Exploring Asian students’ citizenship values and their relationship to civic knowledge and school participation

Abstract

Empirical evidence of Asian students’ traditional citizenship values was provided in the Asian Regional Module (ARM) of the International Civic and Citizenship Study. This paper is based on a secondary analysis of the ARM data. Three issues are addressed. First, a theoretical analysis of the ARM constructs contributes to their construct validity. Second, the endorsement of these constructs by students from five Asian societies is compared indicating that some of the differences between societies were statistically significant, although effect sizes were generally weak or moderate. Third, the predictive validity of the constructs was examined. They had a small but differential effect on students’ civic knowledge and a generally negligible effect on school participation. Variance at school and individual level accounted for by the ARM constructs differed across societies. The implications of these results for civic education and future research in the field are discussed.

Keywords:

• citizenship
• values
• students
• secondary analysis