Two new briefs on Citizenship Education

Posted by on January 14, 2005

The Education Commission of the States (ECS) National Center for Learning and Citizenship (NCLC) has released two briefs on citizenship education, service-learning and student engagement.

They can both be found on the NCLC web site: http://www.ecs.org/nclc

Involving Students in Governance
The skills of citizenship-including leadership and informed decision making-must be learned. Involving students in governance is one way to provide opportunities for them to acquire and practice these skills. This policy brief presents some of the benefits for students, the community and the policymaking body itself, with examples from across the country. Discussion also centers on the challenges of involving young people in governance, and provides recommendations and a set of questions for state and local policymakers to consider.

Senior and Culminating Projects
Service-learning is particularly effective as a pedagogy that can be used across grades and academic subject areas to help students combine knowledge and skills with community action. Senior and culminating projects-multidimensional projects through which graduating high school seniors demonstrate their accumulated knowledge and skills-are becoming increasingly common. Senior and culminating projects can help students take ownership of their own learning, pursue in-depth study of a topic in which they are interested and integrate what they have learned over time. The combination of these two strategies can provide a powerful learning experience for students. This Issue Brief explores the challenges and benefits of combining these two educational strategies, provides examples of existing high-quality programs, recommends effective implementation strategies and offers some questions for consideration by educational leaders and policymakers.