Mary A. Hepburn

Community Service by High School Students: A Cure for Civic Ills?

In response to what some see as a crisis in civic attitudes and participation, there has been a reinvigorated effort to involve high school students in school-based community activities and in less formal, volunteer community service. Yet little is known about the extent of participation or its effects. Using a nationally representative sample of 9th–12th graders from 1996, we document a high participation rate but also note that many students perform service only once or twice a year and in limited capacities. Participation rates are related to certain student, family, and school characteristics; school policies are also significant, though arranging but not requiring participation may be the key. Participation appears to stimulate greater political knowledge, more political discussions with parents, enhanced participation skills, and higher political efficacy, but not more tolerance of diversity.

Effects of Coordinated Environmental Studies in Social Studies and Science on Student Attitudes toward Growth and Pollution

Abstract This study used a pretest-posttest control group experimental design to assess student environmental attitude changes after study of special social studies and science modules. Two coordinated sets of modules were developed and used with a sample of ninth and tenth grade students. These were used individually and in combination to detect post-treatment attitude differences toward population growth and pollution among the treatment groups in each grade. Coordinated instruction in both social studies and science classes produced significantly higher mean scores on cognitive and affective measures when compared with single treatment and control groups.

Development and Initial Validation of an Instrument To Measure Political Attitudes

The Opinionnaire on Political Institutions and Participation (OPIP) was designed to measure six dimensions of the overall con struct of political attitude. Three studies were conducted to deter mine the validity and reliability of the instrument. Validation and cross-validation studies indicated that the instrument was construct valid for measuring political attitudes. The reliability study revealed that the overall test-retest correlation was moderately high. Reliabil ity correlations for the six subtests ranged from moderate to moder ately low. Thus the OPIP was found to be a valid and reliable in strument for research and evaluation using multi-subject designs.

Patterns of Student Attitudes toward Political Institutions and Participation

Abstract The purpose of this study was to replicate earlier research into the development of student political attitudes by examining the patterns of attitudes which emerged at the third, eighth, and twelfth grades, including comparisons by gender and race. Their attitudes were conceptualized as having 3 dimensions–-attitudes towards political institutions, public political participation, and school participation. A 48-item attitude instrument was used to collect data in two large surveys. Overall results support earlier research which indicated that student political attitudes are shaped by cognitive capacity interacting with social-political environmental factors. Subtest data reveal details about the development of political attitudes, including a self-other dichotomy in some attitude dimensions. Differences by race and gender provide new insights into how social factors affect political attitudes.

Improving Political Science Education in the Schools: College-School Connections

Diggins, John P. 1984. The Lost Soul of American Politics, Virtue, Self-Interest and the Foundations of Liberalism. New York: Basic Books. Hartz, Louis. 1955. The Liberal Tradition in America, An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Kramnick, Isaac. 1982. Republican Revisionism Revisited. The American Historical Review, 87: 629-664. McCoy, Drew R. 1980. The Elusive Republic, Political Economy in Jeffersonian America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Matthews, Richard K. 1984. The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. Murrin, John. 1980. The Great Inversion, Court Versus Country: A Comparison of the Revolution Settlements in England (1688-1771) and America (1776-1816). In J. G. A. Pocock, ed., Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. Pocock, J. G. A. 1975. The Machiavellian Moment, Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Shalhope, Robert. 1972. Toward a Republican Synthesis: The Emergence of an Understanding of Republicanism in American Historiography. William and Mary Quarterly, 29: 49-80. Wills, Garry. 1978. Inventing America, Jeffersons Declaration of Independence. Garden City: Doubleday. Wood, Gordon. 1969. The Creation of the American Republic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. anning, Lance. 1986. Jeffersonian Ideology Improving Political Science Education in the Schools: College-School Connections

Case Study of the Acid Rain Film Controversy: Political Propaganda or Environmental Education?

Abstract In 1982 the National Film Board of Canada released an educational film, Acid Rain: Requiem or Recovery? Early in 1983 the U.S. Department of Justice labeled the film as “political propaganda.” This article traces events in the continuing controversy over the film in the United States and Canada, analyzes the films approach, and examines potential learning effects of both the film and the politicized context in which it must be shown.

Evaluation of a Local Improvement-Oriented Project for Citizenship Education.

AbstractThis article reports the evaluation of a four-year ESEA Title IV political/citizenship education improvement project conducted in elementary and secondary schools of a large, southern metropolitan school system. The project designed and tested an educational improvement model which conceptualized the school as a system with interrelated components which influence student learning. The model focused on classroom teachers as change agents and provided them with five types of support channeled through other parts of the system. The model was first found effective for secondary grades and later for elementary grades. Both process and product were monitored to provide research data on the model. The results, implications and limitations are discussed.

How Do We Know What They Know? Testing the Impact of the School Curriculum on the Political Knowledge of Students.

We read and hear many alarming generalizations about great deficiencies in the political knowledge of young people and the failure of the schools to educate students for citizenship in a democracy. What are the bases for these claims? How is the political awareness of young people measured? How is the impact of the school curriculum assessed? As the evaluation coordinator for a project seeking to assess the strengths and weaknesses of school political education and to design a curriculum for improvement, the author undertook to examine and critically review the instruments used to test the impact of schooling on the political knowledge of students.

Reforming Political Education in the Schools: A System Approach May Be a Better Way to Do It

The author describes a pattern emerging from the growing numbers of local curriculum projects aimed at reforming political education in elementary and secondary schools and gives details of the organization and operations of a local project in Georgia. The project centers change efforts on several variables in the school system in an effort to make the proposed improvements integral to the system. Political scientists can make important contributions to these projects by working in the school system with social studies personnel to improve teacher education, instructional materials, and evaluation procedures.

Political Field Experiences in Secondary Social Studies.

Convinced that many current social studies pro grams are not effective in teaching government and politics, this writer encourages schools to initiate political field experiences. She describes how, ex plains why, and warns of the problems school ad ministrators are likely to encounter.