The relationship between political participation intentions of adolescents and a participatory democratic climate at school in 35 countries

Abstract

In the literature it is expected that a participatory democratic climate is associated with civic and political engagement intentions of adolescents. In this paper we use a three level multilevel analysis to explore these relations: the individual, school and country level. Using data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (2009) from 35 countries, we find that the individual student perception of a participatory democratic climate, especially openness in classroom discussions at the individual level, is positively associated with intended political participation. The teachers’ and principals’ perception of the participatory climate, on the other hand, were not related to the intention to participate. In this discussion we offer some ideas on how this individual level effect might be explained.

Keywords:

• civic education
• political participation
• open classroom climate
• multilevel analysis

Notes

1. Originally, the ICCS dataset included information from 38 countries. However, The Netherlands and Greece did not provide school and/or teacher data. Additionally, Liechtenstein did not provide information on some school-level variables (student–teacher ratio and school size). These countries are therefore left out of the analyses, leaving us with data from 35 countries to analyse: Austria, Belgium (Flemish), Bulgaria, Chile, Chinese Taipei, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, England, Estonia, Finland, Guatemala, Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, Poland, Russian Federation, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Thailand.

2. However, Gniewosz et al. (2009) found no effect of class-level open classroom climate (‘I encourage students to make up their own minds about issues and to express them’) on political alienation.

3. The ICCS 2009 International Database provides five separate estimates of each student’s score on civic knowledge. These civic knowledge scales are already negatively correlated without any control variables. All five scales produce the same results. The negative relation is thus not the result of a measurement artifact.

4. These effects remain the same if we do not aggregate the results per school but use individual measures of teachers. This might suggest that teachers do not just give their perception about what goes on in their own class, but rather about the general interaction climate at their school.