The Changing Landscape: The Role of Civic Education on Political Efficacy Among Latina/os and Asian Americans

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of civic education on political engagement across racial groups. While scholars focus on the political efficacy gap between Black and White students, we extend attention to Latina/os and Asian Americans. This is because universities are becoming increasingly more diverse and defined by inclusion of these historically underrepresented groups. We theorize that the White-centered nature of political science classes as well as other structural disadvantages that Latina/os and Asian Americans face within and outside of the university may lead to inequality in their political efficacy gains after taking the same civic education courses, relative to Whites. Toward testing these expectations, we conducted an original panel study. We find that while Latina/o and Asian American students start out at higher levels of internal efficacy at the beginning of civic education classes, they leave more uncertain about their own understanding of politics after the course ends. Our findings suggest that amid universities’ demographic change, the promise of civic education is unevenly realized by Latina/os and Asian Americans, racial groups that colleges will increasingly need to serve. In the conclusion, we offer several suggestions on tailoring civic education to students of color in political science.

Keywords:

• Civic education
• political efficacy
• Latina/os
• Asian Americans

Acknowledgments

We thank the following UCI undergraduate research assistants: Ismael Arreola, Loryn Carter, Andre Castro, Sarah Frasco, Rima Gasparyan, Aileen Guzman, Cati Miguel, Natalie Monge, Angel Lira, Ivan Odiver, and Katherine Razo. We also thank the discussants and participants of the 2019 Midwest Political Science Association, 2019 American Political Science Association, and 2019 UCI Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Ethics and Morality Workshop, where previous versions of this paper were presented. We especially appreciate thorough comments from the anonymous reviewers as well as Elizabeth Bennion, Arthur Drake, Michael Rogers, and Cherie Strachan, all of whose feedback strengthened this manuscript. We also thank Jeffrey Kopstein for his support of this project.

Notes

1 The registrar stipulates that after taking these courses, students should be knowledgeable and understanding of “principles, sources, and interpretations of human behavior and how people organize, govern, understand, and explain social life” and/or “demonstrate specific knowledge of the cultural, historical, social, economic, scientific, and political aspects of one or more foreign countries, and the connections among these aspects” (University of California, Irvine Course Catalogue 2019).

2 We report the results from two Introduction to American Politics courses, one Introduction to International Relations course, and one Introduction to Law course.

3 We note that the scale for external efficacy has low reliability (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.22). However, in this paper, we focus on the results for internal efficacy.

4 We do not make any confident conclusions about African Americans, given our small sample who identify as such.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship [2018254511].

Notes on contributors

Nathan Chan

Nathan Chan is a PhD Candidate and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the University of California, Irvine. His research interests include identity and minority political behavior. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Benjamin Hoyt

Benjamin Hoyt is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Irvine. His research interests include realist political theory and political psychology. He can be contacted at [email protected].