Niemi, Richard G. and Jane Junn (1998). Civic Education: What Makes Students Learn. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Niemi, Richard G. and Jane Junn (1998). Civic Education: What Makes Students Learn. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Summary: For 30 years, the conventional wisdom about the development of political knowledge holds that school, and civics course in particular, have no effect. Niemi and Junn’s use data from the 1988 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) findings to “debunk” this conventional wisdom. Their results indicate that schools and civics curriculum—including amount and recency of course work, variety of topics studied, and discussion of current events in the classroom—are significant and positively related to overall political knowledge. More specifically, Niemi and Junn find that net of all other influences, having had a civics or American government course in 12th grade gives students a 2 percentage-point edge over those whose last course was earlier, and an additional 2 points over students who have had no civics courses.

Research Problem:
Formal education is the strongest, most consistent correlate (and is widely considered the central causal determinant) of political knowledge, but there is far less certainty about what components of formal education make citizens more knowledgeable. As a result, scholars have also attributed political knowledge to confounding variables, such as intelligence, occupation and interests. Moreover, attitudinal studies have tended to find fewer positive effects than have purely cognitive studies. Conversely, a large number of studies have found that all levels of schooling influence many types of attitudes.

Previous scholars have experienced severe data and methodological limitations; the majority of the results, whether from political scientists or educators, come from small scale, often experimental studies, where Hawthorne effects and generalizability are key concerns, or from cross-sectional samples of the adult population, where there are few measures of either political knowledge or educational experience and background. In short, scholars have generally found it difficult to both assess the validity of competing explanations of educational effects and to isolate the effects of specific elements of the educational experience.

Therefore, Niemi and Junn believe there are reasons to reassess the effects of schooling on knowledge of government and politics. Niemi and Junn are especially pumped because the 1988 NAEP Civics Assessment provides “an unparalleled opportunity” to isolate and sort out these effects because it includes solid indicators of: political knowledge, the civics curriculum, individual achievement and motivation, parental and familial characteristics, and other individual background traits. As a result, Niemi and Junn can “ascertain” the validity of competing explanations of why education has such a large impact on political knowledge.

Methods:
The NAEP is an ongoing, congressionally mandated project that was established in 1969 to obtain comprehensive data on the educational achievement of American students. The core of the assessment is a test given to a nationally representative sample of students in grades 4, 8 and 12. The NAEP Civics Assessment supposedly tests for (1) what students know and (2) students’ ability to understand and apply ideas. There are 4 substantive categories: (1) principles underlying the Constitution, changes in interpretations of concepts and value; (2) principles, structure, and operation of the U.S. government, and organization and functions of state and local governments; (3) how laws are passed implemented, and reviewed, in addition to how conflicts are resolved; and (4) the Bill of Rights, civil and criminal law, responsibilities of citizenship.

All students were given a background questionnaire, in addition to a short civics questionnaire, in which they answered questions about their interest in civics and government, their course work, and their participation in student government. Principals or school administrators provided information about the schools.

Sample: 4,275 12th graders; to avoid fatigue, no student given full set of 150 multiple choice questions; very little of test consisted of open-ended response items

Findings:

Schools and Curriculum

Schools and civics curriculum—including amount and recency of course work, variety of topics studied, and discussion of current events in the classroom—are significant and positively related to overall political knowledge. Independent of all other influences, having had a civics or American government course in 12th grade gives students a 2 percentage-point edge over those whose last course was earlier, and an additional 2 points over students who have had no civics courses.

Individual Achievement

The three characteristics of individual achievement—including participation in mock elections or government; “likes to study government;” and “four-year college planned”—contribute strongly and positively to civic knowledge, with interest in studying American government and postsecondary school college plans have the largest effects.

Home Environment

Characteristics of the home environment of students—including: having more reading and reference materials at home; having higher levels of educational attainment among parents; speaking English at home; and living in a two-parent household—are strong, positive contributors to student knowledge.
• Knowledge declines as the amount of time spent watching TV increases.
• No single factor in the home environment is of overwhelming importance.

Race or Ethnicity and Gender

• Boys average 3 more percentage points than girls.
• Percentage of items answered correctly by Hispanics was 11 point less than whites, but the difference is halved in the multivariate model. Niemi and Junn are optimistic Hispanic students’ scores will improve.
• Persistent difference between white and black students; on average, blacks scored 13 percentage points lower than whites. When Niemi and Junn account for factors of curriculum, home environment, and individual achievement, black students still lag behind whites by 9.4 percentage points. Niemi and Junn don’t expect this to change.

Political Knowledge and Race or Ethnicity (pages 127-133)
Niemi and Junn offer three possible explanations for the lower scores of minority students.
• (1) Differences in structural and individual characteristics may encourage political learning or limit exposure or incentives for selection.
• (2) Differential effects of structural and individual characteristics among whites, Hispanics and blacks, e.g. studying civics or watching TV may have a greater or small effect on minorities than on whites.
• (3) White and minorities know more and less about different specific topics.

Gender and Political Knowledge (pages 133-135)
• Amount and recency of civics courses and discussing current events in class have more of an impact on boys than on girls.
• Characteristics of individual motivation are more important for females, and civics knowledge is less dependent on and unresponsive to structural factors in their environment.
• Males appear to react more to their environments in absorbing civic knowledge.

Differential Effects by Dimensions of Knowledge (pages 135-140)
• Discussion of current events contributes as much to knowledge of structures and functions as to other kinds of political knowledge.

Civic Knowledge and Trust in Government (pages 140-142)
• Males more likely than females to agree that government pays attention to people and elections create incentives to do so.
• Minority students are more skeptical than whites about the motives of government by a substantial margin.
• School factors have a positive effect on these two political attitudes.

Postscript: American History Curriculum and Knowledge (pages 142-146)
Niemi and Junn increase validity of the exposure-selection model of political learning by analyzing additional data from 1988 NAEP History Assessment, i.e. a different nationally representative sample of 12th grade students