Student governance is one way for students to become involved on college campuses. Student government allows participants to represent the needs of the student body and to voice their concerns to college administrators. In a qualitative study, five presidents of community college student government associations were interviewed. The student…

Involvement in civic and community activities is a core part of positive youth development. Adolescents involved in voluntary civic activities have greater academic engagement, enhanced well-being, less involvement in problem behaviors, and they are more likely to value connections to their community than those who are not involved. The current…

Background/Context: Student governments are the first direct experience that youth have of representative government. However, very little research has been done on student councils in spite of their ubiquity in American high schools and consistent references to their positive effects on the political socialization of youth.…

Michael Garrison has earned his bachelor's and law degrees at West Virginia University, the state's flagship institution, where he was president of the student government. He rose rapidly to high-powered political posts, including chief of staff to a previous governor. Garrison then became a lobbyist with the longest client list in West Virginia,…

Children's right to participate as enshrined in Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is increasingly evident in the rhetoric of policy documents as well as in practice and research with children and young people. Children's participation in research is being facilitated in a range of creative ways, including as…

This study examines the influence of elements of the college experience, specifically participation in a living-learning (L/L) program, on students' self-reported sense of civic engagement. The researchers examined a nationally representative sample of students (n = 1,474) including those who participated in civic engagement themed L/L programs,…

During World War II, female students at the University of California, Berkeley--then the most populous undergraduate campus in American higher education--made significant advances in collegiate life. In growing numbers, women enrolled in male-dominated academic programs, including mathematics, chemistry, and engineering, as they prepared for…

This article concentrates on two pieces of legislation promulgated in the early 1960s in order to investigate the broader ideas and concerns surrounding political education in the postwar Federal Republic of Germany. These pieces of educational policy highlight the consensus for continued reform while recognizing the value of curricular and…

Assessment of student learning is a growing concern for programs in gerontology. This report focuses on the conception, design, funding, and implementation of an innovative online workshop to assess and improve writing skills of students enrolled in distance-learning gerontology classes. The approach is multidisciplinary and involves a…

Education for citizenship is firmly on the policy agenda throughout Britain, and there is an expectation that teachers will create a participative, consultative ethos in schools. This paper identifies three main vehicles for pupil consultation: elected pupil councils, democratic and participative classrooms and opportunities for pupils to engage…

This article is concerned with the relationship between children's participation and the diversity of childhoods. While there are a number of different arrangements for encouraging children and young people to participate, the article focuses on a dominant mode of participation through which children are elected to represent the interests of other…

The racial desegregation of the student bodies of historically white universities in South Africa has had significant political implications for student politics and university governance. I discuss two key moments in the governance history of the University of Cape Town (UCT) critically. The first involves the experience of racial parallelism in…

The middle level years are a crucial time for student development, a time when the path for school success is set for many students. Educators who focus on character and leadership development realize that training in these areas can play a significant role in developing students who will become effective leaders and active citizens in middle…

A psychosocial conception of ego strengths is presented in relation to adolescent involvement in adult-sponsored structured youth activities. Five-hundred and seventeen high school students completed measures on their involvement in structured activities and on 8 ego strengths. Gender, age, and SES were controlled in a MANCOVA procedure and it was…

This article examines links between different measures of after-school time activity participation (5 specific activities and breadth) on youth's developmental outcomes (anxiety/depression, delinquency, and substance use) over 6 years and whether these links are moderated by neighborhood-level variables. The sample (N = 1,315) of 9- and…