Digital Commons Network^™

Civic Engagement, Paula Burnett, Andrew Matlins, University Of Maine Center On Aging

Maine Center on Aging Research and Evaluation

This report looks at civic engagement as volunteerism and community activism. It looks to analyze whether or not seniors will seek to become civically engaged, as well as the best methods for attracting, engaging, and retaining these individuals. By 2020, approximately one in six Americans will be 65 years of age or older. Maine’s population is now the oldest in the nation. These statistics are causing many nonprofit organizations across Maine and the nation to rethink how they can attract and retain volunteers, which are crucial assets to the agencies. Some suggest that we can expect a rise in volunteers …

Developing Indicators And Measures Of Civic Outcomes For Elementary School Students, Bernadette Chi, Joann Jastrzab, Alan Melchior

Civic Engagement

Over the past decade, public attention on the importance of the civic development and education of youth has grown. To address these concerns, the East Bay Conservation Corps (EBCC) Charter School opened in 1996 with the explicit mission to prepare and engage students grades K through 12 as caring citizens who are capable and motivated to fully participate in our democracy. While content standards and assessments readily exist to articulate the academic and artistic development of students, youth civic development, especially at the elementary level, has been under-conceptualized. What is needed is a more robust, comprehensive developmental framework for citizenship …

So Close And So Small: Six Promising Approaches To Civic Education, Equity, And Social Justice, Debbie Abilock

Civic Engagement

Perhaps you feel, as I did when I worked in a school, that while teachers develop service projects with the best intentions, they make no effort to build on what is known about effective service learning, nor do they align their work with other service in the school. As a result, my school was full of feel-good, superficial activities and little curricular coherence.

Playing For An Active Community: Sports Participation And Civic Engagement, Ian E. Ritz

Sociology Honors Projects

Research on civic engagement in associations posits benefits at various levels in society. Critical perspective holds that sports may alternately teach positive social behaviors while reinforcing discriminatory stereotypes in its participants. The research question becomes, does participation in youth sports actually lead to civic engagement later in life? Using a longitudinal data set, I find that after controlling for other factors, there still is an indirect positive correlation between team sports participation and volunteering as a young adult. Analysis indicates that sports participation as an adolescent significantly accounts for sports participation as a young adult which in turn, influences volunteering.

Youth Helping America - Educating For Active Citizenship: Service-Learning, School-Based Service And Youth Civic Engagement, Kimberly Spring, Nathan Dietz, Robert Grimm Jr.

Civic Engagement

This brief is the second in the Youth Helping America Series, a series of reports based on data from the Youth Volunteering and Civic Engagement Survey, a national survey of 3,178 American youth between the ages of 12 and 18 that was conducted by the Corporation for National and Community Service in 2005 in collaboration with the U.S. Census Bureau and the nonprofit coalition Independent Sector.

The survey collected information on teen volunteering habits, experiences with school-based service-learning, and other forms of civic engagement. While the first brief in the Youth Helping America Series focused on youth volunteering and social …

Out Of The Classroom And Into The Community: Service Learning Reinforces Classroom Instruction, Roy Bonnette

Project Summaries

Technology students successfully developed four complete sets of house plans including floor plans, framing plans, and elevations. Because Habitat relies on donations of doors, windows, and cabinets, detail drawings and schedules vary and were not included. Unskilled persons who volunteered time and labor for Habitat needed concise and unambiguous directions from supervisors. The students' drawings of floor and elevation plans provided these workers with a clear and graphic representation of the construction goals. As noted above, students were held to professional and technical accountability. This process was put in place to replicate real-world practices and to give students a sense …

The Politics And Economics Of Health: A Cross-National Comparison Of Civic Engagement And Health Status, Suzanne J. Wood

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Over the past two decades, various structural modifications associated with the provision of national health and its systems have been undertaken. The preponderance of liberalization experiences have occurred in the absence of epidemiological, political, or social considerations associated with adoption and implementation. Often, financial and political manipulation by international organizations and powerful foreign governments has served as the impetus for fundamental shifts leading to an asymmetrical distribution of resources by population density, geography, and along various socio-cultural boundaries. Consequently, structural adjustments have resulted in unpredictable and divergent outcomes with regard to health status. The question of whether or not health …

Community Partner Indicators Of Engagement: An Action Research Study On Campus-Community Partnership, Sean J. Creighton

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The central purpose of this research study was to develop common indicators of engagement for civic initiatives between institutions of higher education and their community organization partners. The unique aspect of this study was that the indicators were generated by the community organizations participating as stakeholders in campus-community partnerships. Using an action research methodology that involved eleven community organization participants from the health and wellness sector, the study advocated for research that provided a deeper understanding of the perspectives of community organizations. Findings suggested that significant divides existed in core civic areas dealing with service-learning, relevance of academic research, and …

Citizen-Centered Collaborative Public Management, Terry Cooper, Thomas Bryer, Jack Meek

Thomas A Bryer

Civic engagement and collaborative public management are concepts that are defined broadly, making theoretical explication challenging and practical application of empirical research difficult. In this article, the authors adopt definitions of civic engagement and collaborative public management that are centered on the citizen and the potential for active citizenship. Following a historical review of civic engagement in the United States, a conceptual model of five approaches to civic engagement is offered. Citizen-centered collaborative public management is enhanced through these approaches. The authors suggest the need for further empirical research on collaborative public management that is grounded in citizenship action.