Requiring Civics Then and Now: Potentials and Pitfalls of Mandated Civics Curriculum

Background In recent years, the United States has seen a resurgence in calls for mandating civics coursework across the country. For decades, scholars have identified classroom practices that help make civics courses more impactful to students’ civic engagement and knowledge. As more civics courses are required of young people, one begins to wonder if these courses include the kinds of curricular goals and pedagogical practices that can support students’ understanding of politics and promote their engagement with the system. Purpose With increasing calls for mandating middle school civics coursework across the country, it becomes necessary to better understand what happens in these courses. To gain insights into a mandated civics curriculum, the study presented in this article examined students’ experiences in a mandated middle school civics course and how the course influenced students’ civic knowledge and engagement outcomes. Research Design We used a fully mixed concurrent triangulation design to develop a robust understanding of how a mandated middle school civics course was implemented. We collected and analyzed quantitative and qualitative data simultaneously to confirm, cross-validate, and corroborate findings. The qualitative portion of the study looked to understand quantitative trends by examining these relationships through in-depth interviews and classroom observations. Findings Three takeaways were elucidated by analysis of data: 1. Students’ experience of a mandated civics course varied a great deal between the two cases explored in this study; 2. these differences were instigated by the academic pressures associated with an end-of-course exam; yet 3. certain kinds of civics instruction have the potential to promote some desired civic outcomes in middle school. These findings suggest that middle school civics has the potential to promote students’ developing civic knowledge, interest, and engagement. However, these findings hint at a troubling civic inequality that exists as early as middle school. Conclusions Our study found that middle school is a good time to introduce students to civics content because they seem to have fairly positive attitude toward civic-mindedness. At the same time, we found that the civic opportunity gap can manifest as early as the middle grades. Specifically, these inequalities are exacerbated by the existence of a high-stakes end-of-course exam, which negatively impacts students who are already considered low academic performers.