The Effectiveness of Civic Education

Abstract

Past research has explored the effectiveness of civic education in America’s classrooms. We build on these efforts using a survey of American students to test whether civics instruction enhances students’ political knowledge, political efficacy, and their voting intent. We refer to these outcomes, collectively, as democratic capacity. Recognizing that not all classroom experiences are created equal, we break new ground by exploring the degree to which the effectiveness of civic education is conditioned on variation in instructional methods employed by teachers. We also examine how variation in students’ home environment affects the effectiveness of civic education. The results suggest that civic education seems to influence democratic capacity only for those students who come from less privileged backgrounds and that teachers who use a wider range of instructional methods appear to deter the stimulation of knowledge for these students while simultaneously boosting their efficacy. We discuss the implications of these findings.