Teaching, Learning, Policy & Leadership Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2759
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Item Exploring the civic potential of places: Place-based education as a tool for youth civic engagement(2019) Sinclair, Kristin; Malen, Betty; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This qualitative case study examined how place-based education (PBE) (e.g. Gruenewald, 2003a, Sobel, 2004), might provide opportunities for young people from marginalized backgrounds to develop civic engagement attitudes, behaviors, commitments and skills. This study investigated personally responsible and participatory civic engagement (e.g., Westheimer & Kahne, 2004), but focused on critical or sociopolitical action and justice-oriented civic engagement (Watts & Flanagan, 2007). Grounded in a conceptual framework encompassing PBE’s theory of change, critical theories of place, and youth sociopolitical development (Watts & Flanagan, 2007) this study drew on documents, observations, student work, and interviews with administrators, teachers and 11th grade students at Greenfields Public Charter School during the three month long food justice project (FJP). The FJP was an interdisciplinary, experiential project wherein students researched a local food justice issue through community- and school-based fieldwork. Teachers’ goals for the FJP included that students would gain data analysis and research skills, understand the impact of their individual choices, and develop a set of skills and dispositions for engaging in critical social action, specifically a “sense of their own agency.” Even with a favorable school environment, supportive and flexible administrators, and dedicated teachers, the FJP’s outcomes were ultimately disappointing. Findings suggest that while most students gained research skills, only some developed a sense of agency and civic engagement attitudes, behaviors, and commitments. Students who completed projects that investigated school-based issues demonstrated participatory behaviors and skills. Students who studied neighborhood-based issues, however, were the only ones who demonstrated gains in justice-oriented civic engagement. They reported changes in their attitudes towards other marginalized groups, a greater awareness of structural explanations for injustice, and expressed newfound commitments to “be more active” in their communities. This study identifies conditions under which PBE might foster youth civic engagement. Primarily, it argues that the spatial context of PBE – defined as the arena (i.e., school, neighborhood, or city) in which projects are situated and the meanings of place a project invokes (e.g., place-as-container versus place-as-content and context) – may mediate PBE’s impact on civic engagement. Implications for practice, suggestions for future research, and potential refinements to the conceptual framework are discussed.Item Communities of Practice for the Development of Adolescent Civic Engagement: An Empirical Study of their Correlates in Australia and the United States(2009) Homana, Gary; Croninger, Robert; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The relationships between a multidimensional model of school community and civic engagement were examined using survey data collected for the 1999 IEA Civic Education Study from large, nationally representative samples of adolescents in Australia and the United States. This study extends previous research by considering the extent to which multiple dimensions of communities of practice influence the development of various civic capacities, and by utilizing multilevel regression techniques. The investigation also examined the extent to which the various dimensions of communities of practice are related to more equitable civic outcomes, and how these associations vary in Australia compared to the United States. All schools have some form of social and cultural context that influences learning. This study examined the influence of three specific dimensions of communities of practice in school, the discourse community, the collaborative community, and the participatory community on three capacities for civic engagement (civic knowledge, norms of democracy, and expectations for informed voting). Other measures of school structure, including individual socioeconomic background and school size and composition were also used in the analyses. The results of the analyses suggest that important, yet subtle, distinctions exist between the association of the various dimensions of communities of practice and civic capacities in Australia and the United States. The findings from the fully conditional models, for example, indicate that both student level and school level perceptions of the communities of practice can help to shape adolescent civic capacities, although the patterns of relationships vary by dimension of communities of practice and measure of civic engagement. This study offers support for the role of communities of practice in the development of student civic outcomes. Individual student participation in and supportive school contexts for positive communities of practice influences the development of adolescent civic engagement. Learning more about communities of practice and its influence on a broader range of civic capacities, especially in terms of the quality and the extent that communities of practice exist in schools, will help educators and schools to strengthen these connections.