Preparing College Students to Facilitate Action Civics Among K-12 Students

Abstract

Recently, scholars have begun exploring the benefits and challenges of using college students to help develop Kindergarten-12th Grade (K-12) students' civic engagement capacities, specifically through action civics programs. However, much of the literature focuses on the political and social knowledge obtained by the K-12 students. By contrast, the authors explore the dispositions that college students need to effectively facilitate such learning with K-12 students, culled from grounded coding of four cases. They argue that action civics facilitator training programs should focus on action civics dispositions because dispositions underpin the knowledge and skills facilitators need to access to support complex civic work with K-12 students. Specifically, training programs should include dispositional work, valuing student-led projects, multiple perspectives, the development of relationships in contexts, and social justice. In this way, the values that drive Dewey's concept of democratic life can continue to underpin students' future civic work.