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20 - Action Civics

from Part VI - Education and Engaged Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2024

By
Kathryn Y. Morgan  and
Parissa Jahromi Ballard
Edited by
Brian D. Christens
Brian D. Christens
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
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Summary

Action civics is a model for civic education that offers youth opportunities to participate in authentic democratic activities. In this chapter, we trace the origins of action civics and explore the field’s defining features, strengths, and challenges. We frame our analysis through two case descriptions of action civics intermediary organizations: Generation Citizen and Design Your Neighborhood. We discuss action civics education as a psychologically empowering process, and we illustrate tensions that arise as youth develop psychological empowerment. Through these examples, we reveal features of the action civics process model that support community power in the situational, institutional, and systemic domains. We explore empowering characteristics of empowering settings that are present in Design Your Neighborhood and Generation Citizen. These include common belief systems, a relational environment that supports intergenerational partnerships, opportunity role structures, opportunities to develop local leadership, and external linkages to community stakeholders. Our chapter concludes with recommendations for practitioners, researchers, and other stakeholders to consider as the field of action civics expands.

Keywords

action civicsschoolsintermediary organizationscivic educationempowering settingscivic opportunity gapexperiential learningyouth voiceyouth–adult partnershipsocial changeequity
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Community Empowerment , pp. 507 - 531
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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