Conover & Searing (2000) A Political Socialization Perspective

STUDYING THE MAKING OF CITIZENS

The study of the development of "democratic character" among students is weak, and dated. What more, in practice schools' focus on developing democratic character in its students has also slowed--educators have re-centered their focus. This chapter aims to justify the educating of "democratic character" in the first place; determine what bars it; and better understand the social and psychological contexts of political socialization. The implications of this paper shouldeffect formal education, in the form of reform (i enjoy the word form).

at minimum, education should foster strong citizen identities, an understanding of citizens' roles, and hone skills necessary for this realization. (the role, btw, is as an actor, acting to sustain a representative, liberal democracy in a multicultural society). According to the authors, research has not focused on educations'/educators' role in this development. What more, the research has been overly focused on "practices" i.e. voting practices. instead of focusing on the "practices" the focus should be on patterns. The distinction is made here [when studying students]: "In the case of students, the question becomes are they developing lifelong patterns of political discussion, staying informed, and being tolerant in ways that can sustain a full practice of citizenship?" (93).
Other issues? researchers, typically, use determined definitions for topics, like "citizenship," instead of citizen defined definitions. The authors here are interested in the students' understanding of their role as citizens, and the extent to which their definition mirrors the socially prescribed role.

The authors here, thus, use an "interpretive model" (more comparative and more qualitative):
-more credible
-more explanatory
-less predictive
-developmental (recognizing that behavior is self-transformative over time; thus this research is sensitive to the ways in which practices of behaviors evolve over a lifetime) (93).

DATA:
US AND Great Britain (GB) school communities (4 types):
(1) suburban community
(2) rural community
(3) urban community
(4) immigrant community


Ind vars:
Sense of Citizenship:
"The key measurement task in determining the presense and centrality of citizens identities is to access whether this identity is apart of the core self, the pary of hte self easily accessible for frequent use" (98). Thus, students were asked "how often, if ever, do you think of yourself as a citizen of the US?" their answer to this question was compared to their answer to the question which substituted "student" "friend," "neighbor," "dem/republican" etc. for citizen.
-strength of citizen identity was highest for immigrants at 71.4%, than students in rural communities (60%), suburban (56%), followed by urban (55.7%). their level of identification for the other words was less strong (friend was strong). Thus students have core citizenship identities.

Question 1: Yet what is their understanding of citizenship? in all by the rural community (2), the meaning of a citizen was a person with rights and duties; for rural comms., the meaning of a citizen wasa member of the community, reflecting the tightknit social fabric of rural communities.

Distinguishing between citizen rights and citizen duties:
Students of each of the four communities were asked to rank:
(1) RIGHTS
civil, political and social
(2) DUTIES
political, communal, social, patriotic

Findings:
Although the communities differ, their is an obvious pattern across communities in their ranking of citizen RIGHTS. The only topic that saw considerable disagreement were topics where we see disagreements, in general--issues of homosexuality (the right to be homosexual) and abortion rights. Urban and Immigrant comms were opposed to both at much higher levels than rural and suburban communities (table on page 100).

citizen DUTIES were also consistent across populations, though the communal duties were ranked much higher by students from rural/farm communities. Also, the immigrant comm students stand out, in that these students stress the importance of social duties (see page 102 for full chart).

Question 2: To what extent are students developing the skills and motivation necessary to sustain regular political discussion?
measure (1) what issues do you talk about and how often [frequency] and (2) where [setting]?

FIndings:
schools, across all communities, are the setting for political discussions had by students (demonstrating the importance of schools in the development of citizens). Where there is considerable difference is in the frequency of discussion--students from immigrant comms rarely engage in political discussion, and neither do urban students; suburban and rural students at least engage in moderate levels of political discussion.

Question 3: How tolerant are students from each community?
Measure: ask students which group they disapprove of most (i.e. racists) and then ask them the number of tolerant acts they would commit toward this group. Urban and immigrant groups' tolerance toward the group they disapprove of most is very low; for sub and rural students, it is much higher (chart on page 107).

Question 4: To what extent does the educational experience help to ameliorate these deficiencies?
School experience broken down into four elements:
(1) the sense of school community
measure: identification with the school community and sense of shared interests.
(2) the students level of civic engagement
number of groups the student is associated with
(3) level of political discussion
asked how often they have serious discussion about political issues a. in school, b. at school, but not in class, c. after school, or d. with teachers (thus, a more concentrated assessment of the "setting" question, that just looks at the setting whilst at school).
(4) curriculum
asked if there are classes that influence their conception of citizenship, beyond american gov courses.

Findings:
(1) half of the students identify with their school--it is lowest among urban students (42%).
(2)sub and rural students are in more groups than urban and immigrant students
(3) political discussion takes place in class
(4) students talk about politics in english classes--though not at a high level or across all communities. it is based on contenentious efforts made by teachers, many of which do not conceive of this role.

Final and key question: To what extent do these four elements contribute to a sense and practice of citizenship?
Findings on page 113:
Civic engagment (membership in groups) is strongly correlated with a sense of citizenship, whereas political discussion, civic engagement, and discussion of politics in a non political class are correlated with a practice of citizenship.

Take home point?
social interaction in schools is key (i.e. group membership).
there is variation within schools (depending upon the teachers' efforts) and between communities
cannot reduce findings to differences in SES; the authors conclude that differences reflect subtle and not so subtle community differences in shared understanding of the meaning of citizenship, the importance of community, and goals of education, stressing the importance of a localized understanding of citizenship.