Spirituality is associated with a variety of positive life outcomes, and the university experience has long been regarded as a critical period of spiritual identity development. A key explanation for why gender differences exist in the importance of integrating spirituality in one's life may be that civic engagement is intervening in the…

A young person's engagement in high-quality youth development programs should lead to stronger positive outcomes as a young adult. Theoretical literature advances broad indicators that mark success in young adulthood; however, there is a dearth of empirical publications reporting long-term outcomes to support this assumption. We conducted a…

Civics education continues to gain national importance, especially in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election and with recent debates about the teaching of history that addresses the legacy of racism and discrimination in the United States. Despite the increasing interest in strengthening civics education, states continue to differ in…

The present study advances a model of critical civic motivation grounded in expectancy-value theory and highlights diverse manifestations of motivation among marginalized adolescents. The participants were 447 high school youth (85.0% Latinx; 62.9% low-income). Two complementary methodological approaches were employed to examine civic motivation,…

Service-learning is a high-impact practice that increases students' engagement with class material and the community. However, a critical lens is needed to strengthen students' understanding of and commitment to social justice and the inclusion of students from diverse backgrounds. This mixed method study examined the impact of a critical…

For many high school students, the benefits of civic education seem irrelevant and take place in their future lives. Student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Civics is stagnant. In 2018, the average civics score for eighth-grade students was not significantly different from 2014 and had only increased by 3…

Purpose: In response to concerns about fake news (Allcott et al., 2019) and polarization (Wollebaek et al., 2019), youth media literacy interventions have emerged to teach strategies for assessing credibility of online news (McGrew et al., 2018) and producing media to mobilize others for civic goals (Kahne et al., 2016). However, in light of…

Based on the past sixteen years of experience with an online collaborative endeavor offered across differing university types, as well as modes of instruction, the best practice found that by fostering student peer exchanges on a collaborative web site students reached a high level of achievement in these courses. Findings indicate that despite…

While citizen science and other participatory approaches to science are increasingly used in schools to promote student science learning, rarely are these students supported to collect, analyze, and share their data with meaningful outside audiences. In this study, we used a Design-Based Research approach to iteratively develop and examine an…

The Town Hall Meeting (THM) program at California State University, Fullerton has been annually incorporated into several Introduction to American Politics course sections since 2011, to improve academic performance and promote civic engagement among enrolled students. This article provides a detailed analysis of results from a 2017…

Very little has been published reporting on long-term outcomes experienced by young adults (aged 19 to 34 years old) who participated in 4-H youth development programs. We adopted Gambone et al.'s (2002) framework advancing three long-term outcomes for early adulthood: economic stability, health and well-being, and community involvement. With…

In this brief, we use data from the 2021 PACE/USC Rossier Poll to report on California voters' attitudes towards and engagement with local school district governance. Generally, our findings show relatively high support for school boards among California voters, although voters were less satisfied with school board performance in the context of…

A number of social and ecological justice educators have long recognized the need for educational institutions to foster the development of a critical interest in civic engagement. They also have recognized the lack of appropriate education for students who are already civically engaged. One popular way to address this context in higher education…

Polarization in political culture and the decline of public education for civic engagement have become serious challenges to a healthy constitutional federal republic in the United States. Communication as a field of study in American universities is well-poised to address these challenges and contribute meaningfully to improving the civic…

This paper presents findings from a survey of 34 food policy councils (FPCs) in California. The survey addressed organizational structure and functions, policy priorities and achievements, and the use of research or other information. We find that most FPCs have formed in recent years, operate with small budgets and limited or no staff, and…