Developing Civic Engagement in General Education Political Science

Abstract

How can we promote student and civic engagement amongst our students? At Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi, the political science courses in the First Year Learning Communities Program have been using the New York Times as a supplemental reader to increase student engagement both inside and outside the classroom. The paper will examine the effectiveness of the New York Times in increasing student civic engagement inside the classroom by assessing the newspaper effectiveness in three ways: making the class material more relevant; helping the students to stay abreast with the news; and improving their attitude toward politics. The paper will also examine whether reading the New York Times has stimulated a desire to make a difference in their communities. The expectation is that students using the newspaper will demonstrate gains in all four attitudes about civic engagement in comparison to students not using the New York Times.

Keywords:

• civic engagement
• general education
• newspapers in the classroom
• student engagement

Notes

∗ = significant at .05.

∗∗ = significant at .01.

For more information about the American Democracy Project visit the Web site at http://www.aascu.org/programs/adp/about/default.htm

This is not to suggest that empirical analysis is the only way to verify the claims.

This report does not report a publication date, although it mentions it is a successor study to a 2001 study. It also is not a peer-reviewed publication. The report can be found at the Newspaper Association of American Foundation Web site—www.naa.org.

There are several other large lecture general education courses in the FYLCP including Psychology, History, Sociology, Chemistry, and Biology.

“The Higher Education Service-Learning Surveys (1999) were developed by D. Díaz-Gallegos, A. Furco, & H. Yamada.” For more information about the survey or to download the survey visit the Web site at http://gse.berkeley.edu/research/slc/evaluation.html

The indicators are the pre- and postclass relevancy, keep up with the news, and community involvement items discussed later in the research design.

The response categories for the NYT did make the material more relevant is 3 – strongly agree, 2 – agree, 1 – disagree, 0 – strongly disagree; and the question is only asked on the postsurvey in the NYT section of political science.

The response categories for keeping up with the news are 1 – yes, 0 – no.

The response categories are 3 – strongly agree, 2 – agree, 1 – disagree, 0 – strongly disagree.

The response categories to these items are 3 – strongly agree, 2 – agree, 1 – disagree, 0 – strongly disagree.