The Relationship Between Civic and Political Participation and School Performance: An Analysis Considering the Role of Socioeconomic Status

Author(s):

Carla Malafaia(submitting)Isabel Menezes(presenting)Tiago Neves

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

14 SES 01 A, Schooling in Rural/Urban Settings(Part 1)

Paper Session: to be continued in 14 SES 02 A

Time:

2014-09-02

13:15-14:45

Room:

B323 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Silvie Kucerova

Contribution

The strong influence of the socioeconomic status on several important dimensions, including the civic and political participation (Badescu & Neller, 2007), and academic performance (NESSE, 2010) of young people is widely acknowledged. Studying youth civic and political participation must necessarily take into account the cultural and economic capital involved, and therefore the influence of several life contexts. In this respect, the school is one of the most crucial socialisation contexts (Gibson & Levine, 2003). It has been pointed out by the literature as a vehicle for democratic citizenship principles and a context that prepares youths to be actively political citizens (Torney-Purta, 2002). In this vein, research indicates that the educational level is one of the strongest predictors of civic and political participation (Emler & Fraser, 1999). Acknowledging the central role of formal education and political and civic participation, this paper seeks to analyse two aspects. First, the effects of variables related with socioeconomic status and attitudes regarding school on metacognition. Second, the predictive influence of each metacognition dimension on several forms of participation.

The present time is defined by a continuously changing social landscape that challenges the way we live, transforming traditional politic and civic behaviours and defying values and institutions we considered guaranteed and stable. The youths’ civic and political participation is characterized by a withdrawal from the traditional political spheres and a concomitant rise of new, alternative forms of expression (Norris, 2002). Also, the classical systems of education and training have needed to adapt their learning/ training methods, in order to face problems related, for instance, with early school leaving, currently aggravated by the social and economic situation (NESSE, 2010). The need to prevent early school leaving is often discussed among scholars and political decision-makers at European and national levels (OECD, 2011). This is equated in parallel with the high percentage of young people that are overqualified and underemployed, causing what is called the “education’s credibility crunch” (Ainley, 2011, p. 44).

At the same time, the “Yo-Yo” generation – to quote an European project related with the uncertainty of young people’s pathways (Walther, 2006) – has participated massively in the viral wave of protests that started in early 2011 (Estanque, Costa & Soeiro, 2013), adopting tools to better exercise an active citizenship, less inside the school and more on the public space. This conjuncture emphasizes the importance of promoting the educational success of young people, but also the importance of intertwining the school sphere with other arenas that are particularly useful in preparing young people to be active citizens and to deal with the emerging social transformations. This paper is a contribution to this interaction, trying to fulfil some gaps on this domain. To understand the variations in learning outcomes, it is important to take into account how socioeconomic variables impact the relationship between educational performance and participation, understanding the magnitude of such effects. Plus, the type of school (private or public) and its context (rural or urban) must also be considered, as the nature of school could generate serious inequalities (Neves et al., 2013). Moreover, there is a lack of studies relating the cognitive processes involved in civic and political participation and those that contribute to educational success, as metacognition. This dimension, attributing an active role to the subject on self-regulating his/her own learning process, is correlated with educational success (Magno & Lajom, 2008) – which is surely stimulated by processes of social interaction, cognitive conflict, and active decision-making, which are present in many experiences of civic and political participation (Ferreira et al., 2012).

Method

For this presentation we will focus on some dimensions of a self-administered questionnaire created for the quantitative study of a wider PhD research project. To accomplish the goals proposed above, we mobilise a quantitative methodology with a sample of 1127 Portuguese youngsters (from the 8th grade, 11th grade and the 2nd year of university) from private and public schools (located in rural and urban areas). First, we will perform Multivariate data of variance (MANOVA) to explore differences based on socio-demographic items (e.g., school’s nature, school’s location, number of books at home, parents’ level of education, the existence of financial problems, school belonging, self-evaluation of school performance) in five metacognition scales (these are an adaptation of the questionnaire found in Melo et al., 2006). We explore the influence of students’ attitudes towards school in their study commitment (Weinstein & Palmer, 1990); the role of parents’ level of education and the number of books at home in measuring cultural capital (Lopes et al., 2009); and the importance of the latter variable as an indicator of socioeconomic status (ibidem), which also has an impact on participation (Menezes, 2012). The metacognition scales used are: elaboration (e.g.: “When I study for this class, I pull together information from different sources, such as lectures, readings, and discussions”); critical thinking (e.g.: “I often find myself questioning things I hear or read in this course to decide if I find them convincing”); regulation (e.g.: “I work hard to do well in this class even if I don’t like what we are doing”) and peer learning (e.g.: “When studying for this course, I often set aside time to discuss course material with a group of students from the class”). MANOVA enables the consideration of both main and interaction effects. Second, to explore the predictive power of the four metacognition elements on civic and political participation, we perform linear regressions of each sub-sample (public-urban; public-rural; private-urban; private-rural) with predictors organized in blocks, including the scales related to the metacognition. Regarding the participation dimension (Lyons, 2008) we will use items related to vote in elections, participation on the Internet (e.g.: “Participate in online based petition”), civic engagement (e.g.: “Do volunteer work”), direct participation (e.g.: “Participate in political actions that might be considered illegal”) and economic participation (e.g.: “Boycott or buy certain products for political, ethical or environmental reasons”).

Expected Outcomes

The statistical analyses performed will be useful in depicting an important linkage between topics that are, to some extent, classical in the domain of the social and educational sciences: social inequality, school and participation. We expect that the analyses will enable: i) to understand if, in some way, sophisticated academic thinking (metacognition) can be transferred into the realm of civic and political participation; ii) to explore the nature of the relationship between these two spheres, which are seldom related in the literature; iii) to identify the weight of socioeconomic factors, family background and students’ attitudes regarding school on the development of metacognition skills; iv) to analyse the explanatory magnitude of such effects and the different influence of each element. In other words, we expect to be able to understand what kind of resources and elements influence and motivate the development of specific learning strategies, and in what way the cognitive complexity present both in civic and political participation and academic performance is articulated and, perhaps, mutually transferable.

References

Ainley, P. (2011). Lost Generation? New strategies for youth and education. Educational Futures, 3(1), 39-51. Badescu, G., & Neller, K. (2007). Explaining associational involvement. In J. van Deth, J. Montero, & A. Westholm (Eds.), Citizenship and Involvement in European Democracies: A Comparative Analysis (pp. 158- 187). London: Routledge. Emler, N., & Fraser, E. (1999). Politics: the education effect. Oxford Review of Education, 25(1-2), 251-273. Estanque, E., Costa, H. A., & Soeiro, J. (2013). The New Global Cycle of Protest and the Portuguese Case. Journal of Social Science Education, 12(1), 31–40. Ferreira, P. D., Azevedo, C., & Menezes, I. (2012). The developmental quality of participation experiences: Beyond the rhetoric that "participation is always good!”. Journal of Adolescence, 35(3), 599-610. Gibson, C., & P. Levine (2003). The civic mission of schools. New York: Carnegie Corporation and the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning. Lopes, J., Benton, T., & Cleaver, E. (2009). Young people's intended civic and political participation: does education matter?. Journal of Youth Studies,12(1), 1 -20. Lyons, E. (2008). Political trust and political participation amongst young people from ethnic minorities in the NIS and EU: A social psychological investigation. Final Report. Magno, C., & Lajom, J. A. (2008). Self-regulation, self-efficacy, metacognition and achievement goals in high school and college adolescents. Philippine Journal of Psychology, 41, 1-23. Menezes, I., Ribeiro, N., Fernandes-Jesus, M., Malafaia, C., & Ferreira, P. (Eds.) (2012). Agência e participação cívica e política: Jovens e imigrantes na construção da democracia. Porto: Livpsic. NESSE (2010). Early School Leaving, Lessons from research for policy makers An independent expert report submitted to the European Commission. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Neves, T., Pereira, M. J., & Nata, G. (2013). Escolas privadas são “generosas” na atribuição de notas? A Página da Educação, 200, 28-29. Norris, P. (2002). Democratic phoenix. Reinventing political activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. OECD (2011) Education at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators. OECD Publishing. Torney-Purta, J. (2002). The school’s role in developing civic engagement: A study of adolescents in twenty-eight countries. Applied Developmental Science, 6, 203–12. Walther, A. (2006). Regimes of youth transitions. Choice, flexibility and security in young people’s experiences across different European contexts. Young, 14(2), 119–139. Weinstein, C. E., & Palmer, D. R. (1990). LASSI: Learning and study strategies inventory. Clearwater, FL: H & H Publishing Co.

Author Information

Carla Malafaia (submitting)

University of Porto

Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences

Porto

Isabel Menezes (presenting)

University of Porto, Portugal

Tiago Neves