an explicit outline of the methods used to collect and analyze it.The greatest danger lies in assuming that all that can be done with qualitative data is to provide the cultural “context” for quantitative analyses. Unfortunately, this did occur with TIMSS. In contrast, the Civic Education Study researchers used the hypothesis-generating function of the qualitative work to challenge original hypotheses and to dramatically re-cast the project. This continued use of reflective analysis changed the Civic Education Study from a more traditional “input-output” study to one that was indeed truly process oriented. Moreover, because the Civic Education case studies were conducted well in advance of the survey and testing aspects, the Civic Education Study researchers were able to capitalize on the qualitative data in a way that the TIMSS researchers could not.Comparative education scholars have long been aware of the different cultural values attached to school, learning and teaching in different nations or among different groups within a given nation. However, recent international achievement studies have rarely attempted to analyze systematically the cultural components of achievement. Over 30 years ago, Jones (1971) hailed the first International Mathematics Study (FIMS), but nevertheless stressed that “because comparative education is concerned with cross-national or cross-cultural variability, one of its tasks ought to be the advancing of hypotheses which can be tested in either established or novel ways” (p. 153). The ethnographic case studies of the Civic Education Study offer established ways to use qualitative data to generate and test hypotheses. These approaches have been used for at least two decades in some areas of qualitative studies, but they present, for the field of comparative education, novel ways to think about the problems of comparison.The politically contested nature of civic education prompted the Civic Education Study's NPRs and steering committee to alter significantly the research process that has traditionally been applied to cross-national studies of achievement. Topics like democracy and citizenship evoke very different associations in different countries, and even between various groups within a given nation, a fact that fortunately clarifies rather than obscures the impact of culture on curriculum, teaching and expectations for competence. The experience of the civic education researchers suggests that the use of qualitative data for hypothesis generation and the use of a reflective research process that links qualitative and quantitative data have significant promise for the study of achievement in any subject. In addition, continued recourse to highly integrated studies that utilize a range of research methodologies promises to bring comparative studies of achievement to a new and higher level of usefulness.The Civic Education researchers incorporated a range of qualitative techniques, innovative uses of technology, and extensive literature reviews, and were highly sensitive to the impact of methodological decisions on the kinds of data collected and the interpretations arrived at. Despite the tremendous amount of material reviewed and summarized, as well as the incredible cultural, social and political diversity represented by the participating nations, the work of these researchers not only is providing crucial insights into the actualization of qualitative methods on a large scale but also is offering “comparativists” and “qualitative researchers” alike a wealth of information.

This chapter aims to provide insight into conceptualizing and understanding the experience of civic engagement through voluntary service for high school students in the United States today. Unlike prior studies of youth civic life that are predominately quantitative and rely on correlates of youth civic engagement, this qualitative research explores the meanings and rationale youth attribute to being members of their communities. Youth service work emerges in two general forms. Some young people have an altruistic orientation: they are dedicated to help the less fortunate in their communities, but at the same time, they lack strong ideological investment. Other students have an activist orientation: they are committed to activist politics, but cannot connect their political concerns to school-based service. These two orientations to service develop in the context of school programs that encourage – or require – episodic single acts of volunteerism as a form of civic education. Diffuse associational forms and loose, individually based networks thus shape the context and content of youth volunteerism. These associational forms imply the practice of “networked democracy” by young Americans. Although networked associational ties offer young people weaker forms of collective organization, they also allow students to connect to and experiment with many different ideas, issues, and forms of expression.

The aim of the text is to present a historical foundation of the changing conceptualization of citizenship and to outline the present trends in citizenship theory from a social and educational perspective. Based on a 132literature review from the 1990s and the first decade of the new millennium, an attempt is made to describe possible changes in school curricula in order to demonstrate the diversifying content and role of civic education. These considerations must be placed in a broader context of the transforming content of current public debates on citizenship and nationhood, including the increasingly ethnicity-oriented views of nationhood in many European and non-European countries, accompanied by the rise of anti-immigrant discourse.

While LIS scholarship emphasizes the need to be multi-literate by equipping people with critical information literacy, digital literacy, and media literacy skills to combat the phenomenon of fake news in the contemporary information society, the concept of political information literacy is still in its infancy. This chapter addresses this gap by developing an understanding of political information literacy and challenges the premise that information professionals and information organizations should remain neutral in the face of phenomena like censorship through noise and disinformation. In this endeavor, it reviews contemporary information environments vis-à-vis the growth of fake news and misinformation, and current information literacy approaches utilized by information organizations. Thereafter, it explores several cognitive barriers, such as the role of confirmation bias, information avoidance, information groupishness, and information overload, which affects people’s ability to process information. Finally, it encourages information professionals to hold regular information sessions on politically charged topics, tackle the cognitive factors increasing misinformation, and cultivate multidisciplinary approaches to confront fake news.

This chapter describes two courses in which university students were involved with community partners, in one case a local school system and in the other, a local nonformal educational institution. The authors begin with a discussion of the benefits of civic engagement through service learning in an academic setting and describe the integration of socio-scientific issues of local importance and a service-learning aspect into the courses. The authors follow with a discussion of the impacts the project has had on each of the partners involved in the collaboration. The authors conclude with lessons learned as a result of the project and future plans for the partnership.

This chapter describes a particular course that was undertaken as part of a partnership between three community institutions: a classroom of college undergraduate learners, residents of a local homeless outreach center, and the members of a neighboring social justice oriented Christian community. The project was an interdisciplinary endeavor, facilitated by the authors who represent the humanities, specifically Religious Studies and Education. The students in the course represented a cross-section of the institution where the authors teach: various majors, both declared and undeclared; students from different enrollment years; various ages; and mixed race and ethnicity. The first part of this chapter addresses a theoretical framework related to community-based learning and service-learning related to the role of such partnerships in higher education with specific focus on a particular course. The second part addresses the significance of the social change model and purposeful student self-reflection within such partnerships as a way to enhance student learning. The final part of the chapter includes an evaluation of the community collaboration with respect to process and student learning.

The institution of the university has played a significant role in the economic, social, political, and cultural developments of society throughout history, which has resulted in presenting different but also contradictory views on university missions. After the middle of the twentieth century, some economic developments, especially technological ones, have led to the maximum domination of economic discourse over university missions and, consequently, the marginalization of other aspects of university missions, which constitute a significant part of the contribution of universities in society. In this regard, this study aimed to identify the missions of universities based on a comprehensive understanding of the contribution of universities in society. This study uses a systematic qualitative review strategy for collecting and investigating the data and a metasynthesis method to analyze and synthesize the findings. The data included 130 valid studies related to university missions. The research findings indicated 18 important university missions, 11 of which are considered transeconomic missions, including social, political, and cultural ones. Among the implications of this research are: the necessity of redefining higher education policy frameworks based on a more comprehensive understanding of the missions of universities and a warning about policy frameworks based on the exclusive authorization for their role in the knowledge-based economy.