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Supporting students transitioning from high school into college continues to be a challenge for academics and policy-makers. Composition assignments that include Kuh’s (2008) High Impact Practices (HIP) and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) rubric and HIP tenets of Civic Learning and Community Engagement (Fig. 1), help foster opportunities for empathy, which develops students’ abilities to think critically, write well, and succeed in college and beyond. While effective college teaching and instruction are necessary, increasing enrollments, and increasing percentages of First-Year Composition (FYC) students requiring supportive composition courses compound the difficulties of the effort. According to AAC&U, “a global community requires a more informed, engaged, and socially responsible citizenry” (2009, p. 1; Finley & McNair, 2013). In other words, educators and employers believe that “personal and social responsibility should be core elements of a 21^st-century education” (AAC&U, 2009, p. 1). This conceptual content analysis study framed by HIP analyzed 10 FYC syllabi from different composition faculty at one urban Hispanic public four-year university (SMU) in Southern California during the 2015–2016 academic year in the context of the university’s mission statement embracing Civic Learning and Community Engagement for FYC students.

In light of the concerns of declining value education in higher education and the debates on the role of general education in current university setting, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the relation between general education and moral and civic education by examining the effectiveness of a compulsory classics reading general education program in cultivating civic literacy in Asia-Pacific context.

Mixed-method approach in the form of survey assessment and focus group studies was employed to examine the degree of students’ development in abilities and virtues relevant to civic literacy in the course.

Data analyses reveal a promising development on students’ civic literacy in the classics reading general education course. Statistical analysis on surveys indicated students experienced a significant development on democratic skills and critical thinking, acquisition of civic knowledge and cultivation of democratic virtues after taking the course. Focus group analysis illustrated a relation between classics reading and students’ acquisition of knowledge of socio-political institutions, cultivation of open-mindedness and sense of tolerance for diversity and willingness of seeking reasonableness and engaging in social debates.

This paper discusses the successful experience of a newly formulated General Education program in Hong Kong. The program is the first attempt in East Asia to launch values education through the teaching and learning of classics in Asia-Pacific context. This could be an example of launching values education at the level of undergraduate education for other local universities.

Over the last twelve years, an innovative community engagement practice has immersed undergraduate students enrolled in a 300-level leadership course in adaptive leadership by giving them power to make progress on complex challenges at the local level. This unique partnership between a university, donors, and a local United Way, makes students equal partners in awarding and distributing up to $10,000 per year to local organizations seeking to meet a complex community need. Within a framework detailed in a Memorandum of Understanding established among the three partners, students create a request for proposals (RFP), distribute RFPs, review proposals, visit sites, and determine which priorities to fund that are in alignment with both the donors’ and United Way’s vision. The experience culminates in a formal recommendation to the United Way Board of Directors and the donors for approval and allocation of funds. Throughout the process, the President/ CEO of the United Way, the instructors of the course, and the donors mentor the students directly. A preliminary study exploring the student learning outcomes for past program participants found positive outcomes related to community involvement, teamwork, civic engagement, and critical thinking.

White nationalist groups have recently been at the forefront of American sociopolitical life, as demonstrated by the events in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. The purpose of this paper is to explore the historical roots and various waves of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

This paper offers high school teachers age-appropriate, evocative texts and disciplinary-specific, engaging tasks organized in a guided inquiry on the KKK, America’s most prominent hate organization.

Students are positioned to utilize newly-constructed understandings to take informed action on the local, state and national level.

Recently-published research has explored late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century manifestations of the Klan, but not mid-twentieth and twenty-first century outbursts.

The purpose of this paper is to offer insights and lessons learned about how to successfully balance the interests of the many competing stakeholders who can or do influence the CVB's strategy for marketing a destination.

The study uses a qualitative case study approach utilizing an extensive interview as the method for data collection. A series of structured questions specifically designed to focus the interview on the topic of interest was used to facilitate data collection.

The paper presents insights from Mr William C. Peeper, the person largely responsible for building the Orlando Orange County Convention and Visitors Bureau from a two‐person organization into the multi million‐dollar operation it became by the time he retired 25 years later. Since the focus of the paper is on how to successfully balance the differing goals of stakeholders to achieve organizational goals, this interview offers a number of lessons learned that can be used by any organizational leader seeking to balance the interests of diverse stakeholders.

This study provides fresh ideas and new insights into how to successfully manage an organization's stakeholders in ways that make it possible to achieve an organization's mission across time. The success Mr Peeper had in gaining sustained support for the mission and goals of the Orlando CVB provides important lessons on how to manage all stakeholders especially the corporate governance structure that is pertinent to any organization that has to accommodate many diverse viewpoints and interests. There is little existing knowledge on managing stakeholders across time as their interests and needs change and the management of them must also adapt.

As a fundamental notion of transmitting civic responsibility with leadership, preparing service learning into the transformative experiential education aims to link classroom and community as an initiative in transforming civic responsibility among students. This paper aims to examine the insights of service learning to transmit the civic responsibility-based leadership.

This paper builds on recent reviews on ethical engagement for service learning to underlie in performing civic responsibility. This literature review stage critically investigates service learning for contributing leadership-based civic responsibility. In-depth analysis from referred books, journals and conferences using keywords such as service learning and leadership-based civic responsibility was conducted. Meta-synthesis was conducted from findings by searching for information organized using substantive keywords.

There are three core stages to understand and provide insight into the importance of civic responsibility-based leadership: strengthening commitment to work with a strategic plan in community engagement, nurturing creative thinking and professional skills with experiential leadership and enhancing leadership awareness with rational problem-solving. This study is supposed to contribute to the theoretical construction of civic responsibility with insights from service learning.

Civic responsibility-based leadership is mainly seen as a comprehensive method of putting individual and societal basis in experiential learning. It aims to give insights to enhance the personal and social awareness to get involved in the community engagement by which to be the citizen with responsible essences.

Purpose – This study focuses on seventh grade teachers’ constructions of students’ civic awareness as they planned for and enacted a civic engagement project with urban youth of color.Approach – Drawing on critical and interpretive paradigms, I analyze the teachers’ dialogues during colloquia on youth civic engagement and their pedagogy as observed in the classroom.Findings – At the start of the project, the teachers hoped to involve students in critical thought and action on a local social problem. Yet, they doubted the depth of students’ knowledge about injustices in their neighborhood. As the students shared their thoughts about budget cuts affecting a local park, the teachers expanded their constructs of the students’ civic knowledge.Value – The paper argues that teachers’ views of student knowledge are malleable and in the context of a learner-centered curriculum, they can position students as aware activists.

The purpose of this study is to explore the dynamics of critical thinking for informed action within the frame of six sample US states’ Kindergarten-5 social studies content standards.

This study used quantitative content analysis. In addition to describing how the states’ standards present critical thinking for informed action, four variables were included: the enrollment weight of the states, textbook adoption status to advance standards, summative test status for social studies and grade levels.

The results indicate complex variations in context-based critical thinking levels are required by the sample states’ content standards with an extensive orientation toward superficial contextual thinking.

The study provides a new lens with which to make sense of students’ context-based critical thinking, as it relates to the expectations found in standards. It discusses the implications of the states’ K-5 standards on engaging students in critical thinking.

This theory-into-practice article centers on American history through the optics of one religious organization's contestations – the Elim Springs Church of Jesus Christ, or Harshmanites as they are commonly known – with state and society. Secondary students explore the history and myriad responses from citizens and the federal government, which provides insight into what it means to be an American.

Embedded action inquiry (EAI) couples investigation with informed action. This whole-class exploration of 19th and 20th century American history transforms into individual, independent inquiries about related historical and current civil liberty contestations. Students communicate newly generated, fully substantiated understandings first to an academic audience and then to the community.

Teachers direct students' historical reading, thinking and writing toward informed civic participation. Engaging primary and secondary sources spark students' curiosity and scrutiny; writing prompts and scaffolding guide students' text-based articulations.

Harshmanite history, initiated by an iconic leader and maintained by the congregation into its 3rd century, illuminates the best and worst aspects of America. Secondary social studies students can examine emergent, local tensions when citizens' religious freedoms confront civic duty and societal responses. Through EAI, a novel adaptation of inquiry, students make meaning out of the local history and contribute to civic dialogue.

In order to appreciate recent practical and theoretical changes in the field of public administration, this article contrasts the ancient to the modern view of “politics”. These contrasting views of politics are used to explain and evaluate the ongoing debate in public administration scholarship between what the authors call the contemporary “communitarian” school and the new public management school. By placing these competing schools of thought in public administration in the larger context of the history of political thought, the authors reveal some of the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. They argue that in fact these two competing schools of thought capture the tension between the ancient and the modern views as they have developed in the history of Western political thought.