In 1947, the Truman Commission recommended that American colleges and universities recommit themselves to civic education. Community colleges accepted this responsibility and today they offer a wide range of programs and activities designed to educate students and prepare them for the life of an engaged citizen. Still, overall, the data show that…

A survey of the nation's civic health reveals troubling trends, with historic lows in trust among individuals and key institutions such as government, media, and the courts. Political polarization has significantly increased among Americans in the last 40 years, surpassing eight other democratic nations and challenging the idea that it is merely a…

The University of Southern California (USC) Democracy Project responds to the inadequacies of traditional civics education, particularly its failure to engage marginalized students in meaningful democratic participation. Grounded in the theories of John Dewey and Paulo Freire, the project uses an action civics model to connect students with…

The liberal arts tradition is under attack in the United States, even as it is spreading around the globe. That tradition was formalized in Latin Antiquity, but the essential questions and rational methodology that underpin it date to Ancient Greek philosophy. At the core of the tradition is the range of modalities of rational thinking, the main…

Research on college student political engagement remains limited, often focused on classroom interventions and studied quantitatively (Bardwell, 2011; Beaumont et al., 2006; Mann et al., 2018). Students' lived experience of their political engagement, however, is "situational, emergent, and co-creative" (Hildreth, 2003, p8). During the…

In this article, the authors review higher education's evolving role in this nation's democracy. They then describe a new collaboration, the Civic Learning and Democracy Engagement (CLDE) Coalition, which responds educationally to the challenges facing our democracy. The CLDE Coalition aims to (1) reclaim and revitalize higher education's public…

Focusing on the work of the Interfaith Leadership in Higher Education Initiative, a partnership between AAC&U and Interfaith Youth Core, this publication showcases institutional efforts to broaden, deepen, and strengthen commitments to interfaith teaching and learning. [Foreword by Lynn Pasquerella.]

In this interpretative case study, the researchers examined the democratic and multicultural beliefs and related practices of 11 preservice social studies teachers in the northeastern United States. They collected interview, observation, and classroom artifact data throughout the participants' teacher preparation experience. Using Banks's typology…

In this paper we present the analysis and interpretation of data collected during an intercultural virtual exchange undertaken in 2020 in which students from Argentina and the USA explored how trauma and suffering associated with COVID-19 can be channeled through collaborative artistic multimodal creations, and how approaching this in a productive…

Implementing democratic citizenship across disciplines in education requires careful consideration of how pre-service teachers are prepared to translate this concept into classroom practice. This study investigates Norwegian pre-service teachers' understanding of reflective rehearsals as a model in teacher education for enhancing awareness of…

This research focused on the mechanism of establishing citizen democratic networks to promote political participation in schools under the provincial administrative organization in Mahasarakham. This research aimed to 1) analyze the model of creating a civil-democratic network between universities and schools, and 2) study the process of promoting…

In this chapter, the authors trace the historical roots of civic learning and democratic engagement in higher education from the founding of the first institutions to the present day. In different major historical moments, universities elevated their mission to develop an engaged citizenry. Furthermore, public perception of the purpose for higher…

Background/Context: New Civics scholars and practitioners aspire to move beyond curricula focused on voter participation and knowledge of government structures and mechanisms to instead prepare youth to act upon their values in ways that lead to systemic change. Critics of New Civics argue that this approach is a form of pervasive leftist politics…

A key goal of higher education is to graduate citizens who are actively engaged in the process of democracy. Yet, it is a challenge to build a curriculum with this in mind. Herein, we describe a multi-year process of creating and supporting a movement to centralize undergraduates' civic identity development across the curriculum. The result is a…

Teaching democratic citizenship has never been more vital, particularly given the dismissive attitude and direct attempts to undermine democratic institutions exemplified by the Trump administration. In addition, traditional approaches to teaching citizenship foreground the underlying values of self-governance, knowledge of the different branches…