Approaches to civic education that integrate knowledge, skills, and civic values encourage students to make changes in their communities.

“I see myself as someone who can make a change.” — Massachusetts 8th-grader

Over the past five years, we have been building a yearlong middle school civics curriculum that supports leadership development among middle school students. The curriculum includes student-led civics projects addressing issues ranging from campaigning for healthier food options in their communities and school cafeterias, to raising awareness on animal testing, to advocating for elderly populations affected by expensive tax increases.

As researchers and practitioners at the Democratic Knowledge Project (DKP), an initiative of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, our focus is on a Deeper Civic Learning model for exploring civic engagement. In this model, students integrate mastery of disciplinary knowledge in civics with the development of skills that support their successful civic participation (Allen & Kidd, 2022; Haduong et al., 2023). Our approach cultivates the knowledge and skills needed to play a leadership role in the community. The skills and dispositions that we seek to foster through our curriculum and instructional methods are what young leaders need today.

Our approach builds on key insights from the field of student leadership development. Most student leadership literature focuses on young adults in high school and college, so middle schoolers have been an under-researched group (Coffey & Lavery, 2018). James Kouzes and Barry Posner (2018) noted that high school and college students benefit from opportunities to identify their values, find like-minded others, and collaborate and act on their desires for change. Helping adolescents (10-15 years old) to learn more about themselves supports their leadership development: Students need to know themselves before they lead others (Bowman, 2013; Coffey & Lavery, 2018; Meyer & Rinn, 2021). Our work with 8th graders provides support for the view that these insights from research about older learners also can apply to middle schoolers.

Deeper Civic Learning

The U.S. has underinvested in civic learning over the past 70 years, with disappointing results for student achievement. In 2023, the Nation’s Report Card showed that only 22% of students showed proficiency in civics, an unsurprising result of disinvestment in civic education (Diliberti, Woo, & Kaufman, 2023). To counteract that, DKP’s curriculum, Civic Engagement in Our Democracy, helps students develop their civic identity by integrating their knowledge, skills, and values. Three core civic dispositions help students achieve that integration: civic reciprocity, civic self-care, and civic self-confidence (see Figure 1).

Because project-based learning provides a powerful way of helping students achieve this sought-after integration (Allen & Kidd, 2022), our curriculum is a yearlong project-based 8th-grade civics program. It is aligned with the Massachusetts History and Social Science Framework and the Educating for American Democracy Roadmap. Its driving question is “How do I become an authentic, informed, and skilled changemaker, and why does it matter?” Its focus is on helping students learn to play a leadership role in their community that suits their personal civic identity.

Students start the year by exploring their own values and connecting them to shared values. Students consider, define, and reflect on their values and how those values affect their daily choices. Concrete tools — such as values cards with short definitions of civic values and civic stories that describe historical or contemporary civic actors — are woven throughout the curriculum to support students’ reflections.

To influence or make change thoughtfully in their community, students not only need traditional literacy skills, but also civic skills.

To take community action, students need knowledge and understanding about our country’s institutions, including the roles they can and will play in leveraging those institutions for change. They study the history of our democracy and think deeply about why and how our government was constituted as it was. Students study the Declaration of Independence with special attention to its second sentence, which declares that “all men are created equal.” They study the Bill of Rights to best understand and communicate why rights matter. They explore how constitutional powers are checked and balanced while asking themselves, “Does the presidency have too much power?” They study the abolitionist Prince Hall to understand the philosophical foundations of democracy and to see a model for how to apply those foundational ideas to improve the community, especially for those who are marginalized. They explore institutional levers of change, such as lawmaking, amendments, and the courts, to understand how to navigate the systems to make change.

In each unit of study, students encounter civic actors whose choices might guide them in their own civic engagement. One student effectively captured how knowledge and agency come together when reflecting on lessons about the Bill of Rights. They said, “I know my rights more, and if something happened to me legally, I’d be more confident.”

To influence or make change thoughtfully in their community, students not only need traditional literacy skills, but also civic skills. These include thinking and participatory skills that can help them make change as community leaders. Students practice distinguishing fact from opinion, consider how and why multiple perspectives on an issue matter, and practice respectful disagreement. They read primary and secondary source documents, write persuasive and evidence-based arguments using reliable sources, and present the products of their learning to authentic audiences. For example, in 2023 the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education convened its first statewide civics showcase to enable students to share their projects with community members. Districts across Massachusetts have followed suit by hosting similar showcases. The DKP encourages students to find the best audience for their civic learning, which could include their community; decision-makers in their school district; or local, state, or federal representatives.

The course culminates in a student-led civics project as required under Massachusetts’ 2018 civics education legislation. As part of this work, students consider dilemmas and tensions involved in civic engagement, navigate those during their civic action, and reflect on them after their projects are complete. These dilemmas and tensions include questions such as:

• Beyond yourself, who else might care about this topic? Why might this topic also matter to them?
• What strategies did you use to make it easy and engaging for others to join in your cause?
• How did you plan to respectfully address disagreements or pushback from people with different perspectives when you took your civic action?
• Did you face any personal risk during your civic action project?

Derived from the DKP’s 10 Questions for Young Changemakers developed as part of our Youth and Participatory Politics project, these questions prompt learners to practice the civic thinking and participatory skills that support reciprocal, self-caring, and self-confident civic engagement that our young leaders deserve the opportunity to develop (Nam & Kidd, 2024 ).

Civic dispositions

As students develop their civic identity, we seek to help them commit to three foundational civic concepts: civic reciprocity, civic self-care, and civic self-confidence. The goal is for students to connect their personal values to these concepts, which serve as both a foundation for a civic identity and a motivator for students’ civic engagement. These concepts are not separate from the academic and cognitive tasks in the curriculum. Indeed, they both support and are supported by the acquisition of civic knowledge, the practicing and developing of civic skills, and the identification of values for community engagement and changemaking.

As students come to understand themselves and their values, this program empowers and supports them to apply their learning beyond the classroom to better society and fulfill their own responsibilities as citizens.

We help develop these civic dispositions in students by using multiple instructional tools. One tool is a curated set of civic thinking routines, created in collaboration with Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thinking routines are powerful instructional strategies that deepen student cognition by making their thinking visible (Ritchhart & Perkins, 2008). In our curriculum, students use thinking routines to identify dispositions in themselves and others.

Students’ stories and perspectives have been essential to our design process. The perspectives demonstrate how students can make meaning around civic reciprocity, civic self-confidence, and civic self-care. (Maggie is not a pseudonym, but the names of the other students whose stories we share are.)

Civic reciprocity: Maggie takes on tax assistance

We define civic reciprocity as “considering the needs of others as well as your own and being fair, respectful, and open-minded when working with others who have different values and goals (as long as they are democratic values and goals).” It involves encouraging students to identify shared values within their communities, which they are poised to do because they have reflected on and identified their personal values. Civic reciprocity also involves recognizing the sacrifices of others in the democratic sphere and considering those sacrifices next to your own. Our curriculum supports the development of civic reciprocity by having students use a thinking routine called Feelings and Options, which supports perspective-taking, problem solving, and communicating.

Maggie is a sports-loving 8th grader living in a small town. Her student-led civics project was inspired by the adults around her advocating for a tax override that would, if supported by the community through a ballot question, enable her town to raise taxes for schools and other public entities beyond what is allowed by Massachusetts law:

My civics project was about getting people to the resources they need for tax exemptions in my town. There was a thing going on with our school budget and people were worried that people wouldn’t be able to pay the tax increase if we did have the budget thing. And so I found all the resources that we have available and made a website about it. I worked on my own. And I’ve had a lot of success with it and I wanna continue it in 9th grade too.

Maggie’s website (https://sites.google.com/view/eho23), which connected people to resources to support those impacted by increased taxation (e.g., access to food, financial assistance, clothing donations), was posted on her town’s local Facebook page and printed out by the town leaders and made available to populations affected by the tax overrides. Her town’s Board of Selectmen have held discussions around the topic using her research into models used in other towns in Massachusetts.

In the curriculum, students who are raising awareness are encouraged to consider who is the right audience for the message they are spreading and the changes they seek. Maggie knew that senior citizens were worried about paying additional taxes, so she contacted her town’s director of the Council for Aging, who helped her share the information she’d gathered with the fixed-income retirement community. Her work got the attention of others who work with communities that would be affected by the increase:

At our [end-of-semester] civics fair a bunch of people came up to me, and one of them is a bus driver for a different town near us, who specifically caters to the disabled and elderly community in that area. He asked if I ever finish it up in my town, that I might be able to expand it to other towns.

In the future, Maggie wants to work in the biotech industry but says she hopes to be part of her town’s council and keep up with her local community.

Civic self-care: Maisie weighs the risks

The curriculum defines civic self-care as “taking care of yourself while participating in civic activities by being informed, using reliable sources, and thinking through choices about how much time, energy, or personal information to share.” It helps students make informed decisions about their engagement by considering both the risks and benefits of civic action and involvement, especially online and in social media. Civic self-care also includes the essential academic skill of source evaluation, as part of protecting yourself in making change. Students study the story of civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, whose identity as a gay Black man required him to navigate the risks and benefits of his involvement in the movement.

Maisie loves lifting weights and going to the beach near her city. She is an active member of her student body and was awarded a prize for her commitment to civics at her middle school graduation. She reflected on how civics class has helped her understand when to participate in different causes:

I feel like at the beginning, we were a little bit pressured like, “Oh, you always need to make change. You always need to say something.” But I feel like [civics] made us realize that you can exit if something becomes uncomfortable.

Maisie is referring to a unit from the curriculum where students consider the choices available to them when they feel their values and their community’s actions are not aligned. To understand the concepts of loyalty, voice, and exit, students study Prince Hall, the 18th-century Black abolitionist active in Revolutionary Boston, whose petitions advocating for the back-to-Africa movement and for the education of Black children in Boston illustrate these ideas.

Maisie learned to think carefully about sharing her views in different settings:

I feel like now. . . . I try to speak out. But I’m more careful about who I speak out to because it can be very scary and I’ll admit it, I’m a little bit more scared now to be like, “Oh, that’s not right!” because I don’t want people to not like me.

While challenging conversations are important to Maisie, so are her friendships. She described how she thinks about navigating the risks and benefits of engaging in conversations while also holding those friendships:

It can be really great to disagree with people. . . But I feel like, also at the same time, sometimes I feel like when I’m with a certain person, like, I can’t bring up certain things because it will make me feel a certain way. . . I feel like sometimes I dodge away from conversations because I’m scared that what they will say will make me feel . . . like a little bit differently about them and sometimes it’s like, hard to stay friends with people after you have disagreements.

Civic self-confidence: Mimi asks for healthy snacks

Students experience civic self-confidence by “noticing how your knowledge and skills are deepening over time, noticing when you have been successful, and reminding yourself of what you are capable of in civic situations that might originally make you feel overwhelmed.” It is the recognition that one can deploy their knowledge, skills, and personal values in the service of a community need or issue. Students learn about levers of change at their disposal and how to identify the appropriate lever to pull. They are introduced to the story of Wilma Mankiller and listen to an interview in which she describes the skills she gained to support change in her community.

Mimi attends a charter school in a large city. She loves TikTok and volleyball and hopes to become a doctor one day. She worked with a group of friends on a student-led civics project that aimed to reduce exposure to marketing of unhealthy food to children in her local area. They were responding to rising cases of obesity and diabetes:

When you go to a corner store, you walk in, all you see is candy all around. So that makes people wanna buy the candy, children especially. So [my student-led civics project was] limiting the candy and adding more healthy snacks in the stores around [the school].

Her group emailed their city council representative and were invited to meet and discuss their views. In the curriculum, teenagers who are working toward policy changes are encouraged to seek out decision makers as Mimi did:

We were talking about the funds for the change and actually lowering snacks, unhealthy snacks, in stores and adding more healthy snacks to the stores.

For Mimi, her civic education was a meaningful experience:

It’s really like an eye-opener, because [civics] shows you . . . you can do so much, like I can run for like Congress or something, and I can make change in like, the community.

A legacy of student leaders

Following five years of co-design with practitioners across Massachusetts, Civic Engagement in Our Democracy (www.democraticknowledgeproject.org/8th-grade-curriculum/) is now a free and open-access yearlong curriculum. The curriculum offers leadership development for students across the country. Our participating 8th graders have told us they value this opportunity. One student noted:

Because of experiences in this class, I think differently about myself because a long time ago I wouldn’t have thought to make change or to try to make any change in the world as much as I am trying to do now.

As students come to understand themselves and their values, this program empowers and supports them to apply their learning beyond the classroom to better society and fulfill their own responsibilities as citizens. Building these skills will benefit the students, their communities, and the world.

References

Allen, D. & Kidd, D. (2022). Civic learning for the 21st century: Disentangling the “thin” and “thick” elements of civic identity to support civic education. In Handbook of Philosophy of Education (pp. 27-41). Routledge.

Bowman, R.F. (2013). Learning leadership skills in middle school. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 86 (2), 59-63.

Coffey, A. & Lavery, S. (2018). Student leadership in the middle years: A matter of concern. Improving Schools, 21 (2), 187-200.

Diliberti, M.K., Woo, A., & Kaufman, J.H. (2023). The missing infrastructure for elementary (K–5) social studies instruction: Findings from the 2022 American Instructional Resources Survey. RAND.

Haduong, P., Jeffries, J., Pao, A., Webb, W., Allen, D., & Kidd, D. (2023). Who am I and what do I care about? Supporting civic identity development in civic education. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 17461979231151616.

Kouzes, J.M. & Posner, B.Z. (2018). The student leadership challenge: Five practices for becoming an exemplary leader. John Wiley & Sons.

Meyer, M.S. & Rinn, A.N. (2021). Developing leadership talent in adolescents and emerging adults: A systematic review. Gifted Child Quarterly, 65 (3), 287-313.

Nam, C. & Kidd, D. (2024). How young people get from voice to influence for change: Exploring the relations between tactical choices and civic efficacy. Journal of Information Technology & Politics.

Ritchhart, R. & Perkins, D. (2008). Making thinking visible. Educational leadership, 65 (5), 57.

This article appears in the May 2024 issue of Kappan, Vol. 105, No. 8, p. 26-31.