Assessing Adolescents’ Communicative Self-Efficacy to Discuss Controversial Issues: Findings From a Randomized Study of the Word Generation Program

Abstract

Communicative self-efficacy serves as an important link between discussing controversial issues and civic engagement because confidence in one’s discourse skills is important to managing conflicting perspectives and developing solutions to community-based problems. Freely available to schools, Word Generation is a cross-content literacy program that supports teachers in the four main content areas—ELA, social studies, science, and math—to embed learning of controversial issues through classroom discussions, subject-specific lessons, and writing. Middle school students (N = 5,870) from diverse backgrounds participated in a randomized study of the intervention that was conducted in 12 middle schools located in an urban school district. We analyzed survey data based on students’ self-reported ratings on their communicative self-efficacy, as indicated by confidence to participate in discussions of 15 different controversial issues related to politics, society, and science. Paired sample t-tests indicate that treatment students reported higher communicative self-efficacy than control students on a set of topics immediately covered prior to testing, but not on the set of topics covered in the previous year. This study informs curriculum developers, policy makers, and educators to consider the importance of incorporating classroom discussions of controversial issues within a framework of subject-specific instruction.

Keywords:

• civic engagement
• communicative self-efficacy
• controversial issues
• current events
• randomized trial

Acknowledgments

Special thanks goes to Dr. Juliana Pare-Blagoev, former Assistant Director in SERP’s national headquarters, for her expertise of the Word Generation program. Patrick Hurley, the SERP director of the participating school district, who played a key role in facilitating the cognitive interviews with students to develop survey measures, as well as working with school personnel to participate in the data collection. Also we acknowledge Francisco Campos, Project Manager at the Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics, for his work in coordinating survey administration of the measures used in this study.

Funding

This research was made possible through grants from the IES (R305A090555).

Notes

1. ¹We note that discussion as defined by this classroom approach relates to the goal of helping students best arrive toward a solution through the thoughtful consideration of alternatives, as opposed to debate, where the goal is to determine a “winner” or “winning side” (Avery et al., 2013).

2. ²For more information about the SERP Institute, refer to http://serpinstitute.org/.

3. ³For more information about the Word Generation program, refer to http://wg.serpmedia.org/.

4. ⁴Results of this analysis are available from the first author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was made possible through grants from the IES (R305A090555).

Notes on contributors

Alex R. Lin

ALEX R. LIN is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697. He can be contacted at Email: [email protected].

Joshua F. Lawrence

JOSHUA F. LAWRENCE is an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697. He can be contacted at Email: [email protected].

Catherine E. Snow

CATHERINE E. SNOW is the Patricia Albjerg Graham Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. She can be contacted at Email: [email protected].

Karen S. Taylor

KAREN S. TAYLOR is a Ph.D. Student in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697. She can be contacted at Email: [email protected].