Every year on January 16, Washington public schools participate in Temperance and Good Citizenship Day (TAGCD) in accordance with Revised Code of Washington (RCW) 28A.230.150. On this day, Washington social studies teachers must provide instructional time for high school seniors to register to vote. The Office of Superintendent of Public…

Over the past decade, Democrats and Republicans have grown increasingly polarized in their views of American higher education. Republicans in particular have become far more critical of the political and social views of faculty. In this paper, we thus investigate whether the commonly held belief of a politically liberal professoriate is true for…

With the world growing in complexity and interconnectedness, the demand for leaders equipped to solve compound problems will only increase. Higher education is called upon to develop leadership in students and needs to engage relevant tools and techniques to prepare students for the tasks ahead. Democratic engagement--from voter education and…

Although voting is a fundamental mechanism through which Americans engage with their democracy, social workers often do not see it as a valid component of practice. Voting is an important source of political power and provides a means to ensure equitable representation. Educating social work students on how they can encourage voter engagement…

The case for the use of simulations in political science seminars to provide illustrative learning of complex political process has been well demonstrated across a variety of sub-disciplines within political science. Their value to the teaching of European Union politics has also been explored and is particularly valuable for the EU's numerous…

"The Civic Outlook of Young Adults in America" is a first-of-its-kind national survey of 18-24-year-old Americans that sheds light on their civic knowledge, civic engagement, and commitment to democracy. Part of a multi-year research initiative to measure holistic youth civic preparedness in America, Citizens & Scholars commissioned…

Tuition levels in the US have been rising at an above-the-inflation pace, leading to spiraling student debt levels and negative effects on students' well-being. While student outcomes of rising tuition are well known, the political reasons behind the decisions of policy makers to contain tuition increases or not remain poorly understood. In this…

Voting instruction typically provided to students is focused on educating for informed voting, but we believe it is essential that schools educate for informed and equitable voting. Indeed, in a well-functioning democratic society, participants need to be prepared to engage in critical, but civil, discourse with and about people who look and think…

The university accreditation system in Chile appears to be influenced by tensions between interest groups from well-established institutions and newer (private) institutions. These institutions depend to a certain extent on accreditation decisions to obtain indirect public funding. However, the system relies on faculty nominated by conglomerates…

Twenty years ago, Northern Ireland's previously prominent presence in the headlines of the yellow press dwindled to virtual non-existence. As the region's three-decade long conflict went into abeyance and the daily death tally dropped, the vagaries of the region's little-understood, political tensions were assigned to little-read columns hidden…

For-profit colleges have long been a feature of the American higher education landscape and the quality of the education they provide has always been under question. This paper investigates the effects of attending a for-profit college on voting and volunteering as compared to individuals who attended a not-for-profit college or no college at all.…

Voting for various pro-environmental governmental policies is an indirect, but potentially effective, action that citizens can take to reduce global warming (GW) and climate change. Supporting further environmental education is an additional action. This study reports students' beliefs about the effectiveness of these indirect actions in reducing…

The college-educated are more likely to vote than are those with less education. Prior research suggests that the effect of college attendance on voting operates directly, by increasing an individual's interest and engagement in politics through social networks or human capital accumulation. College may also increase voting indirectly by leading…

In the 1960s, people across the West started imagining that they were in a societal transition. Crucially, in these future-oriented discussions, social class was often transformed into educational attainment as the main dividing line. These future studies garnered attention across the political spectrum, including the Swedish Conservative Party.…

This article outlines a series of lessons the author led to help students understand gerrymandering, which is the practice of drawing district boundaries to favor a particular group or party and which undermines the fairness of a representative democracy. These lessons were developed to capture student interest and engagement by linking…