The school’s role in youths’ political efficacy: can school provide a compensatory boost to students’ political efficacy?

Abstract

In the democracies of today, school often have a dual role to play. Not only should they give students the knowledge they need to enter the labour market, they should also teach young people about democracy, and develop students’ capacity to exercise their citizenship. A third task for schools is to enhance political equality in society by supporting the least privileged students. In this study, we explore how school can contribute to increased equality by strengthening students’ political efficacy. Upper secondary students’ political efficacy levels are compared over time by creating four groups on the basis of their educational choices and experiences of the school and teaching environment. The results indicate that school matters for the development of political efficacy, but not in the same ways for all students. Signs of there being compensatory effects of having a positive school/teaching environment are found for students on vocational programmes, but not for those on academic programmes. Moreover, the results suggest that classroom/teaching factors play a more important role than the social environment offered by schools.

Keywords:

• political efficacy
• school
• political equality
• democracy

Acknowledgements

This study was made possible by access to data from the Political Socialization Program, a longitudinal research programme within YeS (Youth and Society) at Örebro University, Sweden. Responsible for the planning, implementation and financing of the collection of data were professors Erik Amnå, Mats Ekström, Margaret Kerr and Håkan Stattin. The data collection was supported by grants from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

Notes

1. In this study, we use choice of educational programme in upper secondary school as a proxy for social background/SES. The rationale for this is given below.

2. For further information, see the website of the Swedish National Agency for Education, www.skolverket.se.

3. Thus, two dimensions are used: study programme and school experiences. The division between vocational and academic is fixed, whereas experiences of the school factors can differ between students regardless of study programme, which means that the sizes of the analytical groups vary across the school factors.

4. For further information on the project, and on the procedure via which the data were retrieved, see Amnå et al. (2009).

5. The scale was created by the multidisciplinary research group in charge of the Political Socialisation Programme at YeS (Youth and Society) at Örebro University, Sweden, under the supervision of professors Erik Amnå, Mats Ekström and Håkan Stattin.

6. It was, however, somewhat difficult to code a few of the programmes, which, according to the Swedish National Agency for Education, count as academic, but are provided at vocational upper secondary schools, e.g. Digital Design and Robotic Techniques. The opposite applies to Health and Social Care, a programme with a high academic content, but one that counts as a vocational programme.