Christopher P. Gilbert

The Resourceful Believer: Generating Civic Skills in Church

We investigate the conditions under which members practice politically relevant civic skills in church, generating a base of resourceful citizens equipped for political activity. Previous research has considered congregations to be black boxes, with sometimes unspecified and almost always untested processes operating to encourage civic skill development. In contrast, we conceptualize churches as diverse organizations and find evidence that the social homogeneity of church-based small groups allows for greater individual skill development. Moreover, members direct their energies toward the church and skill development when they are socially isolated from their communities. We also test the efficacy of clergy to promote skill development, finding mixed evidence. Overall, we find considerable support justifying the decision to open the black box and investigate the varied ways in which churches promote the acquisition of civic skills.

The Political Voice of Clergy

Whether clergy are influencing opinions, setting agendas, mobilizing, or empowering parishioners, the primary mechanism is public speech. Using a national sample of 2,400 ELCA (Lutheran) and Episcopal Church clergy, surveyed in the late summer and fall of 1998, we explore the nature, frequency, and determinants of clergy public speech. We find that clergy public speech is relatively pervasive and conveys a significant amount of normative judgments about the workings of the policy process. In assessing its determinants, we find that clergy public speech is a product of personal motivation situated in an environment conducive to action, which includes the pressures exerted by the congregation, national political cues, and community. Specifically, we find that clergy speak out publicly on political issues when mobilized, but also as a way to represent their congregations in the public sphere and to motivate members to add their distinctive voices to public debate.

The Impact of Churches on Political Behavior: An Empirical Study

Introduction Toward a Theory of Church Contextual Influence on Political Behavior County Concentrations of Religious Adherents: A Test of Three Election Years Churches, Voting, and Party Identification Churches and Political Attitudes Church Contexts and Individual Self-Evaluations The Political Influence of Church Discussion Partners Conclusions: The Political Relevance of Churches as Contexts Appendix Bibliography Index

Sources of clergy support for denominational lobbying in Washington

Do clergy approve of official lobbying by their denominations? Using a data set of nearly 2,300 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and Episcopal Church clergy surveyed in 1998, we investigate how clergy evaluate the work of their official denominational Washington lobbying offices. In particular, we assess the effects of four factors-political ideology, social theology, political engagement, and internal denominational politics-on clergys evaluations of these Washington offices. We find that clergy evaluations of their Washington office are driven by (I) their own politics, (2) whether they feel it is appropriate for their denomination to pursue political ends. and (3) their support for the general direction of the denomination-not directly connected to the lobby.

Adding an Integrated Library Component to an Undergraduate Research Methods Course

As undergraduate students increasingly rely on the Internet as their primary method for gathering sources, they often overlook the rich and varied resources available to them in library collections. Furthermore, students often lack the sophistication to effectively seek out and use information, an ability generally referred to as information literacy. Political scientists and librarians at one institution sought to address the gap in student information literacy skills by creating and implementing a semester-long library lab component integrated into the required research methods course within the political science department. This article presents the steps taken to implement the lab component, including the student learning outcomes we sought to address. We also focus on the measures we used to assess the impact of the lab component. Students who participated in the lab component demonstrate markedly improved information literacy skills compared to those who did not. Political science professors at our institution are often frustrated by the quality of student research, particularly in terms of the quality of sources used in research papers. Students increasingly rely on the Internet as their primary method of gathering information (Barberio 2004; Robinson and Schlegl 2005). Although it is possible to use the Internet to identify high-quality, scholarly sources, the Internet can also be dangerous territory for students. In particular, studentsoftenhavedifficultydistinguishingbetweenscholarlysources, such as academic journals or primary source data, and nonscholarly sources. For many professors, the response to this problem has been the traditional “one-shot” visit to the college library or a classroom visit from a librarian, to review the resources and materials relevant to student research on politics and government. Is a single visit enough to turn students into good researchers? Research in the field of library science suggests that more is better when it comes to time in the library (Gandhi 2004). A growing body of research points to the benefits of a focus on information literacy. According to the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (2000), information literacy involves the ability to “determine the extent of information needed . . . access the needed information . . . and evaluate information and its sources critically.” Although the use of this terminology in political science is relatively new (Marfleet and Dille 2005; Williams, Goodson, and Howard 2006; Stevens and Campbell 2008; Williams and Evans 2008), certainly the concept is not. This article examines the development and assessment of an integrated information literacy component designed to enhance student learning in political science. Our decision to implement an information literacy program grew out of the overlapping goals of political science and library faculty at Gustavus Adolphus College, a private, liberal arts college located in the midwest with an average enrollment of 2,300 undergraduates. The campus library is a teaching library, meaning that its mission is to educate students about research. Six library faculty members are responsible for delivering library instruction, which consists primarily of single sessions arranged by classroom faculty in collaboration with library faculty, to all on campus. The political science department has eight full-time faculty, serving 100 majors and enrolling approximately 900 students annually in courses covering all major subfields in political science. Political science faculty sought ways Julie K. Gilbert is assistant professor in the Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library at Gustavus Adolphus College. Her research and teaching interests include information literacy across campus, the recreational reading habits of undergraduate students, and diversity initiatives in academic libraries. She can be reached at jgilber2@gustavus.edu. Katherine Knutson is associate professor of political science at Gustavus Adolphus College. Her research and teaching interests include interest groups, religion and politics, public policy, and political communication. She can be reached at knutson@gustavus.edu. Christopher P. Gilbert is professor of political science at Gustavus Adolphus College, where he teaches courses on research methods, religion and politics, and US electoral politics. He can be reached at cgilbert@gustavus.edu. T h e Te a c h e r ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 112 PS • January 2012 doi:10.1017/S1049096511001788 to enhance student research skills beyond an introductory level. Library faculty wanted to expand efforts to partner with academic departments in teaching information literacy skills among undergraduate students. Both library and political science faculty also wished to understand more precisely the effect of new teaching strategies on student learning. We hypothesize that adding an integrated library component to an undergraduate research methods course leads students to select higher quality sources, demonstrate a broader and deeper use of library resources, and report increased levels of confidence in library research—skills that are hallmarks of information literacy. Our findings indicate that students who receive multiple instruction sessions in the library do demonstrate enhanced research skills, and increasing the amount of library instructional time further improves student research skills. INFORMATION LITERACY IN THE CLASSROOM Many political science writing assignments require students to identify and use high-quality sources, whether in traditional research papers or shorter response essays. Recent research suggests that incorporating information literacy into college courses can improve students’ ability to do this effectively. Consequently, ACRL guidelines call for the development of information literacy goals within the context of discipline-based research and encourage collaboration between faculty and librarians (LPSS 2008). Discipline-based approaches to information literacy have been endorsed by political scientists as well (Grafstein 2002; Hutchins 2003; Norelli 2006; Stevens and Campbell 2008; Williams and Evans 2008). Existing research on the impact of one or two library instruction sessions on student learning outcomes indicates mixed results. In other disciplines, some researchers find little change (Emmons and Martin 2002), whereas others find significant improvement, particularly in the research confidence of students (Zoellner, Samson, and Hines 2008). In political science, Marfleet and Dille (2005) experiment with students in one section of a methods course and one section of a nonmethods course. These students who are exposed to an information literacy component featuring a session with a reference librarian perform better on an assessment instrument measuring their information literacy competencies, compared to students in a similar section of a methods course and nonmethods course who are not exposed to the information literacy component. Research focused on multisession library instruction models, however, is more conclusive and points to the positive effects of incorporating information literacy. Gandhi (2004) assesses learning outcomes for a five-session library instruction sequence and finds that students in the experimental group demonstrate higher levels of learning than students who receive the traditional oneshot session. Wang (2006) assesses the long-term effects of a semester-long library credit-bearing course on student information literacy skills. In comparing research papers written by students who had taken an elective library research course with students who had not, Wang finds that students in the elective course use significantly more scholarly resources in their papers, have fewer citation errors, and earn higher grades. Williams, Goodson, and Howard (2006) find that adding a multisession integrated library component to an undergraduate comparative politics course improves students’ information literacy and that “information literacy skills correlate significantly with student performance in written work” (518). Goebel, Neff, and Mandeville (2007) show that students completing a semester-long information literacy course demonstrate improvement in specific research skills such as knowing how to use electronic periodical databases, as well as more ability to locate and evaluate relevant literature and avoid plagiarism. Finally, Stevens and Campbell (2007) outline a collaborative approach to incorporate information literacy into courses at various levels within a political science department using multiple library sessions. They find that students at all levels improve, with the greatest improvement in lower-level and midlevel courses; interestingly, sophomores and juniors make greater gains than first-year or senior students. Although this research certainly suggests that political science students would benefit from incorporating information literacy into the entire curriculum, we argue that methodology courses are a particularly appropriate place for the development of such a focus. As Hubbell (1994) argues, undergraduate research methodology courses “should primarily train students to be intelligent consumers of research” (60). Whereas other courses are heavily focused on content, methodology courses are primarily concerned with process. Thus, teaching the process of finding and evaluating appropriate research resources complements the overall focus of methodology courses. Furthermore, about two-thirds of US college political science departments offer research methods courses (Thies and Hogan 2005); Stevens and Campbell’s research suggests that

Christians and Quistians in Minnesota

Experience in Iowa in 1994 suggests that neither the rosy nor the bleak scenario will consistently obtain. The Republican coalition is more heterogeneous than at any time since at least the early twentieth century. Coexisting within the coalition are potentially serious conflicts over nominations, policy priorities, and, in some cases, policy positions that make a Republican-white Evangelical alliance at a given time and place uncertain. Furthermore, the volatility of contemporary voter preferences adds to these instabilities (see Fiorina 1994). Permanent success or failure of the Republican-white Evangelical alliance is unlikely; rather scenarios will vary depending on particular candidacies and the events that surround them.