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This chapter focuses on civic and political networks. All six facets of knowledge networks are described. The importance of three of the six facets is called out, including topology, domain, and messages exchanged across the network. The authors provide three networks’ profiles, including civic and governance networks, advocacy networks, and political parties and networks.

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.

Current events and citizenship intersect in students’ classrooms in ways both problematic and full of potential. Teachers take a range of approaches, from the passive, weekly regurgitation of news stories to the empowered use of current events to explore broader issues and inform civic engagement. Creating an open classroom climate can help teachers unlock the civic potential of current events, which aids students in building civic knowledge, internal political efficacy, and civic self-efficacy. This article begins by introducing teachers to research on open classroom climates using data from the International Civic and Citizenship Survey (ICCS). We then provide examples of the components of an open classroom climate and a survey created from ICCS items for teachers to assess their own classroom’s climate. Elements of an open classroom climate are applied to current events pedagogy with a lesson plan for young children that explores civic responses to water scarcity and features All the Water in the World, a picture book by George Ella Lyon and Katherine Tillotson.

Theories and research on gender and civic engagement have changed dramatically since studies were conducted 50 years ago. Over time, definitions of political socialization, knowledge, and engagement have all evolved, and with these developments come differences in how we view male and female political and civic engagement.

Civic engagement involves working to make a difference in one’s community. Experiential learning enhances civic knowledge and promotes the process of reflection that students can take beyond their educational experiences. The purpose of this paper is to identify whether civic engagement may be increased through domestic experiential learning experiences and to inform future educators about how a domestic immersion experience can be used to increase civic engagement among students.

Twenty-five students who participated in a domestic immersion experience in January 2022 were sampled. Reflection and changes in civic engagement were measured with student responses to questions before, during and after the immersion.

During the preimmersion, students showed a desire to learn about the Afghan refugee population and considered preimmersion anxiety mitigation strategies. Using the Association of American Colleges and Universities’ Civic engagement VALUE rubric, the four main themes were diversity of communities and cultures, civic identity and commitment, civic communication and civic action and reflection. The main themes yielded post immersion were increased civic engagement and aptitude to apply knowledge and skills. The subcategories of continued civic engagement were career planning, volunteering and educating others.

The findings provide guidelines to future work in civic engagement. This case study provides insights into the impacts of domestic immersion experiences and how it allows the opportunity for experiential learning.

This study examines whether online asynchronous discussion forums support student’s meaning-making about citizenship in a globalizing world. Citizenship is an increasingly contested identity for young people, yet they have few opportunities in traditional civic education to consider their own citizenship. Although online discussions are considered effective spaces for increasing dialogue and critical thinking between diverse students, there has been little research to understand how effective they are for helping students to construct new understandings of citizenship.

A content analysis approach was used to analyze and code 89 discussion board posts. The Interaction Analysis Model (IAM) coding scheme was used to describe and analyze the quality of knowledge construction that occurred across the posts focusing on different aspects of global citizenship.

The findings demonstrate that the discussion boards produced substantive talks about the meaning of citizenship that in some instances reached the level of new knowledge construction. The students considered different meanings for global citizenship and negotiated positions on key issues. However, the highest levels of knowledge construction were rarely reached.

A major implication is the need to organize and cue discussion boards to support knowledge construction in addition to fostering dialogue.

This study contributes to the role that technology can play in supporting students’ knowledge construction about global citizenship that go beyond the scripted meanings conveyed in civics classes.

The recent mobilization of many Hong Kong youth to engage in what are regarded as radical political activities is not a new area of investigation. Much has been discussed about this growing political activism and localism often giving an impression that Hong Kong youth are radical and disengaged from China as a nation. Yet little is known about the possible antecedents of such disengagement. The purpose of this paper is to identify whether there is empirical evidence of growth or decline in civic trust and national attitudes amongst Hong Kong young adolescents over the ten-year period from 1999 to 2009.

In this study latent profile analyses were used to classify cohorts of Hong Kong secondary students according to the levels of their self-reported trust in civic institutions and attitudes toward the nation. The cohorts were separated by a ten-year gap. Comparisons were made across groups and across the ten-year time span, in order to trace changes in civic attitudes of young adolescents following the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997.

Three distinct groups were identified in both cohorts – Activists, who had negative attitudes to trust and toward the nation, Nationalists who had positive attitudes toward trust and the nation and Moderates who endorsed average responses to the, two variables. The gaps between the groups tended to be greater in the 2009 group compared to the 1999 groups suggesting greater polarization amongst adolescents on these measures.

Young adolescents cannot be assumed to be politically neutral or lacking social values. Citizenship education needs to take this into account so that values can be clarified and major issues can be discussed in a safe and supportive environment.

This study examines how a social studies methods course, with an emphasis in civic education, is taught and carried through from its original implementation within a teacher education social studies course to practicing teachers’ classrooms. Findings suggest that by implementing social action curriculum projects teachers: 1) effectively integrated emerging curriculum, 2) facilitated student-led instruction in a democratic classroom, 3) increased effective communication and built partnerships beyond the classroom, and 4) used structured reflections as a tool for growth and evaluation.

Research‐intensive universities have special challenges in providing their students with civic education, particularly education that is rooted in the curriculum. Their efforts are important to the overall effort to promote education “for the common good” at colleges and universities because of their stature within the higher education community. This paper aims to address the particular needs and challenges of research universities in fostering civic education and strengthening their leadership contributions.

This article provides a snapshot of how 15 American research university campuses, which are part of a “learning community”, approach their goal of educating their students to promote the common good. Based on survey self‐reports conducted in the spring of 2009, it documents their civic education work.

The survey confirms, while research universities are being creative and assertive in expanding their civic education work, there is ample room to extend and improve their efforts, and it frames an agenda for continued improvement. All surveyed campuses are committed to civic education and provide domestic and international engagement experience to undergraduates. Most provide curricular engagement experiences. In‐depth opportunities for a select group of students are common, university‐wide opportunities are not. Many want to improve the integration of curricular and extra‐curricular engagement.

The research is based on self‐reports of a small sample.

These campuses face two major challenges to fostering civic education: generating greater faculty buy‐in, and overcoming the difficulties of program development at large decentralized institutions. Opportunities for program improvement include: better measurement of outcomes, more use of theory, and more student involvement in institutional governance.

These findings provide unique insight into the work of some of the most able practitioners of civic education at American research universities.