Qualifying the potential impact of civic educators: A literature review of dispositions, behaviors, and student outcomes

Abstract

Civic education teachers are confronted with a landscape in which they are: asked to comply with varied and somewhat contradictory standards, confronted with high-stakes testing which may not measure meaningful civic learning outcomes, and despite their best intentions, made painfully aware that only approximately 25 percent of students are achieving a level of civic proficiency. In order to remedy this ragged state of civic education, teacher agency can be developed. This agency can be realized through a careful interrogation of a teacher’s presence in the classroom and an examination of the presence’s implications on student learning outcomes. The specific elements of the problem around which I hope to create clarity are as follows: civic education teacher perspectives (civic and pedagogical dispositions) and behaviors, which teacher dispositions precipitate which pedagogical behaviors, and the pedagogical best-practices which precipitate the most desirable or highest levels of student civic outcomes. Upon articulating these concepts and their relationships as well as the research surrounding them, it is evident that certain teacher dispositions are to a moderate degree correlated to pedagogical behaviors and in turn conceptually and statistically linked to improved civic outcomes for students. The dispositions which most favor improved civic results reflect common ideologies of participation, engagement, and student agency.