In a yearlong ethnographic study, we actively participated as members of the national planning committee for fourteen local climate conferences, we examined how citizen participation was imagined and enacted. We introduce a framework for studying the relationship between cognitive engagement, learning, and civic engagement in the public sphere. We…

Modern urban and metropolitan universities are increasingly obliged to recognize their role as anchor institutions. These same institutions of higher education (IHEs) also have a responsibility to educate students to be responsible and participatory citizens in society. An increasing number of IHEs recognize these distinct commitments as central…

New Hampshire is a place of both traditions and contradictions. Though historically New Hampshire's demographics have been primarily white, the state is becoming increasingly diverse with respect to racial and ethnic identities. There are communities with significant wealth adjacent to towns with widespread poverty and devastating rates of…

The value of the liberal arts and humanities has increasingly been called into question on multiple fronts. Attempts to bridge the practical and liberal arts through forms of civic professionalism have been gaining traction in larger spheres of influence. This article outlines the results of a deliberative civic engagement forum (n = 42) that…

Members of the National Louis University Civic Engagement Team developed research and evaluation tools for scholarly analysis of data on community engaged research and service-learning at our university then piloted them with students, faculty, and community partners. This study results from the pilot. We examined perspectives on service-learning…

Community-based action research (CBAR) encourages students to view internships and other civic-engagement opportunities as the first steps in collaborative projects that build long-term relationships with community partners and model how democracy works. We marshal longitudinal data, qualitative and quantitative, on both attitudes and behaviors to…

Citizen science is fundamentally about participation within and for communities. Attempts to merge citizen science with schooling must call not only for a democratization of schooling and science but also for the democratization of the ways in which science is taken up by, with, and for citizen participants. Using this stance, along with critical…

The collective action predicaments of the time require citizens to participate in remaking the governance of civil society so that they can become engaged and cooperate together. Can citizens become makers of civil society? This article draws upon Hannah Arendt's "On Revolution" to provide a theory of remaking in which citizens come together to…

Democracy has been weakened in the United Kingdom with citizens increasingly frustrated at not being able to shape government decisions in any meaningful way. State actions at the local and national level are at risk of becoming even more influenced by vested private interests. This poses a major challenge to the democratic health of the country.…

This paper describes a qualitative study of seven alternative democratic program (ADP) students of a public high school in a suburb of a major city. The purpose of the study was to gain an in-depth understanding of how students in ADP reflect upon their transitions to become active members of the ADP community over time. The students were…

To educate young people to be productive citizens and to ensure that the democratic objective of equality is realized, service learning must adopt an alternative paradigm that promotes the ideals and values of participatory democracy. Three problematic assumptions of service learning are that (1) good citizenship requires students to "give" back…

This paper discusses the ways in which the decline in trust of professionals and public institutions may impact public schools of the future, as they are increasingly seen as government utilities providing educational services. To counter this situation, scholars and citizen activists are experimenting with institutional reform strategies using…

Participatory democracy in its purest form, the town hall meeting, has been lost in modern mass society. The sheer number of citizens prevent effective interaction between themselves and their leaders. The aim of this study is to explore the various means available to correct that loss, which until the advent of this McLuhanesque era, was…

This report explores questions about roles for citizens and governments in a good society by examining six Canadian experiences with civic engagement. Each case study involves different sectors of society, key players, goals, processes, and outcomes; touches on long-standing policy issues in Canada; and details how players have come together or…

In this working paper, the authors review the literature on college students' political attitudes and behaviors. It is hoped that this review will help to refine research questions and ultimately lead to a larger follow-up research study on college student political engagement. The literature review was based on the following three questions: (1)…