Two paradigms of civic learning

We’d like to get a discussion started on our latest report, a literature review/think piece on generational differences in civic engagement practices. Here’s the abstract:

How can civic education keep pace with changing political identifications and practices of new generations of citizens? We examine research on school-based civic education in different post-industrial democracies with the aim of deriving a set of core learning categories. Most school-based approaches reflect traditional paradigms of dutiful citizenship (DC) oriented to government through parties and voting, with citizens forming attentive publics who follow events in the news. While this model may appeal to some young people, research suggests that it produces mixed learning outcomes, and may not capture the full range of learning and engagement styles of recent generations of citizens. We expand upon these conventional learning categories by identifying additional civic learning opportunities that reflect more selfactualizing (AC) styles of civic participation common among recent generations of youth who have been termed digital natives. Their AC learning styles favor interactive, networked activities often communicated with participatory media production such as videos shared across online networks. The result is an expanded set of learning categories that can be used to design, document, and compare civic learning in different environments from schools to online communities.

If possible, please have a look at the full paper. But even if you don’t have time to read the whole thing, I’ve included a couple discussion questions that should make sense based solely on the abstract:

• Have you seen the AC and DC styles reflected in your own research or anecdotal observations of school civics programs or young people themselves? If not, how would you characterize the new brand of civic engagement popular among youth? Are there other conceptualizations of youth civic engagement not mentioned in the paper we should be aware of?
• The authors mention Obama very briefly in the paper, suggesting that the youth enthusiasm for his campaign (particularly as expressed through participatory media) defies the typical AC/DC distinction. Would it be more accurate to conceptualize the Obama campaign as an exception to the rule or as a hybrid of the two styles (AC methods in pursuit of DC ends)? Looking toward the future, do you expect that digital media will continue to occupy the AC end of the civic spectrum, or will they diffuse evenly across AC and DC as they becomes more integrated into everyday life?

Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, conceptions of citizenship

1 comment July 15th, 2008 at 03:02pm Deen Freelon Permalink

Digital media: what is it good for?

CLO is a bit late to this particular conversation, but I wanted to spotlight the ongoing dust-up in the civic/political blogosphere over a recent Christian Science Monitor op-ed by Sally Kohn, a youth civic practitioner. The piece, titled “Real Change Happens Offline,” makes a number of controversial claims, some more defensible than others:

. . . Internet activism is individualistic. It’s great for a sense of interconnectedness, but the Internet does not bind individuals in shared struggle the same as the face-to-face activism of the 1960s and ’70s did. It allows us to channel our individual power for good, but it stops there.

This is great for signing a petition to Congress or donating to a cause. But the real challenges in our society – the growing gap between rich and poor, the intransigence of racism and discrimination, the abuses from Iraq to Burma (Myanmar) – won’t politely go away with a few clicks of a mouse. Or even a million.

Daily Kos, the Nation, and CLO adviser Allison Fine have all articulated thoughtful objections to these and other arguments and assumptions embedded in the piece, and Kohn’s response to her critics highlights some of the deep-rooted philosophical differences between partisan Democrats and leftists steeped in critical theory. But I want to sidestep that debate for the time being to focus on an implicit question running through the entire discussion: what, in civic and political terms, is digital media good for? And what projects are better left to the non-digital world?

Kohn’s critics were as quick to dispute the notion that online politics is somehow inherently atomistic as they were to acknowledge the fact that it will never be sufficient to fulfill the goals of most civic and political projects of any significance. Kohn herself seems to view new media as little more than a narrowly helpful supplement to “real” political activity, the vast majority of which plays out offline. But in light of current theoretical understandings and empirical findings, what ought we to expect the internet to do well, and at what point should we begin to curb our enthusiasm? I think we can all agree that new media has made political contributions, petition-signing, and self-expression easier than ever before, but what about changing hearts and minds, civic participation in the legislative process, engaging the disengaged, and hedging against gross concentrations of power (political, economic, cultural, and other)? This question is so basic that we as scholars run the risk of incorrectly assuming that we all agree on the answers, which is why addressing it directly is crucial.

Entry Filed under: adviser conversations, participatory media

3 comments July 15th, 2008 at 03:01pm Deen Freelon Permalink