Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T10:17:06.075Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An Argument for Teaching Deliberative Collective Action Skills in the Political Science Classroom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2006

J. Cherie Strachan
J. Cherie Strachan
Affiliation:
Central Michigan University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The roots of the political science discipline are intertwined with developing the skills required for democratic citizenship. Teaching and research efforts in this admirable tradition are still a prominent focal point of our academic tradition, as evidenced by the work of the APSA Task Force on Civic Education, reoccurring arguments about the most effective pedagogy for promoting participation, and works assessing the effects of civic education interventions. Moreover, this tradition has become increasingly relevant as political participation in the United States, especially among young people, continues to decline. Panel studies of college freshmen indicate that young people's participation in an array of political indicators—including thinking that keeping up with politics is important, discussing politics with friends, and acquiring political knowledge—have all declined by about half since the 1960s (Sax et al. 2003). Far more young people voted in 2004 than in the past, as turnout by 18–24 year-olds increased from 36% in 2000 to 42%, but younger citizens' appearance at the polls still lagged behind prior cohorts of young Americans, as well as their current elders (CIRCLE 2005). Educators and policy makers have come to the conclusion that intervention through formal civic education is necessary (Carnegie Corporation of New York and CIRCLE 2003; Galston 2003). Spurred on by works such as Educating Citizens (Colby, Ehrlich, Beaumont, and Stephens 2003) and Civic Responsibility in Higher Education (Ehrlich 2000), many colleges and universities have reinvigorated their mission of grooming students for civic leadership. Most of the skills identified as essential to such efforts could be labeled as deliberative communication skills. As the Colby et al. (2003) note:

Type
THE TEACHER
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , October 2006 , pp. 911 - 916
Copyright
© 2006 The American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bandura, Alfred. 1977. Social Learning Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Bandura, Alfred. 1986. Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Barber, Benjamin. 1984. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics in a New Age. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Boyte, Harry C. 2003. “Civic Education and the New American Patriotism post-9/11.” Cambridge Journal of Education 33: 85–100.Google Scholar
Brehm, John, and Wendy Rahn. 1997. “Individual-level Evidence for the Causes and Consequences of Social Capital.” American Journal of Political Science 41 (3): 999–1023.Google Scholar
Brooks, David. 2001. “The Organization Kid.” Atlantic Monthly (April).
Carnegie Corporation of New York, and CIRCLE: The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement. 2003. The Civic Mission of Schools. New York: Authors.
CIRCLE: The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement. 2005. “Youth Voting in the 2004 Election.” Fact Sheet available at www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/FactSheets/FS_Exit_Polls.pdf
Cogan, John J., Judith Torney-Purta, Rainer Lehmann, Hans Oswald, and Wolfram Schultz. 2001. Citizenship and Education in Twenty Eight Countries: Civic Knowledge and Engagement at Age Fourteen. Amsterdam: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement.
Colby, Anne, Thomas Ehrlich, Elizabeth Beaumont, and Jason Stephens. 2003. Educating Citizens. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Ehrlich, Thomas, ed. 2000. Civic Responsibility and Higher Education. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press.
Fishkin, James S. 1991. Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Fishkin, James S. 1995. The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Galston, William. A. 2003. “Civic Education and Political Participation.” Phi Delta Kappan 85: 29–33.Google Scholar
Gastil, John. 2000. By Popular Demand: Revitalizing Representative Democracy Through Deliberative Education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gastil, John, and James P. Dillard. 1999. “The Aims, Methods and Effects of Deliberative Civic Education through the National Issues Forum.” Communication Education 48: 179–92.Google Scholar
Gibson, Cynthia. 2001. From Inspiration to Participation. New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Hahn, Carole L. 1998. Becoming Political. New York: State University of New York Press.
Jacobs, Lawrence, and Theda Skocpol, eds. 2005. Inequality and American Democracy: What We Know and What We Need to Learn. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Ladd, Carll Everett. 1999. The Ladd Report. New York: The Free Press.
Matthews, David. 2000. “ How Concepts of Politics Control Concepts of Civic Responsibility.” In Civic Responsibility and Higher Education, ed. Thomas Erlich. Phoenix, AZ: The American Council on Education and Oryx Press.
Matthews, David. 1994. “An Investigation of Students' Learning Styles in Various Disciplines in Colleges and Universities.” Journal of Humanistic Education and Development 33: 65–79.Google Scholar
McMillan, Jill J., and Katy J. Harringer. 2002. “College Students and Deliberation.” Communication Education 51: 237–53.Google Scholar
National Commission on Civic Renewal. 1998. A Nation of Spectators. College Park: University of Maryland Institute of Philosophy and Public Policy.
Niemi, Richard G., and Jane Junn. 1998. Civic Education, What Makes Students Learn. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Putnam, Robert D. 2000a. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Putnam, Robert D. 2000b. “ The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public Life.” In Principles and Practices of American Politics, eds. S. Kernell and S. S. Smith. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press.
Reeher, Grant, and Joseph Cammarano, eds. 1997. Education for Citizenship. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Ryfe, David. 2005. “Does Deliberative Democracy Work?” Annual Review of Political Science 8: 49–71.Google Scholar
Sax, Linda J., Alexander W. Astin, Jennifer A. Lindholm, Victor B. Saenz, William S. Korn, and Kathryn M. Mahoney. 2003. The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 2003. Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA.
Skocpol, Theda, and Morris P. Fiorina, eds. 1999. Civic Engagement in American Democracy. New York: Sage.
Warren, M. 2001. Democracy and Associations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Youniss, James, and Miranda Yates. 1997. Community Service and Social Responsibility in Youth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Youniss, James, Jeffrey A. McLellan, and Miranda Yates. 1997. “What We Know about Engendering Civic Identity.” American Behavioral Scientist 40 (5): 620–32.Google Scholar