Education Commons^™

Can Education Reduce Political Polarization?: Fostering Open-Minded Political Engagement During The Legislative Semester, Brett L.M. Levy, Annaly Babb-Guerra, Wolf Owczarek, Lena M. Batt

Educational Theory and Practice Faculty Scholarship

Background: In the United States, elected leaders and the general public have become more politically polarized during the past several decades, making bipartisan compromise difficult. Political scientists and educational scholars have argued that generating productive political cooperation requires preparing members of democratic societies to productively negotiate their political disagreements. Numerous prior studies on civic learning have focused on fostering youth political engagement, but little research has examined how educators can support both political engagement and political open-mindedness.

Purpose: The study described in this paper explores how students’ experiences in a unique high school government course may help to foster their …

Motivating Political Participation Among Youth: An Analysis Of Factors Related To Adolescents’ Political Engagement, Brett Levy, Thomas Akiva

Educational Theory and Practice Faculty Scholarship

Prior research has identified political efficacy and political interest as strong predictors of political participation, but few studies have examined these two attitudes in tandem or compared their relative importance vis-à-vis political participation. Drawing on the expectancy-value model of motivation, we begin to address this research gap while also considering several related issues. Our sample includes a diverse group of high school students in grades 10, 11, and 12 (N=422) from the midwestern United States. Through quantitative analyses of participants’ survey data, we found that political interest (a central aspect of value) and political efficacy (closely related to expectancy) predicted …