Using an Agenda Setting Model to Help Students Develop & Exercise Participatory Skills and Values

Abstract

The Agenda Setting Model is a program component that can be used in courses to contribute to students' development as responsible, effective, and informed citizens. This model involves students in finding a unified voice to assert an agenda of issues that they find especially pressing. This is often the only time students experience such a deliberative process in their studies. The process of developing the agenda begins in the classroom with students engaging in conversations regarding issues they consider most critical. Topics range from tuition increases to larger social issues, such as healthcare reform, unemployment, and the war in Iraq. Students learn compromise and empathy while they work to limit their agendas and to choose a finite number of issues to address. A coalition is formed among the students and one unified voice is achieved. From this, students then further research their agenda and begin lobbying to gain support for their issue. Every aspect of this process involves students in using a range of problem-solving skills and exploring core values of democracy, particularly values and skills related to participatory citizenship: each student's voice is heard, and all students are represented. Democratic leadership skills are also fostered throughout the exercise, especially as some students develop coalitions to push more effective political demands through consensus and collaboration.

Keywords:

• Agenda Setting Model
• civic engagement
• civic literacy
• political education
• Urban Agenda

Acknowledgments

The Civic Action Project has its foundation in the former Urban Agenda Project developed at Wayne State University in 1986 by the late Professor Otto Feinstein. Dr. Perry worked with Dr. Feinstein from 1987 until his passing in December 2003. Dr. Perry has since employed and expanded on the Agenda Setting Model and associated activities at Henry Ford Community College.

Notes

Difference between means significant at .001 level.

1. Wayne State University (WSU), in Detroit, Michigan, is a large, urban research university serving approximately 33,000 undergraduate and graduate and professional students from Detroit and the surrounding areas, nearly one-third of whom are African American. Henry Ford Community College (HFCC), located in Dearborn, Michigan (one of Detroit's oldest suburban communities), has over 13,000 students from a diverse multicultural and economic background. The multicultural makeup of the City of Dearborn and Metropolitan Detroit provide WSU and HFCC with perhaps the most multicultural student bodies in Michigan, with significant representation from nearly every ethnic group present in the state.

2. The increase in students' positive attitudes was initially documented in 1989 with a survey of students who first participated in the Urban Agenda Project at Wayne State University in 1988. Members of Dr. Otto Feinstein's Fall 1988 Introductory American Government course participated in the development of a student driven Urban Agenda using a deliberative agenda setting process first in small groups in their individual sections and then in a larger unified convention involving more than 400 students. A follow-up phone survey of students who participated in the first Urban Agenda Convention indicated significant positive attitudes towards the activities and their role in the democratic political process (Perry 1989).

3. Past practice suggests that using an independent facilitator can foster a greater degree of student openness in the process. This can be done by trading classes with a fellow instructor or by having students select a fellow student or students to play the facilitator role. In many cases the time and the nature of the process only allow the course instructor to facilitate the agenda-building process, in which case it is recommended that the instructor provide space to the class in discussing and negotiating their agenda by leaving the classroom for periods of time.

4. Also referred to as an Urban Agenda Convention.

5. The follow-up survey of participants in the Student Issues Conference yielded 75 responses. In the control group of nonparticipants who were enrolled in Introduction to Political Science at HFCC (18 respondents) 66.7% indicated that they had voted.

6. According to Smith, “Young people with more positive civic dispositions are believed to participate in politics more. Contrary to purely rationalist models of political behavior, it has become increasingly clear that affect—strongly held beliefs and feelings—drive much purposive activity related to the civic system” (Smith 2003, 5).