SCHOOL EFFECTS AND CIVIC KNOWLEDGE: A CROSS-NATIONAL STUDY OF YOUTH POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION
Open Access
- Author:
- Fabrega-Lacoa, Rodrigo Alejandro
- Graduate Program:
- Educational Theory and Policy
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 05, 2004
- Committee Members:
- David Alexander Gamson, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
David P Baker, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Miryam Espinoza Dulanto, Committee Member
Jacqueline A Stefkovich, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Civics
achievement
cross-national - Abstract:
- From its earliest conception as an institution, formal public mass schooling, managed and financed by the nation-state, was developed with citizenship production as one of its chief goals and assumed contribution to national societies. Sociological analyses of the origins of mass schooling have observed the strong assumed link between education and citizenry held by a wide spectrum of political interests in creating social order within a national polity. Even though there is extensive sociological analysis of the origin of the institutional link between public schooling and citizenry production, there is little sociological analysis on how schooling produces citizens, and, in turn how that process is shaped by the nation-state and the world system of nations. Here I examine the micro process of schooling for citizenship, the effects of national income, and the global patterns in 27 nations with unique data on adolescents’ civic knowledge. This dissertation is organized as follows: Chapter 2, reviews the historical roots of civic education and political socialization and literature on the school effect. Chapter 3 presents the multilevel comparative cross-national research methodology that links the different approaches to civic knowledge and the multilevel and cross-national context. Chapter 4 presents the data and measures. Chapter 5 includes models, results, and interpretation of the results. Chapter 6 provides a conclusion of this study. I found that schools apply different combinations of resources to equip their students with an understanding of how democracy works. Second, the variability on civic knowledge attributable to school is larger than what has been found in other academic subjects, such as mathematic and science. Third, in all countries, student background and expectations explain more of the variability in civics achievement than school variables do, and fourth, less-developed countries do not have larger school effects than family background effects.