There are many opportunities outside of academic schoolwork for adolescents to gain hands-on experience with civic and political projects and activism. Whether run by community or youth organizations that are unaffiliated with schools, or by school faculty during extracurricular time, these activities are purely optional and less common than school-based civic education experiences. Greater voluntary extracurricular participation is associated with a higher likelihood of civic involvement after a student leaves school and higher levels of political efficacy, which is why I investigate adolescents’
participation in my study (Beck & Jennings, 1982; Hanks, 1981; Patrick & Hoge, 1991; Quintelier, 2008; Smith, 1999; Stoll, 2001; Stolle & Rochon, 1998).
However, not all extracurricular activities are equally influential on future civic involvement. Sociologist Michael Hanks (1981) was the first to identify differential influences of instrumental versus expressive extracurricular activities for adolescents, and other scholars have refined his findings. Instrumental groups—those that are externally oriented, whose activities are means to an end—include school newspaper, honorary clubs, academic clubs, and student council, as well as scouting, cultural, or religious groups. Expressive groups—those that are more internally oriented, whose activities are ends in themselves—include sports teams, hobby clubs, and performing arts groups (these definitions were first laid out by Hanks, 1981, and refined by the work of; Stolle & Rochon, 1998).
Precisely because instrumental groups are task-oriented, focusing on objectives outside the group, and interested in influencing “the creation or maintenance of a desired
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condition,” participation in such groups is highly positively associated with later political and civic involvement.11 Conversely, while involvement in expressive groups for
entertainment and self-esteem purposes has positive associations with development of an interpersonal identity and even academic achievement and attainment, it has little, if any, lasting influence on political involvement (Feltz & Weiss, 1984; Hanks, 1981; Lindsay, 1984; Otto & Alwin, 1977; Stoll, 2001).
Political activities, though more limited for adolescents than for those who can vote, are also associated with higher tolerance of minority groups, which is why I hypothesize an association between extracurricular participation and more inclusive attitudes among European adolescents. Results from Sotelo’s study of Spanish adolescents suggested that political experience is associated with higher tolerance for feminists’ rights, even where political experience may range from campaigning for a candidate, wearing a campaign button, talking with friends about politics, running for school office, talking with family about political issues, joining a political club, or debating a political issue in class (1997, p. 521).
Political participation—or just the anticipation of it—has been found to be
strongly associated with decreased xenophobia. Mikael Hjerm (2005) finds that Swedish adolescents who are more inclined to vote as adults, join a political party, participate in peaceful protests, and run for office are also less xenophobic. However, while service-
11
Of course, the fact of being on a school’s student council does not guarantee that students will get meaningful experience with community service. Participation on a student council’s planning committee for the school dance is quite a different experience from participating in a student group’s organization of and service at a soup kitchen for homeless community members (Reinders & Youniss, 2006). Students using their social skills to address social problems are likely to get more out of their experience and develop a greater sense of personal efficacy than those who use their social skills purely for their own and their peers’ entertainment, as reported by Miranda Yates and James Youniss in their 1998 study of black, urban adolescents who participated in a yearlong service-learning course in high school, and most of whom continued to be active in their communities as middle-aged adults.
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learning and community service experiences can influence students’ development into active citizens, educators must contend with the fact that socioeconomic status is positively associated with participation, as well as political interest and feelings of political efficacy, meaning that students of lower SES are less likely to feel that their opinion is important or worth expressing through participation (Hahn, 1998; Patrick & Hoge, 1991).
2.3 ‘Curriculum’: Its Meaning and the Spectrum of Its Control
Recall that in this study I am interested in school-level and national-level influences on students’ civic attitudes and knowledge. One of these influences is the curriculum. At the country level, I focus on the system for designing and controlling curriculum. The choice of system is related to a country’s historical politics,
demographics, and social values, and can look quite different across countries because of the plurality of meanings the word ‘curriculum’ takes on.
At its most basic, educators and policymakers agree that ‘curriculum’ is a course of study—the ‘what’ of teaching (as opposed to the ‘how’). Different interpretations arise in its level of detail or prescriptiveness. At one end of the spectrum it means big ideas or standards, “broad … learning goals, usually for certain grades” (Marshall, 2004, p. 43). At the opposite end, it means detailed daily lesson plans, including teaching methods and assessments, whether designed by the teachers who will use them or a commercial entity. In between these, one finds teachers and researchers using
‘curriculum’ to mean a grade-by-grade plan for the skills and content that must be taught, specific learning expectations for each grade, a textbook, or teaching methods for
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particular subjects or learning expectations (Gewert, 2011; Marshall, 2004; Prideaux, 2003). In my study I address only the ‘formal’ or ‘intended’ curriculum, not the notions of ‘hidden,’ ‘latent,’ or ‘unintended’ curriculum. Because I am studying national-level curriculum policy in relation to student outcomes, I address only the question of whether national agencies create documents that outline or prescribe academic content in the form of school subjects.12 This limited focus is interesting despite the commonly noted loose relationship between intended and implemented curriculum. As comparative education scholar Aaron Benavot has written:
In a world in which education is predominantly a creature of the nation-state, official policies themselves reflect commitments widely understood to carry authoritative intent. At a minimum they affect, both directly and indirectly, the formal organization of schooling. They distribute the content of instruction throughout the days and years of the schooling cycle according to relatively explicit and reasoned goals. They indicate what types of classes will be offered to students and what general topics are to be taught in each type of class. …
[O]fficial curricular timetables may directly determine the subject matter taught in local schools. (1992, p. 35)
A typology created by French researcher Nathalie Mons, discussed in Janmaat and Mons (2011), identifies countries as falling into one of five categories of systems for central, regional, or local control of curriculum. Essentially it describes the division of power and activities across these levels on issues of “curriculum design, textbook choice, and modes of assessment” (p. 63). In democracies that, for reasons of diversity or
political history, place great importance on limited central government, the tendency in education is to give local schools or communities more power over the curriculum than
12
Though it is outside the scope of this study, another aspect of national curriculum policy is whether schools are expected to ‘track’ students according to ability. Tracking ostensibly places students of differing abilities into course trajectories with different foci and, often, academic rigor, and to some societies is a desirable form of social efficiency. It is also well documented as a process that maintains the status quo and reduces social mobility, most often by placing students of low socioeconomic status (which immigrants frequently are) in the lowest, most vocationally oriented tracks (Crul & Vermeulen, 2003; Green, Preston, & Janmaat, 2006; Kahne & Middaugh, 2008; Oakes, 1985). For a lengthier discussion of the implications of tracking for immigrant students, see Appendix B.
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the national government. In a federal model, as in Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland (and the US), regional entities such as states or cantons are responsible for curriculum. These countries do this to honor the autonomy of historically close-knit and independent cultural or linguistic communities, and to avoid the political challenges of creating
common expectations that could appease such diverse communities. On the opposite end of this typology, countries such as Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Norway (and, perhaps more famously, France) have centralized models, wherein curriculum design, textbook choice, and assessment are solely the responsibility of the state. Greece, for example, has a historically more homogeneous society than its northern neighbors, takes the opposite approach, indeed the most directive in all of Europe:
[C]urricula, syllabi, the content of textbooks and pedagogical guidelines are uniquely the responsibility of the Ministry of National Education and Religious Affairs and its consulting agency, the Pedagogic Institute. In Greek schools, only one textbook is used per subject taught, and textbooks are published by the state. (Makrinioti & Solomon, 1999, p. 292)
This arrangement effectively denies any need for adaptation of content to local or individual circumstances, but has the potential to expose all students in the country to the same content, regardless of socioeconomic status or skill, which is why I find it important to study how this national characteristic plays out in students’ civic preparedness and attitudes. Additionally, highly centralized, prescriptive curricula like Greece’s tend to present national values in a very particular way, establishing a sanctioned national understanding of what is ‘right,’ which can build unity and a sense of national identity (Janmaat & Mons, 2011; Kerr, 1999a). Not all central systems are as uniform as Greece’s. Norway and Portugal’s central governments are both prescriptive and
50 curriculum to address local circumstances.
Most European countries fall somewhere between the federal and centralized extremes. In decentralized models, as in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, local schools and communities are entirely responsible. School autonomy models, as in England, Hungary, and Sweden, are characterized by some national-level regulation of curriculum objectives, but strong school autonomy in curriculum design, and strong central control of assessment. In collaboration models, as in Denmark, central authorities determine the curriculum framework and assessment, giving only minor leeway to schools.
Each of these shared arrangements offers some national consistency as well as local autonomy, a compromise between several levels of government. Generally, on international reading and mathematics achievement tests like the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), those countries whose students score highest have some national involvement in curriculum, whether defined just as broad standards or as articulated (grade by grade) learning expectations (Mons, 2007, as cited in Janmaat & Mons, 2011). A report written through a partnership between the Organization for Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD, the agency that sponsors PISA) and CTB/McGraw- Hill, a North American publisher of educational assessments, suggests that these high- performing countries’ standards are not simply national, but rigorous, “premised, in detail, on the proposition that it is possible for all students to achieve at high levels and necessary that they do so”:
Whatever the approach, such standards shape high-performing education systems by establishing rigorous, focused and coherent content at all grade levels;
reducing overlap in curricula across grades; reducing variation in implemented curricula across classrooms; facilitating co-ordination of various policy drivers,
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ranging from curricula to teacher training; and reducing inequity in curricula across socio-economic groups. (Paine & Schleicher, 2011, p. 5)