Criminal justice students preparing at the university level will be required to possess knowledge and understanding of applicable constitutional law, rights and responsibilities upon entering their profession to ensure the competent execution of the duties of which they will be entrusted to perform. Students majoring in the criminal justice field of scholarship at one university situated in the Great Lakes region of the United States participated in this study by completing a pre-instruction and post-instruction questionnaire designed to measure their confidence of Amendments I, IV, X, XIV, and XV of the U.S. Constitution. The intent of this study was to provide a mechanism in which to assess student understanding of basic ideas and examples of each of the amendments. The outcome of the survey study is to provide insight to the effectiveness of instructional pedagogy in a scholarship of teaching framework for undergraduate students majoring in criminal justice. The students participating this this survey were criminal justice majors and were surveyed over four academic semesters spanning two years. The results indicate a significant difference (p <.001) between pre-survey and post-survey questionnaire aggregate scores at the alpha = .05 level with a moderate effect size of .45. Individual pre-survey and post-survey questionnaire scores on confidence of individual amendments were also all significant at the alpha = .05 level but with small effect sizes. Implications of small effect sizes are interpreted with respect to program and pedagogical implications.

University students in the United States preparing for a career in as teachers Pre-K -12 professional education must possess a basic understanding of constitutional law applicable to the profession. Undergraduate teacher education majors in their first course for teacher education majors participated in a survey research study designed to measure their confidence in ability to explain a relevant example of the 1 st , 4 th , 10 th , 14 th , and 15 th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution in the context of professional education. The survey questionnaire instrument asked the respondents to self-assess their level of confidence on the above constitutional amendments on a four-point Likert scale, and also asked the respondents to give a basic example of each of the above stated constitutional amendments. The findings indicate that these students have a low initial understanding of educationally relevant examples of these amendments and an unrealistically elevated belief in their ability to give relevant examples. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to determine differences between pre-survey and post-survey scores. The results indicated a statistically significant (p < .001) gain in their confidence to give educationally relevant examples of these amendments in the context of their profession at the end of the course. The effect sizes for differences in pre-survey and post-survey scores indicate a moderate difference for all questions except for one amendment. The pedagogical implications include insight for the course instructor on better engaging students in this content material for relevancy, retention, and application.

Three groups of undergraduate student citizens of the United States at a regional public university were surveyed regarding their knowledge of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States. Additionally, the findings of a focus group discussion of Honors students regarding this same topic are presented and discussed. A fifteen-statement questionnaire was administered to 66 First Year Experience (FYE) undergraduate students, 50 senior students, and nine Honors students. Ten of the statements were quotes from the Bill of Rights amendments and five statements were foils which were not among the Bill of Rights amendments. A focus group discussion with the Honors students revealed several themes including those of rights and responsibility for educational curricula on the Bill of Rights. Analysis of the data indicated that these three groups did not present evidence of deep knowledge of the Bill of Rights by amendment number. We interpret the general lack of knowledge of the Bill of Rights as a warning regarding of the lack of value of the Bill of Rights and citizenship by state and federal governments and raise a concern of the possibility of a growing crisis in civic conscience of the citizenry of our country unless significant educational-policy countermeasures are taken.