Schools, Education Policy, and the Future of the First Amendment

Review of the effects of citizenship education

“…Relatively large effect sizes are reported (Cohen's d varying from 0.78 to 3.20 see also Table 4). Simply taking a journalism class, however, did not affect students' citizenship knowledge and negatively affected their attitudes towards freedom of expression with a large effect size, as indicated by a Cohen's d of 0.96 (Lopez et al, 2009). Torney-Purta et al (2007) reported only one effect of the use of official materials by teachers in secondary education, such as materials from state or local authorities for the planning of civics lessons -classified as curriculum in school -on the expectation of students to be informed when they vote in the future (acting democratically (political)) after re-analyzing IEA data from the United States (N = 2811; 124 schools, 14 years of age, 84.4% Non-Latino, 13.5% Latino).…”

“…Experimental and quasi-experimental studies are considered the ''golden standard'' for establishing effects of a certain intervention (cf., Petticrew & Roberts, 2006;Vandenbroucke, 2004;Vandenbroucke, 2008), and thus might be plead for to establish the effects of well-developed and well-documented curricular practices in the area of citizenship education. In our review, some studies investigated the intended and predicted effects of a given curriculum on students' citizenship (e.g., Feldman et al, 2007;McDevitt & Kiousis, 2007;Yang & Chung, 2009); others investigated learning outcomes for a -sometimes already existing -citizenship curriculum in a more open and exploratory manner (e.g., Finkel & Ernst, 2005;Lopez et al, 2009;Torney-Purta et al, 2007). Taking the applied research designs into account, we thus interpret these results as only indicating ''what might work'' rather than as evidence.…”

“…1). While the size of the reported effects for this type of citizenship education varies from small (McDevitt & Kiousis, 2007) to large (Lopez, Levine, Dautrich, & Yalov, 2009), the effects are generally large. The effects are mostly found in quasi-experimental research; the large effect also in cross-sectional research (see Fig.…”

“…According to Lopez et al (2009) (large national sample N = 100,000; 254 schools; high school students), taking classes on the First Amendment, discussion of the role of the media in society, discussion of how to deal with journalism, and discussion of the use of news media -which were all classified as curriculum in school for purposes of the present review -positively affected student attitudes towards freedom of expression, their news consumption, and their knowledge of the First Amendmentwhich were all classified as acting democratically (political) in the present review. Relatively large effect sizes are reported (Cohen's d varying from 0.78 to 3.20 see also Table 4).…”

Youth citizenship at the end of primary school: the role of language ability

“…Higher cognitive ability is also positively related to democratic participation indicated by, for example, voter participation and support for free speech (Dee 2004;Hauser 2000). In citizenship studies, cognitive ability is typically measured by a general measure of intelligence, a measure that combines verbal and mathematics abilities, or using (expected) educational level as a proxy (Geijsel et al 2012;Hoskins, Janmaat, and Villalba 2012;Isac et al 2011;Lopez et al 2009;Quintelier 2010;Schulz et al 2010). However, educational level has been shown to have an effect on civic engagement independent of cognitive ability (Hauser 2000), while general measures of cognitive ability or measures that combine different types of cognitive ability may veil which component of cognition positively relates to citizenship development.…”