An Experiment of Community-Based Learning Effects on Civic Participation

Abstract

How does community-based learning (CBL) influence student attitudes toward civic participation? One of CBL’s primary aims is to improve college student civic participation. As yet, however, little is known about the educational effects of CBL classes on student community and political participation. Using a quasi pre–post experiment with experimental and control groups, we found that civic participation is more likely to increase in students taking CBL classes as students are more willing to participate in community activities such as organizing student groups and volunteering at local organizations. Statistical analyses suggested that students in CBL classes are more likely to engage in the political process by petitioning local authorities than by participating in the voting process. Additionally, the analyses indicated that students are more likely to actively participate in local organizations voluntarily and that they are more likely to organize student groups to address local issues. We therefore conclude that designing CBL classes that emphasize tangible local issues with hands-on experience could facilitate students’ attitudes toward political and community participation.

Keywords:

• Community-based learning (CBL)
• civic participation
• quasi-experimental research

Notes

1 VCP syllabus can be provided upon request.

2 Our research team also asked the same question for students to write a short essay about “Shinchon, I, and We” at the beginning and the end of the class. It was a chance to get qualitative data on the CBL effect as well as to give a chance for students to reflect what they have learned in the class. A student essay stated, “During 15 weeks of the VCP class, we got to know why we should raise, gather, and channel through our voices. At the beginning, I complained our powerlessness regarding Shinchon issues. However, after having this class, we enjoyed a small change that we tried to make for better Shinchon.” Many other students presented similar responses.

3 The book, Village Community Politics (2017) consists of three sections: Theories of VCP; Space and VCP; and Policy and VCP. The theory section introduces VCP, Political Theories of VCP: Habermas, Tocqueville, and Ostrom, and University-community partnership. The Space and VCP section includes social fiction for sustainable campus town, politics of redevelopment for an underground walkway, openness of public arena, barrier free space and buildings, gentrification, and the regeneration of unused buildings. The policy and VCP section addresses the development of a sustainable community energy policy, a social economy model for the area, a social economic bank, an open campus for educational partnership, and a community student organization. The book publishing process, collaborating with the instructor, undergraduate and graduate students, provided an opportunity to make the field study outcomes tangible and sharable. The book has been adopted as a textbook in community-based learning courses in several other universities.

4 The fact that the tests showed no difference between the experimental and control groups allowed us to make some conjectures about the backgrounds of students who chose the CBL class. First, not all undergraduate students registered in the CBL class were fully aware of the CBL class content. Rather, they might have gotten into the class because of other factors like time and space convenience, instructor’s fame, level of difficulty, class burden, and so on. Second, even if some students were interested in the objectives of the CBL class and registered purposefully, our preliminary statistical tests indicate that there were too few of them to create a selection bias threat to the validity of our inference and that they left a role only to chance differences.

5 We recognize that, although CBL class students and non-CBL class students were not much different in their attributes at the outset, it is difficult to rule out the possibility that students registered for the CBL class were more open to change due to the self-selection effect, and thus, CBL class students were ready to accept any CBL-related stimuli, resulting in the changes observed at the end. We discussed our best, if not perfect, means of coping with this internal validity threat above. Additionally, we examined any difference between the CBL and the non-CBL students regarding their openness to change, using a proxy variable that measured students’ community-related activities, with the assumption that if students had been involved in any kinds of CBL-related activities prior to the class, they could be more open to changes due to CBL stimuli. We found no statistical significance between CBL and non-CBL students in this regard.

6 Along with these questions, we also asked following questions to finding out students’ attitude towards political participation: How likely are you to get information about candidates before local elections?; How likely are you to attend local party meetings?; How likely are you to contribute to the media about social and political local affairs?; How likely are you to volunteer for the candidates of local elections?; and How likely are you to become a candidate for local elections? To examine students’ attitude toward community participation, we also asked following questions: How likely are you to fund local organizations?; How likely are you to sign for local issue petitions?; and How likely are you to attend local protest or rally?

7 There are many different ways to evaluate the knowledge, attitudes, and behavior in the fields of education and performance improvement and each way has its own pros and cons. When measuring attitude and behavior with surveys, research based on a one-shot survey is naturally limited by the fact that it does not involve observation of students’ actual future behavior. In this study, we examined changes in student attitudes regarding future behavior. Nevertheless, attitude plays a key role in determining behavior as reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein 2005; Schrader and Lawless 2004). Taking into account the potential weakness of survey research, we designed our survey questionnaire to assess behavioral attitude in addition to cognitive or emotional attitude: we asked, for example, “How likely are you to issue petitions to local authorities?” rather than “Do you think it is desirable for people to issue. . . ?” Remaining questions as to CBL effectiveness on the behavioral aspect of civic participation can be further tested by future research with longitudinal data and/or other qualitative methodologies.

8 Postestimation analyses support the robustness of our ordered logit models. First, the statistical significance that the Hausman test allows us to reject the null hypothesis that ordinary least squares and ordered logit models are the same (Hausman 1978). The likelihood-ratio test also demonstrates the same result.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2018S1A5A2A03034198 and NRF-2017S1A5A8019636); and the BK21 plus program in the Department of Political Science at Yonsei University Graduate School.

Notes on contributors

Taedong Lee

Taedong Lee is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Yonsei University, Seoul. His areas of research include global and subnational environmental politics and policy, NGO politics, international political economy, and social network analysis. Professor Lee recently published his monograph, Global Cities and Climate Change: Translocal Relations of Environmental Governance (Routledge, 2015). His articles have appeared in journals including Policy Sciences, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Journal, Energy Policy, Global Environmental Politics, and other Korean and international peer-reviewed journals.

Jungbae An

Jungbae An is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at Yonsei University Graduate School. He received his BA in Sociology from the same university. His research interests include Internet governance, energy politics, and NGO politics, with a particular emphasis on the private authority and multistakeholder governances at different levels. He has been participating in various organizations on local community organizing, urban energy policy, as well as global Internet governance activities. He wrote A History of Korean Internet: Retrospective 20th Century (2014) along with other peer-reviewed academic articles.

Hyodong Sohn

Hyodong Sohn received a Master’s degree in Political Science from Yonsei University. His research interest includes examining the politics and policy dynamics of various political actors in relation to myriad global energy and environmental issues. He wrote several academic articles on local governance and civic engagement.

In Tae Yoo

In Tae Yoo is an Assistant Professor in the School of International Studies at Chonbuk National University. Yoo’s research interests include comparative regionalism, political economy of international (digital) trade, Internet governance, and research methods, and published in multiple peer-reviewed Korean, Japanese, and English academic journals. His teaching incorporates diverse pedagogies, particularly, civic education, travel studies, and simulations.