The development of citizenship in adolescents: The struggle between the influence of the Family, the peer group and the public school

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to show that the differences in the social context in which adolescents live and study, as well as the people with whom they interact, exert different types of influence on their thinking, among other things, about the importance of citizenship, their stance on reporting a crime or abuse, and the reasons for voting for a political party or candidate. To collect the data, a questionnaire of "citizen opinions and attitudes" was designed with multiple-choice answers with a Likert-type scale, which inquires about some topics that arise from the concept of citizenship and are developed during the secondary level of public education in Mexico. A sample of 323 adolescents attending the three secondary school grades at the end of the 2021-2022 school year was studied. The case studies consisted of two public schools of the general modality, which had different academic grades and levels of marginalization. The results showed that the characteristics of the social context and the socializing agents with whom the students lived encouraged ways of thinking that were opposed to the citizenship competencies sought by the educational institution.