*Project Report* **Reaching the Hard-To-Reach with Civic Education on the European Union: Insights from a German Model Project**

### **Monika Oberle and Märthe-Maria Stamer \***

Department of Political Science, University of Goettingen, Platz der Goettinger Sieben 3, 37073 Goettingen, Germany; monika.oberle@sowi.uni-goettingen.de

**\*** Correspondence: maerthe-maria.stamer@uni-goettingen.de

Received: 22 July 2020; Accepted: 23 September 2020; Published: 30 September 2020

**Abstract:** So-called "hard-to-reach" learners with a lower level of formal education have been identified as a "challenge" for civic education and have been neglected with regard to civic education in the past. However, these young people do deal with political processes that relate to their everyday lives; they simply do not perceive these processes as political. The same holds true for the topic of the European Union. To date, hardly any teaching concepts and learning materials for civic education on the European Union that are specially designed for hard-to-reach youth have been available. This paper discusses the relevance, challenges, and promising approaches used to address this severe deficit in the research and practice of civic education regarding the EU. It focuses on the situation in Germany and presents the Jean Monnet project "*Junge Menschen erreichbar machen mit politischer Europabildung*" (JUMPER). Here, workshops with a focus on the European Union are developed—specifically tailored to the needs of the target group, carried out with pupils in the vocational transition system, and accompanied by systematic evaluation. Finally, conclusions are drawn for civic education and research regarding hard-to-reach youth.

**Keywords:** civic education; European Union; hard-to-reach learners; empirical research; vocational transition system; simulation game

### **1. Introduction**

Nowadays, the European Union (EU) plays a vital role in the lives of people living in the EU. Ongoing European integration has led to an increasing number of decisions being made at the European level that have a direct impact on people's everyday lives. However, an alienation of people from the EU is noticeable, Brexit being the most prominent result. Wilhelm Knelangen (2015) described a "trust crisis" that could eventually become threatening for the European project. It is evident that people, especially those with a low level of formal education, are becoming disentangled from the political system and are not adequately represented on the political stage (Brinkmann 2009; Vester 2009; Sloam 2013a, 2013b; Carpenter and Taru 2016). This could threaten the political stability of a country (Detjen 2007) or of the European Union (Leruth et al. 2017). Research shows that people who directly experience the advantages of the EU tend to have a more positive attitude toward the EU compared to people who do not experience these advantages—and such a lack of positive experiences often goes along with a lower socio-economic status (Grimm et al. 2017; Hix 2009). Eurosceptical attitudes and a low level of willingness to participate often go hand in hand with a distinct lack of knowledge about the European Union (Westle 2015). These results call for a European citizenship education that specifically addresses people who are persuaded that they cannot influence European politics (Eis 2013).

This contribution focuses on civic education regarding the European Union for young hard-to-reach learners. It sheds light on the relevance and challenges of civic education on the EU, specifically regarding young, hard-to-reach learners and presents promising approaches to providing learning opportunities on the European Union tailored to the needs of this specific and often neglected target group. Looking at the situation in Germany, the vocational transition system is described as a suitable, but largely neglected, context for reaching so-called "hard-to-reach" youth with civic education on the EU. Finally, the Jean Monnet project "*Junge Menschen erreichbar machen mit politischer Europabildung*" (JUMPER) is presented, which has designed civic education measures based on existing research as well as on feedback from the target group that was involved in the development of the materials. Moreover, the design and challenges of the systematic empirical research accompanying the JUMPER workshops will be presented and discussed.

The paper is structured as follows: After this introduction, an overview is given regarding the relevance and main goals of civic education on the EU, with a special focus on the situation in Germany. Next, the relevance and specific challenges of civic education for young hard-to-reach learners, as well as promising didactic approaches, are pointed out. These outlines are followed by a presentation of the JUMPER project, highlighting the characteristics of the German vocational transition system, which serves as the project's starting point for successfully connecting hard-to-reach youth with EU education, and presenting the workshops and design of the accompanying empirical research. A final outlook will draw conclusions for civic education and research regarding hard-to-reach youth in Germany and beyond.

### **2. Civic Education on the European Union in Germany**

The European Union (EU) is the most closely interconnected transnational political union worldwide, and its political decisions have significant effects on policies and on the lives of the people who live within its borders. Estimates vary, but research suggests that at least one third of the legislation passed at the federal level in Germany in recent years can be traced back to a 'European impetus' (Töller 2008, 2014; König and Mäder 2008). The politics of its member states can no longer be sufficiently understood without including the European level, but at the same time, European Union policies cannot be influenced solely via participation at the national level. Besides extending its competencies to more policy fields, the EU's deepening dynamics also mean a change in the methods of political decision-making that foresees more majority decisions in the Council of Ministers, awards more participation rights to the directly elected European Parliament, and makes it possible for the population to participate in the European legislative process, not with referendums, but with a European Citizens' Initiative. In the European multi-level system, EU-related political knowledge and competencies thus have increased in importance for the Union's citizens over the last few decades (cf., (Oberle 2015)). The ongoing European integration requires civic education on the EU in order to facilitate (young) people's understanding of these processes, their ability to judge, and their capacity to participate politically on the European level.

Because only civic education given at school has the potential to reach all young citizens, it carries a particular responsibility for European civic education that also opens up great opportunities. Kris Grimonprez (2020) argues in favor of the integration of an EU dimension into national civic education curricula. The promotion of teaching and learning about Europe and the European Union at school is furthermore on the agenda of different European actors, such as the European European Parliament Committee on Culture and Education (2016).

In Germany, the European Union was a rather neglected topic of civic education in schools and extracurricular activities in the past and not much focused upon by civic education research either. However, increasing cooperation on the European level has led to a re-examination of this topic in civic education in Germany (Rappenglück 2014, p. 392). Already in 1978, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the *Länder* in the Federal Republic of Germany (Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder of the Federal Republic of Germany KMK) emphasized the teaching of Europe-oriented competencies as an important task of schools, including the subject civics, in order to enable pupils to live a successful life in Europe. It was

updated in 1990 and 2008 and is currently, during the German Council presidency, 2020, again under revision, underlining the continuing significance of teaching about Europe and the European Union at school in the face of current challenges. These demands are mirrored by the school curricula of all 16 German *Länder*, which require dealing with the European Union in secondary level civic education at general schools (Geyr et al. 2007).

Drawing on empirical research that underlines a lack of knowledge and understanding of the European Union in the general public as well as among European and German youth, Monika Oberle and Johanna Forstmann emphasize that "a knowledgeable approach to the complex entity 'EU' cannot be acquired incidentally; instead, it requires intentional civic education" (Oberle and Forstmann 2015, p. 82). The overarching goal of civic education remains the "development of political maturity (*Mündigkeit*)" (Society for Civic Education Didactics and Civic Youth and Adult Education 2004, p. 9). Based on the model of political competency by Detjen et al. (2012), they propose a catalogue of competencies with which pupils should be provided in civic education classes at school. This catalogue includes conceptual understanding of the EU; interest in the EU; a positive, EU-related internal efficacy (trust in one's own political abilities with regard to the EU) as well as fundamental trust in the EU, its institutions, and its responsiveness; and EU-related abilities to judge political questions and take political action (Oberle and Forstmann 2015, p. 82). Taking a closer look at EU-related political knowledge, the following aspects can be identified as basic knowledge about the EU: general orientational knowledge, knowledge regarding the European institutions and legislative procedures, the competences of the EU as well as modes of citizen participation (Oberle 2012).

It can be concluded that civic education on the EU is of high relevance for people living in the European Union to gain at least orientational knowledge on this unique political entity as well as a feeling of political self-efficacy and fundamental political competencies in order to enable people living in the EU to participate in the (European) political sphere. National politics can no longer be approached without a greater view on the European level. This need for a European perspective with regard to political knowledge and skills applies to all societal groups. However, some groups are disadvantaged when it comes to civic education. A target group often neglected in civic education is focused in the following chapter: hard-to-reach youth.

### **3. Civic Education for Young Hard-To-Reach Learners: Relevance, Challenges, and Promising Approaches**

The international network "Networking European Citizenship Education" (NECE) defines hard-to-reach learners as "educationally and socially disadvantaged people who are often 'forgotten' by the mainstream of citizenship education or left behind in schools or other educational facilities". (Kakos et al. 2016, p. 10) This target group is viewed as a "challenge" for civic education (Detjen 2009, p. 101). Research shows a connection between a low level of formal education and a low level of political interest (Schneekloth and Albert 2019, pp. 51–52). Helmut Bremer opens up another perspective by explaining a putative low political interest with mechanisms of exclusion: individuals with a low level of formal education tend to abstain from political participation because they do not feel entitled to participate (Bremer 2012, pp. 30–33). This assumption is backed by a study from 2012 which concludes that young people from "underprivileged" milieus are in fact interested politically—their lack of interest in "institutionalized politics" stems from ignorance of political processes as well as a missing link to their everyday lives (Kohl and Calmbach 2012, pp. 21–22). However, these young people deal with political processes that relate to their everyday lives; they simply do not perceive these processes as political. Therefore, the authors conclude that these young people's political agenda is "invisible" because the scope to assess their political interest is too narrow (Kohl and Calmbach 2012, p. 23). Furthermore, Heinz-Ulrich Brinkmann points out a shifting of political representation of these groups: the low level of political participation of "underprivileged" groups leads to a lack of political representation of their concerns and needs (Brinkmann 2009, p. 69).

Putting an emphasis on addressing young people with civic education appears to be especially worthwhile because they are in the course of becoming a "political generation": their patterns of political activity are in the process of development and their political attitudes are still subject to change (Baumert et al. 2016; Brinkmann 2009). Civic education in schools is of utmost importance as is lays the basis for the acquisition of knowledge and competencies in later years: the political knowledge one possesses as an adolescent is a decisive predictor for the level of political information one possesses in adult life. In addition, political attitudes and behavioral patterns of the adolescence tend to persevere throughout adult life (Oberle 2012).

In recent years, civic education opportunities for young hard-to-reach learners have been increasingly discussed among experts (for instance, see the following edited volumes: (Drews 2009; Widmaier and Nonnenmacher 2012)). While "classical" education opportunities usually do not seem to work well for this target group, there are some promising approaches that will be presented in the following paragraphs.

It has become evident that schools play a central role in civic education. As individuals with a lower level of formal education do not often frequent extracurricular civic education opportunities, schools of basic secondary education and vocational education are often the only place where these pupils come into contact with civic education (Brinkmann 2009, p. 90). An analysis of data of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016 strongly suggests the need for high quality civic education in schools—especially for pupils originating from disadvantaged households (Deimel et al. 2020). Based on their study on the invisible political agenda of young people, Wiebke Kohl and Marc Calmbach conclude that civic education needs to engage in "translation" in order to make political content accessible for hard-to-reach youth (Kohl and Seibring 2012, p. 25). Friedrun Erben, Heike Schlottau, and Klaus Waldmann edited a volume on civic education for hard-to-reach groups in 2011 in which principles for the design of civic education opportunities for this target group were identified. These are (a) subject orientation (participants are seen as individuals capable of judging and acting, not just as objects of teaching), (b) recognition and respect (participants are perceived as equal interlocutors), (c) participation (participants have the opportunity to participate), and (d) action orientation (development of real opportunities to act) (Erben et al. 2013, pp. 27–45). These principles are very similar to the didactic principles applied to civic education in general: targeting the addressees, learning from examples, controversy orientation, action-orientation, and science orientation (see, for instance, (Sander 2014)).

As a central success factor for civic education efforts targeting hard-to-reach youth, Heinz-Ulrich Brinkmann identifies closeness to everyday life and the living environment, e.g., through using social media and including locations or events frequented by youth ((Brinkmann 2009, pp. 81–82); see also, (Hradil 2012, p. 24)). Furthermore, he names "Edutainment"—teaching formats that do not put an emphasis on political learning but on learners' entertainment and on pointing out links to their everyday life—as a useful method for civic education. Conveying political content in the course of youth work may be successful (Brinkmann 2009, p. 80); this is backed by Benedikt Sturzenhecker, who also believes that civic education in youth centers is a promising approach (Sturzenhecker 2013). Arne Busse et al., summarizing successful approaches applied by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education, add computer games and participative approaches, leading to immediate feelings of success to the list of learning opportunities that have proven to be successful (Busse et al. 2012). Another promising approach is the concept of essential reduction (*Elementarisierung*), a procedure to reduce the complexity of political content. This concept was initially proposed by Siegfried Schiele and has since been discussed by many scholars (Detjen 2011; Kohl and Seibring 2012, p. 8; Schiele 2012).

Christian Ernst and Claudia Nickel published a piece on principles for successful civic education on the European Union, especially for hard-to-reach target groups, and identified the following factors: start out from existing competencies of the participants, create open and informal learning situations (e.g., artistic and creative approaches), choose tangible topics, show how to critically deal with information, and provide distinctive pedagogical companionship, intensive supervision, and support

when it comes to mobility opportunities (Ernst and Nickel 2008, pp. 35–37). These can be used for orientation when designing target group specific learning opportunities on the EU.

A specific promising method for civic education with hard-to-reach groups is the use of simulation games (cf., (Petrik and Rappenglück 2017; Bursens et al. 2018; Guasti et al. 2015)). There is empirical evidence showing that political simulation games can facilitate access to politics and the European Union—even for participants who initially show only little or no interest in the matter. Playing the role of an EU politician (e.g., member of the European Parliament, Council member) and actively taking part in political negotiations and decision-making during the game can exercise an ice-breaking effect and can help overcome prejudices with regard to politics and the European Union (Oberle et al. 2018, 2020; Oberle and Leunig 2016).

There is empirical evidence that a low level of knowledge about the European Union correlates positively with eurosceptic attitudes (Westle 2015; Oberle 2012). Those experiencing the advantages of the European Union in everyday life, e.g., by participating in mobility programs, manifest more positive attitudes towards the EU as compared to those not directly experiencing these advantages (Grimm et al. 2017, p. 225; Hix 2009, pp. 59–64). Although civic education on the European Union is of special relevance for disconnected youth with a lower level of formal education, hardly any teaching concepts and learning material are available that are especially designed for hard-to-reach learners. One of the few exceptions is the publication "EUropa—Was geht für dich?", a brochure published by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education, specifically produced for this target group (Oberle and Stamer 2019). So far, how to successfully convey EU-related competencies to hard-to-reach youth remains basically unexplored. The JUMPER project specifically addresses these desiderata: both its didactic approaches and the design of its accompanying empirical study will be presented in the following section.

### **4. Civic Education on the EU for Hard-To-Reach Learners: The Jean Monnet Project JUMPER**

The Jean Monnet Project "Reaching the hard-to-reach with political education on the European Union" ("*Junge Menschen erreichbar machen mit politischer Europabildung*" (JUMPER)) aims at facilitating civic education on the European Union that is specifically tailored to the needs of young hard-to-reach individuals. In the course of the project, a workshop focusing on the EU will be carried out ten times with a total of 150 young, hard-to-reach participants. Following the participants' feedback and the accompanying evaluation, the workshop concept will be further optimized. The final concept, including all material, will be disseminated through training seminars for multipliers (e.g., teachers, social workers) and a closing conference, which, due to the Coronavirus pandemic, has been rescheduled for spring 2021.

JUMPER's target group are 15 to 27 year-olds who are attempting to acquire the competencies required for vocational education and training or integration into the labor market. In Germany, about 5.9% of every cohort drop out of school without obtaining a school leaving certificate—this amounts to about 50,000 young people every year (Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung 2018, p. 121; Deutscher Caritasverband 2019). In recent years, it is observable that the number of young people leaving school without a certificate is increasing. Many of these individuals with a low level of formal education then enroll in the vocational transition system—which therefore seems to be a promising starting point for providing civic education to hard-to-reach youth who do not often voluntarily attend extracurricular civic education measures.

### *4.1. The German Vocational Transition System*

The so-called vocational transition system as a part of the German education system is located on the border between formal education at school and the labor market. This system consists of various measures, which can be divided into two strands: (a) measures of the Federal Employment Agency, characterized by close cooperation with companies and (b) school-based measures. These school-based measures lie within the area of responsibility of the 16 different *Länder*; therefore, their exact arrangement

varies throughout Germany. However, there are several similarities, and this second strand of measures comprises education and training measures that are inferior to a qualified vocational training measure and do not lead to a recognized qualification. The focus of these measures is rather the identification and promotion of the individual's competencies, and is aimed at integrating them into the labor market. The goal is the start of vocational training leading to a recognized qualification or taking an employment opportunity. In some cases, the belated obtainment of a school leaving certificate through participation in measures of the vocational transition system is possible (Konsortium Bildungsberichterstattung 2006, p. 79).

An overview of the different compositions of the vocational transition system in Germany was arranged by Tobias Brändle, who calls the entire vocational transition system a "storage system": the pupils are provided with an opportunity to acquire competencies they are missing for a successful integration into the labor market. The vocational transition system, therefore, can be viewed as a compensation system (Brändle 2012, p. 128) for the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies that were not obtained through regular education at school.

In 2016, about 303,000 young people were newly enrolled in the vocational transition system (for a comprehensive overview of the German education system, including a location of the vocational transition system, see (European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training 2019)). About 14.5% of them took part in measures of the Federal Employment Agency (first strand of the vocational education system). About 35.8% of the pupils are instructed in *Berufsvorbereitungsjahr*/*einjährige Berufseinstiegsklassen* (a part of the second strand of the vocational education system) and the largest faction (37.8%) visit *Berufsfachschulen*, which is pre-vocational training that can be credited in later vocational training phases. The latter belongs to the second strand as well and lies within the area of responsibility of the *Länder.* The remaining 12% of the pupils are enrolled in other measures of the vocational transition system that will not be further discussed in this paper (Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung 2018, p. 138).

Over the last few years, it has become evident that the share of pupils with foreign nationalities in the vocational transition system is rising. In 2018, 36% of these pupils did not have German citizenship. Also notable is that 41% of the pupils with foreign citizenship enrolled in the German vocational transition system have not obtained any school leaving certificate, as opposed to 25% of pupils with German citizenship not having obtained one. Most common is a basic school leaving certificate (*Hauptschulabschluss*, 46.5%), followed by a general school leaving certificate (*Realschulabschluss*, 26.5%). A small number of pupils in the vocational transition system (2.8%) scored a qualification for university entrance (*Abitur*) (Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung 2018, p. 139).

The JUMPER project focuses on pupils attending the so-called *Berufsvorbereitungsjahr*/ *Berufseinstiegsklassen* (BVJ/BEK) (for a detailed overview, see (Brändle 2012, pp. 100, 109)); therefore, the following paragraphs provide a more detailed insight into these specific measures. The distinct characteristics of the measures BVJ/BEK can be described as follows: they are pre-vocational measures aimed at providing pupils with competencies and skills allowing them to start vocational training or take up employment. Pupils are usually educated in two areas of the labor market in order to gain orientation with regard to their occupational choices and opportunities. The time spent in these measures is not credited to reduce the time spent in vocational training programs. It is, however, usually possible to obtain a basic school leaving certificate (*Hauptschulabschluss*) at the end of the measure, which lasts one or two school years, depending on the *Länder*. Due to the federalized structure of the vocational transition system in Germany, these two measures cannot be separated accurately and they carry different denominations throughout Germany. In the following, the term *Berufsvorbereitungsjahr*/*Berufseinstiegsklasse* (BVJ/BEK) is used to describe those measures that share the characteristics outlined above. Brändle (2012) assembled a detailed itemization of the different measures.

To be eligible for participation in the BVJ/BEK, pupils usually have to prove completion of mandatory full-time education. The BVJ/BEK usually lasts one school year, and it is possible to hereby obtain a school leaving certificate. The aim of this measure is passage into vocational training, and some *Länder* also aim for direct integration into the labor market without prior vocational training or specific qualifications (Brändle 2012, pp. 98–99). Apart from occupational orientation, participants usually receive socio-pedagogical support to address individual deficits during the BVJ/BEK (for instance, see Niedersächsisches Kultusministerium 2011, which provides details on the federal state of Lower-Saxony).

Anja Besand closely examined the situation of civic education in vocational schools and concludes that it is a marginalized subject. Through interviews with teachers, she identifies a variety of challenges that are associated with the teaching of civic education in vocational schools, namely a lack of recognition regarding the importance and relevance of the subject (and, consequently, out-of-field teaching), the pupils' (assumed) lack of interest in politics, and the heterogeneity of the student body, as well as the myriad of different pathways at vocational schools. Pupils enrolled in the BVJ/BEK are identified as a particularly challenging group when it comes to civic education teaching (Besand 2014, pp. 121–50).

About 108,500 individuals started the measure BVJ/BEK in 2016 (Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung 2018, p. 138). Taking a closer look at this group based on a study carried out by the *Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung* (BIBB) in 2011 shows that one quarter of the pupils taking part in BVJ/BEK had either not graduated from school or had graduated from a special needs school. Fifty-eight percent of the pupils had completed secondary education with a basic school leaving certificate. A second finding from this study is the low formal education level of the pupils' parents. While 23% of the parents did not complete vocational education and training and reached a general school leaving certificate (*Realschulabschluss*), at maximum, 32% of the parents have reached a basic school leaving certificate (*Hauptschulabschluss*) and completed vocational education and training (Beicht and Eberhard 2013, pp. 15–16). Forty percent of the pupils in the BVJ/BEK had a migration background (Beicht and Eberhard 2013, pp. 15–16). While the gender ratio seems well-balanced in the 2011 study, newer data from 2018 show a larger share of male pupils in the vocational transition system: 65.5% male, 34.5% female (Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung 2018, p. 315; calculations by the authors).

### *4.2. The Workshops: Didactic Concept and Evaluation*

During the JUMPER project, a total of 10 workshops, with about 150 pupils overall of the BVJ/BEK, will be conducted by two trainers of the University of Goettingen. They will each last two full school days (usually from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.). The advantage of carrying out the workshops in a school setting is that it gives a certain level of continuity among the participants. Additionally, for the evaluation of the workshops, it is vital that a majority of the participants participates throughout the two days of the workshop. As some of the pupils work in the afternoons or have other obligations—or their attention span is limited—the duration of the workshop is aligned with the duration of a regular school day. Because classes in the vocational transition system are usually small (about 8–10 pupils), two or more classes will be combined for the workshops.

Most of the participants will take a closer look at the European Union for the first time during the workshop. During the development of the workshop elements, it was assumed that the young people only have little knowledge about the European Union and that they are unaware of the EU's relevance for their everyday lives. Research shows that text-based approaches are not suitable for young, hard-to-reach youth. Therefore, JUMPER focuses on activity-oriented, playful approaches, because they appear most promising for the work with young, hard-to-reach youth: the two-day workshops are designed as "special events". The JUMPER project is aimed at rousing the participants' curiosity regarding the European Union. Throughout the workshop, the pupils will be familiarized with basic knowledge on the EU (e.g., history, institutions, functioning of the EU) and they will learn where and how to find information on the EU and what opportunities they have to make their voices heard on the European level.

The workshops, scheduled for autumn 2020, will begin with interactive icebreakers, allowing the participants to get to know the workshop facilitators as well as each other, if they have not met before. In the next step, links between the European Union and the pupils' everyday lives are highlighted. The participants have the opportunity to reveal previous knowledge about the EU and add topics they are particularly interested in to the workshop. Thereafter, the history of the European Union is briefly presented in an interactive format. A focus of the workshop's first day is the functioning of the EU, with a special view to the institutions, in order to prepare the pupils for the second day of the workshop. At the end of the day, the participants examine decisions regarding plastic pollution on the European level. The central element of the JUMPER workshops is a simulation game that takes place on day 2. It was specifically designed for the target group. The Berlin-based company Planpolitik (www.planpolitik.de) was contracted to develop this simulation game. The participants take on the roles of members of the European Parliament from different countries and different political backgrounds who have to decide on future rules regarding packaging material made from plastic in the EU. The simulation game's topic was chosen because of its tangibility: Plastic packaging of fruit and vegetables is a topic that young people can relate to, the different lines of conflict around this topic are easily traceable, and the plastic pollution is not as emotionally charged as other topics, such as, e.g., migration, which helps create a fact-based discussion. For this reason, pupils have little difficulty representing an opinion that is not their own during the discussion.

At the end of every workshop, a person who is involved in activities on the European level is scheduled to visit. These guests are either members of the European Parliament (MEP), local politicians with a focus on EU politics, or young activists who are involved in pan-European youth groups, such as the Young European Federalists, for instance. The workshop participants prepare the visit, questions are collected throughout the workshops, and the pupils can present the results of their simulation game to their guest in order to receive an idea of how this issue could be decided in real life at the European level. If members of the European Parliament visit the workshop, pupils have a chance to profit from first-hand experience from the European Parliament. However, due to the European Parliament's schedule, MEPs are not always available. The workshop organizers prepare the guests for their visit, making sure they are able to make a connection between the workshop participants and the European Union.

All workshops are to be evaluated. The evaluation design includes a survey at three measuring points: participants are asked to fill out a questionnaire before the workshop (pre), after the workshop (post), and a few weeks after the workshop (follow-up). The questionnaire is aimed at assessing the effects of the workshop (short-term and in a longer perspective) as well as eliciting feedback on the methods and materials from the participants. In addition, EU-related orientations of the participants (knowledge, attitudes, motivations, and readiness to act) as well as success factors for political education on the EU for this specific target group are investigated. The evaluation follows a mixed-methods design: the questionnaire survey is complemented by guideline-based interviews with selected participants (*n* = 20) at all three measuring points in order to gain a deeper understanding of the factors mentioned above.

The evaluation's setup caters to the specific needs of the target group: the questionnaires are kept as short as possible with a strictly limited number of open-ended questions. Furthermore, the questionnaires are filled out online with the support of the two workshop facilitators. This approach has two central advantages: Every participant can fill out the questionnaire at their own pace, anonymously, and, in case of questions, the workshop facilitators can offer assistance. In addition, the participants, who are often not used to and are intrigued by larger amounts of reading material, enjoy filling out the questionnaire on the computer. The reduced reading requirement, with one question per page, helps the participants to complete the questionnaire successfully.

### **5. Outlook**

Research on civic education as well as on civic education practice have not taken hard-to-reach groups into account (enough) in the past. This is despite the fact that individuals who can be classified as "hard-to-reach" for civic education make up a considerable part of society. Approaches to successful civic education on the European Union specifically for hard-to-reach youth are widely unexplored. Practical methods and ready-to-use materials for such an endeavor hardly exist. However, national and European politics are entangled to such a large extent nowadays that individuals require knowledge and competencies related to the EU in order to reach the ultimate goals of civic education: political maturity, ability to judge, and ability to act. The JUMPER project is aimed at closing this gap in civic education research and practice through developing and evaluating methods and material specifically designed for civic education on the EU for hard-to-reach youth. Choosing the German vocational transition system as a starting point seems promising as it is a formal educational context attended by the target group. These youth usually do not participate in extracurricular activities dealing with civic education; therefore, it is necessary to meet them where they are. Usually, the vocational transition system provides few learning opportunities with regard to civic education: this subject is marginalized in lower secondary and vocational schools and is often taught by teachers without subject-specific training.

Targeting this specific group in the rather formalized setting of BVJ/BEK also provides the opportunity for systematic evaluation of the intervention and optimization of the workshop concept and materials. Providing ready-to-use workshop concepts and materials with proven target group adequacy to teachers can help alleviate the reservations against teaching civic education to hard-to-reach youth. Evaluating the effectiveness of civic education interventions and collecting participants' feedback is important for the further development of such measures. Finding a practicable evaluation design to collect data on civic education measures for hard-to-reach youth is a central goal of the JUMPER project. Combined with the evaluation's results, the workshop concept focusing on Europe/the European Union as well as the material can be transferred to improve civic education to hard-to-reach youth in other countries. Moreover, the evaluation results identifying good practices with regard to the design of civic education measures specifically tailored to the needs of hard-to-reach youth could be the basis for the development of civic education measures focusing on different topics, in Germany and beyond.

**Funding:** The JUMPER project is co-financed by the European Commission, 611653-EPP-1-2019-1-DE-EPPJMO-PROJECT, Grant decision number 2019-1632/001-001. We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publication Funds of the University of Goettingen.

**Ethics Statement:** The pupils participate voluntarily in the workshop and the accompanying evaluation. All data is anonymized, and written consent from participants and their parents was sought before the intervention. The intervention and research were permitted by the respective State Boards of Education (*Landesschulbehörden*).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

### **References**


Brändle, Tobias. 2012. *Das Übergangssystem: Irrweg oder Erfolgsgeschichte?* Opladen: Budrich UniPress.


Hix, Simon. 2009. *What's Wrong with the European Union and How to Fix it*; Cambridge: Polity Press.


© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

## *Article* **Citizenship Education for Political Engagement; A Systematic Review of Controlled Trials**

**Steven Donbavand \* and Bryony Hoskins**

Department of Social Science, University of Roehampton, London SW15 5SL, UK; bryony.hoskins@roehampton.ac.uk

**\*** Correspondence: sdonbavand@yahoo.co.uk

**Abstract:** Citizenship Education could play a pivotal role in creating a fairer society in which all groups participate equally in the political progress. But strong causal evidence of which educational techniques work best to create political engagement is lacking. This paper presents the results of a systematic review of controlled trials within the field based on transparent search protocols. It finds 25 studies which use controlled trials to test causal claims between Citizenship Education programs and political engagement outcomes. The studies identified largely confirm accepted ideas, such as the importance of participatory methods, whole school approaches, teacher training, and doubts over whether knowledge alone or online engagement necessarily translate into behavioral change. But the paucity of identified studies also points both to the difficulties of attracting funding for controlled trials which investigate Citizenship Education as a tool for political engagement and real epistemological tensions within the discipline itself.

**Keywords:** citizenship education; civic education; controlled trials; political engagement

### **1. Introduction**

Despite the critical democratic role Citizenship Education could and should play in encouraging and enabling political engagement, there remains a dearth of robust evidence as to "what works" (Geboers et al. 2013). Whilst academic interest in approaching the issue through robust methodologies is growing, as this Special Issue is testament to, the field lacks a sense of how many of the multitude of available evaluations can truly be considered reliable members of the evidence base. This paper is therefore the beginning of an attempt to consolidate controlled trial evidence of the causal efficacy of Citizenship Education to produce politically active citizens. This review focuses exclusively on controlled trials (ideally randomized) as a robust method for measuring cause and effect. This is not to suggest that other methods have no value in understanding citizenship education, for controlled trials are certainly limited in their explanatory power, scope, and scalability, but controlled trials represent a frequent omission in the current evidence base which is difficult to compensate through other methods. Campbell (2019) points precisely to this in a recent literature review entitled "What Social Scientists Have Learned About Citizenship Education", and similar reviews by Bramwell (2020) and Manning and Edwards (2014) are also suggestive of a lack of controlled trials. As no systematic review of controlled trials within this area has yet been undertaken, we do so here for explorative purposes, to see how many studies of this kind exist and what aspects of Citizenship Education they address. The aims of this review are therefore two-fold: scoping and mapping, as described by Grant and Booth (2009) in their typology of reviews. These translate into two simple research questions:


**Citation:** Donbavand, Steven, and Bryony Hoskins. 2021. Citizenship Education for Political Engagement; A Systematic Review of Controlled Trials. *Social Sciences* 10: 151. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci 10050151

Academic Editor: Nigel Parton

Received: 26 February 2021 Accepted: 12 April 2021 Published: 25 April 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

Whilst we offer some discussion of pedagogical approaches, program delivery methods, and the political outcomes realized, we do not attempt a meta-analysis or grand conclusions in response to the narrower question of what exactly the causal relationship between Citizenship Education and political engagement is, as this would require us to go well beyond the capacity of the evidence we found.

### **2. Citizenship Education for Political Engagement**

As far back as Addams ([1902] 2002), Dewey (1923), and Marshall (1950), thinkers have recognized that social justice is not guaranteed by mere legal rights but requires active and informed participation in decision making. In other words, social justice must be asserted through the ballot box and an active civil society. A strong participatory democracy (Barber 2003) grounded in equality in political engagement (Dahl 2008; Verba et al. 1995) is therefore a prerequisite for a truly inclusive society. In such a democracy, individuals from all parts of society vote and express their views within their communities to promote the kind of society they wish to see. Crucially, the health of democracies relies on political engagement from citizens of all social backgrounds. Yet in western democracies, in particular in the UK and the US, we see a recurring pattern in which the most privileged social groups are also the most politically active, and consequently able to direct political decision making toward their own interests and priorities (Dalton 2017; Verba et al. 1995). Conversely, disadvantaged groups, which should have the most to gain from asserting their democratic power, have become alienated from a political realm which is not seen as addressing their concerns or speaking their language (Bovens and Wille 2017). One hope of disrupting this vicious circle of political socialization, which reproduces and exacerbates inequalities, is to use education to politically engage all young people, regardless of social backgrounds, during their formative years (Hoskins et al. 2017; Hoskins and Janmaat 2019).

In principle, the subject in which to address young people's political engagement at school is Citizenship Education (alternatively known as Civic Education or Civics, in the US). However, not every conception of citizenship promoted by national education systems encourages active political engagement. In some cases, the co-option by nationalistic agendas (Starkey 2018) might stress compliance, quiet obedience, or intolerance, whilst in others the subject is simply deprioritized (Burton et al. 2015) or depoliticized (from the students' point of view, at least) through the use of a thin liberal conception of citizenship which protects the status quo. As an example of the latter, government policy on Citizenship Education in England has departed in more recent years from an agenda of political participation toward character education and moral responsibilities (Weinberg 2020). Despite this, many teachers and third-sector Citizenship Education organizations have tried to keep the original political focus alive, and it is this interpretation of the concept of Citizenship Education as a tool for encouraging political engagement which is of interest to us in this paper.

### **3. Why Control Trials?**

Empirical research on Citizenship Education for political engagement has advanced rapidly in recent years, particularly in relation to the analysis of large international datasets such as the IEA International Citizenship and Civic Study (cross-sectional and comparative data) and even some longitudinal datasets at the national level, such as the Citizenship Education Longitudinal Survey (England). This allows for the analysis of varying degrees of exposure to diverse forms of learning citizenship across educational pathways and different education systems. For example, Hoskins and Janmaat (2019) find an association between exposure to Citizenship Education in schools in England and voting intentions at age 16 and, particularly encouragingly, some indication that disadvantaged students appear to benefit the most (Hoskins and Janmaat 2019). However, Hoskins et al. (2012) also warn that Citizenship Education does not always have this positive effect, and it is in establishing exactly "what works" that the picture become far less clear, not least

because modes of delivery, program design, and implementation can vary considerably within the same education system. One attempt to parse apart different pedagogical approaches to Citizenship Education has been through the conceptual distinction between acquisition and participatory models of learning (Sfard 1998), with some within the field suggesting that the evidence weighs more heavily on the success of the participatory approaches (Hoskins et al. 2021). For example, there is very strong evidence that an open classroom method of learning, which would be considered an inherently participatory approach, is associated with political engagement (Torney-Purta 2002; Campbell 2008; Hoskins et al. 2012; Quintelier and Hooghe 2012; Keating and Janmaat 2016; Knowles et al. 2018), positive attitudes towards political engagement (Hoskins et al. 2021; Geboers et al. 2013, p. 164), critical thinking (Ten Dam and Volman 2004), citizenship skills (Finkel and Ernst 2005), political knowledge (Hoskins et al. 2021; McDevitt and Kiousis 2006), and political efficacy (Hoskins et al. 2021). Such evidence is certainly highly suggestive, but does it demonstrate causation?

In reality, convincingly establishing causation between different types of Citizen Education programs and political engagement outcomes is something that can only be approached by degree. There is no panacea, and the notion of unequivocal demonstrable causality falls apart on metaphysical as well as methodological grounds. Nevertheless, there are pragmatic criteria (such as Bradford Hill (Hill 2015)) which can be turned to when making a case for or against the existence of a causal relationship. Different methodological approaches allow for different elements of such criteria to be invoked. For example, theory-led approaches may allow for plausible causative mechanisms to be revealed, whilst longitudinal data may allow one to show that the suspected cause temporally precedes the implied outcome. Away from the analysis of secondary data, many small-scale evaluations of specific Citizenship Education initiatives combine these two principles by explaining the theoretical basis of the program and then administering surveys to participants before and after the program. A successful example of this is Oberle and Leunig (2016), who used this approach to suggest that using simulation games in Citizenship Education classes can lead to improved knowledge about the European Union's political processes and increasing levels of trust, in particular for more socioeconomically deprived groups.

But controlled trials can add unique value to this mix of methods, as they have a characteristic not available to other methods (we should note here that Oberle and Leunig themselves acknowledge that control groups would have strengthened their study). For whilst statistical techniques applied to data may attempt to retrospectively estimate the effect of both observed and omitted variables (i.e., unobserved heterogeneity), they cannot be expected to satisfactorily reconstruct the counterfactual. In other words, what would have happened if the participants did not receive the educational treatment? By comparison, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) comes as close as is possible outside of laboratory experiments to reconstructing the counterfactual by introducing a control group whose members are subject to the same measurements (normally pre- and post-intervention) as the treatment group but are not exposed to the treatments itself. Given sufficient numbers, the statistical expectation is that the random allocation of individuals to the control or treatment group reduces any other difference between the groups other than their exposure to the treatment, with the highest level of confidence requiring multiple trials carried out by independent research terms, each with large numbers of participants. In this review we also include studies in which the allocation of participants or participant-groups is not strictly random, as Citizenship Education initiatives are frequently compelled to make use of existing organizational structures, such as classes within schools. This clearly weakens the method to some extent but can still be a useful step toward making a causal argument if the groups have comparable baseline characteristics and are in the same environment.

As Connolly et al. (2017, p. 14) put it, "What RCT's offer, therefore, is not just the opportunity to provide robust evidence relating to whether a particular program is effective or not, but also—and over time—the creation of a wider evidence base that allows for not only the comparison of the effectiveness of one program or educational approach

over another but also for how well any particular program works in specific contexts and for differing subgroups of learners". Yet control trials have also been contested within education research. Connolly et al. (2018a) identify four underlying criticisms: (1) that RCTs are not possible, on a practical level, to undertake; (2) that they ignore context; (3) that they seek to generate universal laws of cause and effect; and (4) that they are inherently descriptive and do not advance theoretical understanding. But the subsequent analysis by these authors of over 1000 RCTs of educational initiatives casts doubt over each of these criticisms, demonstrating that controlled trials can be undertaken, can acknowledge context by including process evaluation and differentiating effects on subgroups, can discuss the limitations of the generalizability of findings, and can be both rooted in theory and make arguments for the future development of theory. Though Connolly et al. (2018a) also note that the extent to which particular studies address these concerns can vary, and the debate within educational research continues. Each of these points of contestation are as applicable to Citizenship Education research as they are to educational research in general, to which might be further added the particularly acute influence of Paolo Freire's critical pedagogy (Freire 1996) on Citizenship Education for political engagement (Crawford 2010) and by association his scrutiny of research power dynamics and wariness of techniques associated with positivism and the reinforcement of structures of control (Freire 1982; Brydon-Miller 2001). We do not resolve these debates in this paper, but simply note them as an important context prior to presenting the results of the systematic review.

### **4. Method**

### *4.1. Search Protocols*

Our approach is similar to that of Sant (2019), who recently undertook an exploratory systematic review within a related field, though focusing on conceptualizations rather than controlled trials. The systematic review begins with searches for standardized terms (known as protocols) in all appropriate academic databases before the articles were screened manually. We operationalized our focus on controlled trials within the search protocol through the inclusion of the term "controlled trial" as well as the common variant "control trial". The abbreviation for randomized controlled trials, "RCT", was found to be largely redundant given the previous terms and was left out, as it leads to the inclusion of studies on Rational Choice Theory. We also include the terms "citizenship" or "civic" along with "education", capturing what we believe to be the most common signifiers within the field. Admittedly, there is now a proliferation of different terminology used for Citizenship Education, both in schools and also non-formal learning within the youth and third sectors, so our coverage cannot be considered complete. Variants such as Global Citizenship Education, Education for European Citizenship, and Education for Democratic Citizenship each have slightly different meanings and associations, but by including the words "education" and "citizenship/civic" as free floating search terms rather than joining them into a phrase (i.e., "citizenship education" or "civic education"), our searches should at least include studies which use alternative phrasings of this type.

The word "political" is also included to narrow the results to those studies concerned with education as a route to political engagement rather than the nationalistic or liberal (depoliticized) conceptions of Citizenship Education described previously. As with all the qualifier terms, and no more so than with the word "political", the mere use within a search protocol does not guarantee that the resulting articles reflect the meaning of the words in the way we would wish them to. The false inclusion of articles by the protocol, whereby studies do not, for example, measure what we consider to be political outcomes, is dealt with during the manual screening process explained in next section and is only problematic in so much that it necessitates subjectivity and injects some inefficiency into the review process. Of far more concern were false exclusions, whereby the protocol, when applied to a database, does not return articles which actually do describe control trials of Citizenship Education for political engagement.

Indeed, it soon became apparent that searching conventional academic databases and indexes was producing sparse results. To give one example, the Web of Science produced only three results which fulfilled the criteria, two of which passed the manual screening. This trend was widely repeated with 40 other relevant databases, yielding just 125 results, with only four of these passing the manual screening. This appears to be due to the inability of most databases to perform full text searches on many of the articles and our requirement of four search terms to properly specify what we were looking for. We therefore turned to Google Scholar, whereby the same protocol produced results of an entirely different scale of magnitude (>13,000) and included all the studies from the conventional academic databases previously searched that had successfully passed the manual screening stage. Although Google Scholar is far more restrained in the sources it draws from than a conventional Google search, its coverage is much wider than curated academic databases, is inherently multidisciplinary, and makes use of semantic search algorithms which attempt to return results corresponding to the meaning of the search terms rather than only literal matches. All of this contributes to a liberal return of results, but with a trade-off in accuracy and reproducibility, and makes Google Scholar rather less systematic than is ideal for a systematic review, as documented as well by Gusenbauer and Haddaway (2020). But these same authors note the popularity of semantic search engines for exploratory research. Moreover, despite the shortcomings, this study is illustrative of their undoubted appeal in this regard, as it was only Google Scholar that allowed for the studies we eventually selected, albeit combined with considerable manual screening. Researchers will find that an immediate problem which arises when taking this more inclusive route is that the number of results can exceed the capacity for manually screening. In our case, the inspection of the results showed them to be dominated by medical studies of little relevance, RCTs being far more prevalent within medical research. Therefore after some experimentation, we found that by using some medical terms as disqualifiers we were able to reduce the search results back to a manageable number of 2620 articles which progressed to the manual screening stage.

### 4.1.1. Search Protocol

"education" AND "political" AND ("citizenship" OR "civic") AND ("control trial" OR "controlled trial"))

### 4.1.2. List of Academic Databases Searched

ACM Digital Library, Annual Reviews, Bloomsbury Collections, BMJ Journals, Brill Journals, Cambridge Companions Online, Cambridge University Press Journals, Directory of Open Access Journals, EBSCO Child Development & Adolescent Studies, Education Index Retrospective: 1929–1983, Education Research Complete, Educational Administration Abstracts, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Emerald Social Sciences eBook Series Collection, ERIC (Educational Research Information Centre), Google Scholar Ingenta Connect, JSTOR Arts & Sciences I Collection, JSTOR Arts & Sciences II Collection, JSTOR Arts & Sciences III Collection, JSTOR Arts & Sciences IV Collection, JSTOR Arts & Sciences V Collection, JSTOR Arts & Sciences VI Collection, JSTOR Arts & Sciences VII Collection, JSTOR Current Scholarship Journals, JSTOR Life Sciences Collection, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA),Oxford Journals, Project Muse, ProQuest Ebook Centra, PsycARTICLES, PsycBOOKS, PsycTESTS, SAGE Research Methods (SRM), ScienceDirect, Social Theory: First Edition, SpringerLink, Taylor and Francis Journals, Wiley Online Library, WorldCatOCLC, WorldCat.org

### 4.1.3. Amended Search Protocol for Google Scholar

("citizenship" OR "civic") AND "political"

AND ("control trial" OR "controlled trial") AND —"HIV" AND —"illness" AND —"nursing" AND —"medical"

### *4.2. Manual Screening*

All 2620 articles identified by the amended search protocol were then screened manually, first by title, then by abstract, and then by full text where necessary. The process through which a decision was made as to whether to include an article in the final list can be conceived of as a set of criteria, some of which are objective in nature and therefore simple to apply, and some of which unavoidably require more subjective judgments. We briefly list the criteria below and provide some examples of the more subjective judgments which were made in implementing the final two criteria.


Council of Europe (2018) reference framework for democratic culture. In practice, this amounted to the exclusion of initiatives aimed at developing teamwork or individual character traits featured prominently in the search results, but for the most part had little direct relevance to political engagement (e.g., Siddiqui et al. 2019; Connolly et al. 2018b; Silverthorn et al. 2017; Siddiqui et al. 2017; Kang 2019). We also found several studies dealing with conflict resolution, community cohesion, and reducing violent behavior, but these were again screened out, as their concern was generally restricted to harmonious societal relations rather than active political behavior (e.g., Niens et al. 2013; Chaux et al. 2017; Enos 2013), though we acknowledge that counter-arguments could be made here.

### **5. Results**

### *5.1. What Types of Programs Have Been Tested by Control Trials?*

In total, 25 controlled trials which test political outcomes deriving from educational initiatives have been identified (Table 1). To structure the discussion of these studies we group the RCT articles based on different approaches that have been considered, within the international practitioner field of citizenship educators, to be successful in teaching Citizenship Education (UNESCO 2015). The first three categories describe different strategies to delivering Citizenship Education within schools. School-based Citizenship Education can either be delivered as a stand-alone program, as a cross-curricular approach, or as a holistic whole school approach which influences multiple aspects of school life under a guiding ethos. Underpinning each of these three is teaching training, which can itself be the focus of initiatives and therefore represents our fourth category. However, Citizenship Education does not only happen within schools, and any initiative outside of the education system (e.g., by NGOs or community groups) is referred to as "non-formal", and the articles on such programs comprise our fifth category. Our final two categories could occur both in non-formal programs and in the various aspects of school life. These two themes describe initiatives with a clear participatory learner-centered approach (category six) and those looking to unlock the potential of digital techniques, generally within online environments (category seven). Our categories should not be considered mutually exclusive parts of a comprehensive typology, but rather as useful ways to present the results which reflect common practitioners' vocabulary. To avoid repetition in the discussion below, we focus upon the most illustrative studies for each category, with Table 1 representing a more thorough categorization, in which some articles are tagged as belonging to more than one category.

### 5.1.1. School-Based Program (Stand-Alone)

The classroom is the theatre in which specific teaching practices play out, and it is the specific activities within the classroom which most immediately come to mind when thinking of Citizenship Education. Representative of this is the Student Voice program (Syvertsen et al. 2009), in which students practice civic skills, debate political issues, and connect their own community interests to the platforms of candidates before simulating the process through mock elections. Teachers invite local candidates and journalists into the schools for question-and-answer sessions with students. The RCT was of 1670 high school students in 80 social studies classrooms and found significant effects of the program on various self-reported political measures, such as the ability to cast an informed vote, knowledge of the voter registration process, belief that their vote matters, communication with others at school about politics, sense of civic obligation, and media use and analysis. This alone is quite persuasive evidence that the type of basic participatory good practices long spoken about in the field (Hoskins et al. 2012) can show signs of causal efficacy under control trial conditions.

Yet some programs have gone beyond this standard good practice and produced intriguing results in doing so. Notably, the study by McDevitt and Kiousis (2006) of the Kids Voting program appears to show that incorporating the students' home environments as part of the learning environment may bring an added effect. The Kids Voting program included experiential learning based on group-problem solving, peer discussion, and cooperative activities, and in many ways is somewhat analogous to the previously described Student Voice Program. However, what seems to be unique to this program is that it includes activities for the children to complete with their families, such as creating a family election album, roleplaying in which students act as political reporters interviewing family members, and a children's ballot where students can cast a vote at the same polling stations as their parents. The analysis of 491 students aged 16–18 years old suggests that the interplay of influences from school and family magnified the effects of the election-based curriculum and sustained them in the long term, resulting in an increased probability of voting for students when they reached voting age.

However, not all school-based activities will be as successful as hoped, and given the publication bias toward positive results, it is extremely useful to have control trial evidence of the possible limits of some approaches. For example, a promising interactive environmental program which, as in the previous study, involved activities for children to complete with their own families, was ran in the UK. Yet Goodwin et al. (2010) found in their study of 448 primary school students in 27 primary schools that there were no effects compared with the control group on behavior, and an extended version of the program did not yield positive results. There is no clear reason why the program did not produce better results, though the vagaries of context and implementation can be difficult to appreciate from a distance. The authors themselves note that the awareness of the control group also rose during this period, which would seem to suggest contextual complications.

Continuing on a cautionary note is the study by Green et al. (2011), who strongly question the assumption that knowledge alone leads to attitudinal or behavioral change. They undertook an RCT of an enhanced civics curriculum of 1000 15 to 16 year-old students in 59 high schools. The curriculum looked to increase their awareness and understanding of constitutional rights and civil liberties, and although the students displayed significantly more knowledge, no corresponding changes in their support for civil liberties were found. The association between knowledge and behavior change has been critiqued before, not least from the stance of critical pedagogy, which suggests that the assimilation of knowledge can lead to a passive acceptance of the status quo, but to have such clear control trial evidence of the inability of knowledge alone to lead to political behaviors is of real value.

### 5.1.2. Cross-Curricular Approach

Whilst the efficacy of the acquisition of knowledge alone is widely doubted, the significance of skills development is a much more contested area, and one study provides evidence that learning environments which consistently encourage social skills can encourage political engagement. Holbein (2017) addresses this by testing the hypothesis that the targeted development of social and emotional skills can in itself lead to behavioral changes in political engagement. The study looks at the impact of a wide program of interventions to develop social and emotional skills including parent training, peers training, stories, films, games, roleplays, and joint reading activities. The study involving 812 students across 55 schools seems to point toward the importance of the quality of social interaction within the learning environment for the development of these skills rather than the valorizing of a single activity. The finding is quite striking, as it seems to indicate that the early development of psychosocial skills leads to a noticeable increase in long-term voter turnout.

In some jurisdictions, schools can decide to run Citizenship Education itself across the curricula, traversing traditional subject areas. One successful example of this was the science and civics instruction used to promote sustainable development in the article by Condon and Wichowsky (2018), who studied the program for 11–14 year-olds aimed to develop citizen-scientists in the US. The program was based on a real-world, community improvement, and problem-based inquiry that focused on reducing the unnecessary use of resources. It gets students to monitor the use of gas, electricity, and water in their home and in their school and to conduct experiments to identify if they can reduce consumption. The clustered RCT included 551 students across 13 schools and found that integrating science and civics into a unit about community water conversation improved engagement in both areas.

### 5.1.3. Whole School Approach

The ultimate elevation of school-based Citizen Education from a single subject, and even beyond a cross-curricular approach, is the whole school approach (Gibb 2016). Given that the practice itself is less common, we are fortunate to have the experiment by Gill et al. (2018) involving a U.S. charter school which uses control trial principles to evaluate the effects of a whole school approach driven by the unique mission and strategy of the organization. One of the more unique features of these types of schools in the U.S. context is that they are publicly funded schools but independent from officials and yet still have a core civic mission. The specific school studied, "Democracy Prep", has educated more than 5000 students across multiple campuses in New York, and its mission statement is "to educate responsible citizen scholars for success in the college of their choice and a life of active citizenship". This school facilitates the learning of citizenship throughout its curricula, including experiential learning (visiting legislators, attending public meetings, testifying before legislative bodies, and running get out and vote campaigns during elections) and more traditional knowledge-based activities like writing essays on civic and governance. To give just one specific example, during the final year students develop a "change the world" project that investigates a real-world social problem, then design a method for addressing the issue, and then implement their plan. By taking advantage of the random allocation of 1060 students (due to oversubscription) into the charter school, Gill et al. (2018) found that those who were admitted to the school went on to have an increased probability of future voting. This is very important evidence that a school, by adopting a civic mission and civic ethos, which then allows citizenship to flow into all aspects of school life, can motivate tangible differences in political behaviors.

### 5.1.4. Teacher Training

Any Citizenship Education scheme is only as good as its implementation, and it can be easy to overlook the differences in the capabilities and enthusiasm of teachers to deliver programs. Indeed, there are two studies which provide some indication that investing in the development of teachers really can make a difference. For example, Andersson et al. (2013) showed that an initial teacher training on education for sustainable development (ESD) led to positive effects regarding the attitudes, perceptions, felt personal responsibility, and desire to contribute toward sustainable development among the student-teachers. This comes from an analysis of parallel-panel data surveys of 404 student-teachers which included a control group but was not randomized.

Whether or not well-intentioned teachers are then able to pass this on to their own students is of course another question. But the Facing History program studied by Barr et al. (2015) suggests that arming teachers with conceptual tools and teaching materials can result in observable changes in the students. The program was evaluated in the US through an RCT amongst 14–16 year-olds (*n* = 1371) and found that when teachers that had received this training and given the materials brought the program into the classroom, it promoted respect and tolerance for the rights of others among the students, an increased awareness of prejudice and discrimination, and a sense of civic efficacy. Whilst untangling

the training of the teachers from the classroom methods they then implement is difficult, these examples provide some evidence that quality teacher training should at least be a component of introducing effective political Citizenship Education into the classroom.

### 5.1.5. Non-Formal Education

Stepping momentarily away from schools, we now consider some control trials which looked at interventions outside of the formal education system and are therefore referred to as "non-formal". Some of these non-formal programs look at the effect of community or group-level initiatives on the political engagement of the individual. For example, Blattman et al. (2011) used a clustered RCT to evaluate a community empowerment program in Liberia across over 230 communities. Their study measured the respect for human rights, equality, civic participation, and community cohesion, and the findings showed modest increases in the first two but little change in the latter two. The authors also stress that the observed impacts were not always in expected ways, which perhaps highlights the complexity of operating in the community and the relative lack of control organizers have over such socially dynamic environments when compared to a school setting.

More encouragingly, in the UK, a Cabinet-Office-funded evaluation of the National Citizen Service program by Booth et al. (2014) yielded some positive results. The National Citizen Service runs over five phases, from residential inductions to community-based action projects. Though initially restricted to self-reported attitudes the quasi-experimental study goes on to measure overall increases in community engagement, volunteering, and intention to vote amongst 7379 of the 15 to 17 year-olds in the study.

Other non-formal initiatives looked at the effect of providing basic information to adults. For example, Pang et al. (2013) investigated the effects of training women in China on their voting rights for village committee elections. Involving 700 adults, the RCT demonstrated that the women who had received the training not only had a greater knowledge of their rights but were also more likely to exercise these rights. The authors are clear that the study shows that the lack of basic knowledge in rural villages is a barrier to voting in village committee elections. Barros (2017) also looked at the effect of providing basic information on the importance of voting, concluding that the participants studied in Portugal could be encouraged to vote if this led to their valuing the act itself, a phenomenon the author terms warm glow voting. These results appear to nuance the previous observation that knowledge does not lead to action, by showing that, in specific contexts, and in applied settings rather than in the classroom, basic timely information can make a difference. However, as acknowledged in the latter experiment, it is the value placed on the act as a result of a greater understanding, rather than merely the knowledge itself, which is ultimately responsible for motivating the action.

An interesting project that operated as a hybrid between formal and non-formal education and combined knowledge acquisition with participatory approaches was conducted in Peru (Agurto and Torres 2020). This project combined knowledge acquisition on financial literacy and life skills training on leadership, public speaking, and team-work with sending students as ambassadors into the community as change makers to support the provision of basic bank accounts and financial inclusion for disadvantaged communities. The project involved 131 students from a university scholarship program and led to an increased level of self-efficacy, empowerment, and community engagement for female students.

Finally, Bowen and Kisida (2018) looked at different perceptions of civil rights after Holocaust museum visits. They report a positive impact on students' desires to protect civil rights and liberties across 865 students participating in an RCT in 15 middle and high schools. However, the effects are limited and seem to stop short of behavioral change, with no significant evidence that the intervention affected students' sense of civic obligation, empathy, willingness to take on roles as upstanders, or inclinations toward civil disobedience. This study is therefore more consistent with the notion that knowledge alone, even when affecting students, has its limits in triggering political mobilization. There are also notable interactions with gender, ethnicity, and social class which should

serve as a warning of the danger of drawing universal conclusions from controlled trials and the benefit of obtaining large sample sizes, so that these finer grain analyses can be investigated.

### 5.1.6. Participatory Approaches

Many of the initiatives described by the articles identified in this review have made some use of participatory techniques to a greater or lesser extent, among which we can include regular discussions, debates, and simulation exercises (such as mock elections and trials) (Hoskins et al. 2012). For example, Kawashima-Ginsberg (2013) found evidence for the efficacy of exactly these practices in a control trial analysis of 10 to 16 year-old pupil scores on the national civics assessment test. For brevity, we will not repeat the description of other studies with common participatory elements described under different headings, but would encourage readers interested in this theme to look at the studies by Syvertsen et al. (2009); McDevitt and Kiousis (2006); Gill et al. (2018); Condon and Wichowsky (2018).

That said, special attention under this heading is given to a couple of articles which are particularly instructive. Firstly, a very thorough participatory approach was studied by Ozer and Douglas (2013). This program in the U.S. tested the difference that participating in youth-led research has for the young people involved. The approach is learner-centered at every stage, with the research topics selected by the students themselves, and consequently included a diverse range of topics, such as: prevention of school drop-out; stress related to family, academics, or peers; improving the school lunch; cyber-bullying; improving teaching practices to engage diverse students; and improving inter-ethnic friendships at the school. The RCT study involved 401 students at five high schools and found that attending these participatory research elective classes during the school day was associated with increases in the students' sociopolitical skills and motivation to influence their schools and communities. The indication that learner-led approaches such as this may circumvent the previously discussed disconnect between knowledge and motivation to act is a primary attraction of participatory methods over more acquisition-based approaches.

Secondly, the study by Feldman et al. (2007) is quite unique, as it was able to isolate the effects of various elements of a Student Voice program. The program as a whole was quite participatory in that teachers were given a framework of election-based activities but could deviate significantly based on student interests. Overall, the program produced increased interest, knowledge, and efficacy in regards to politics, as measured across 22 U.S. high schools, each of which had a control group. But they were also able to show that it was political discussion within classrooms which was the primary driver of this change, more so than other eye-catching activities within the program, such as actually meeting the election candidates.

### 5.1.7. Digital

Perhaps the timeliest studies are those which evaluate the emergence of online learning environments. The findings across this section suggest that the digital world is similar to the offline world and that it is high engagement actions, in this case the student-led creation of content, that lead to changes in attitudes and behavior.

A study by Smith et al. (2009) stresses the importance of active participation in online environments. They conducted a novel RCT of online discussions on moderated chatrooms using a large mixed age market research panel in the UK (*n* = 6009) and found that only those who posted content showed evidence of developing their opinions through discussion. This is contrasted with those who spent time reading the message boards but did not actively post themselves, and subsequently showed no discernible change in opinions. Strandberg (2015) carried out a similar online RCT deliberation across 70 adults in Finland, finding that some alleviation of the polarization of opinion as well as the participants' feelings of efficacy.

The importance of social support within online environments is taken up by Levy et al. (2015), who studied a sample of 309 US high school students, out of which one class was instructed to keep political blogs to document their thoughts on the unfolding election. The authors find that the "bloggers" developed greater political interest and confidence in their political skills and knowledge, even when compared to their peers in other government courses. However, the authors also note that some students got frustrated at the lack of responses to their blog posts, pointing toward the importance of a receptive audience within a community of learning if this technique is to be further developed. On this same point, Margetts et al. (2009) showed that a mechanism can be built into online environments which simulates the social support and pressure of collective action. Their controlled trial found that among 668 adults, it was those who had received positive feedback from supportive participants who were more likely to go on to sign more online petitions. But a note of caution is sounded by Vissers et al. (2012) to those who assume that online political activity necessarily translates into offline action. Their RCT study on Belgian university students found that learning activities run online on climate change only influenced online behavior and did not change offline behavior.

Yet the evidence that an online environment can develop core political skills is stronger. A study from Hong Kong, China (Chan 2019), looked specifically at the use of a digital storytelling program run through the online platform Facebook for the development of civic identity and skills. Though not explicitly political, we include this RCT, involving 87 16 to 24 year-olds outside the formal education system, as it showed evidence of improvements in relevant skills and dispositions, namely enhanced critical thinking, along with an accompanying decline in ethnocentric views. The article by Kawashima-Ginsberg (2012) also demonstrates how online methods can stimulate political skill development. Using assessment scores to evaluate an iCivics computer-based teaching module, they showed through a clustered RCT of 1526 students in 42 schools in the US, of students aged 12 to 15 years-old, that the program was effective in improving the grades students received from writing a persuasive letter to a newspaper.


**Table 1.** Identified control trials of citizenship education for political engagement.


### **Table 1.** *Cont*.


### **Table 1.** *Cont*.

### **6. Why Aren't There More Control Trials?**

During the course of our searches, we also came across several papers which help to explain why there have not been more RCTs in Citizenship Education. These largely reflect the more general concerns of applying RCTs to the education research discussed previously, but with specific reference to Citizenship Education. Some of these underline the valid, practical concerns that the demands of running a satisfactory RCT are too exacting and expensive. Bakker and Denters (2012) point out that the ideal of a classical experiment is generally unachievable, as the number of subjects in each of the treatment and control groups really has to be quite large to even out the variance in all relevant characteristics, and this is without considering whether the true unit of analysis should be the collective rather than the individual (the clustering of students within classes and schools should at

least be taken into account). In a similar vein, Shek et al. (2012) note that it is very expensive to conduct randomized group trials in an adequate variety of settings to demonstrate the generalizability of a program outside a specific set of conditions. Yet there is more fundamental epistemological and ontological resistance. Mathison (2009) questions whether certain assumptions might be part of a neoliberal ideology of efficiency and commoditization within education, including the notion that accountability is necessarily good if linked to competitive marketplace practices or narrow econometric thinking. Postcolonial critiques, such as that given by Singh et al. (2018), point out that the relationship of the researcher-researched has been compared to that of the colonizer-colonized, particularly when reliant on the types of standardized measures which are a feature of all RCTs. For such reasons, decoloniality has tended to favor the transparency and inclusiveness of qualitative or participatory research praxis. Yet we also found the argument that RCTs can be a part of progressive post-positivism. Shek et al. (2012) suggest in their evaluation of a youth development course in Hong Kong that post-positivism can be understood as embracing the multiplicity of available methods, rather than valorizing certain qualitative approaches, whilst Singh et al. (2018) go on to reject that quantitative paradigms are impermeable to reflexivity and decoloniality and begin to demonstrate how the methodological principles of controlled trials can be more reflectively administered so as to properly acknowledge oppression. Bakker and Denters (2012) note the parallels between experiments and action research as a reason for optimism, in that both actively interfere in reality. This points to a possible path toward rehabilitation for controlled trials if they follow action research tenets to place the disadvantaged group as the primary stakeholder and client, which may involve minimizing the influence of preconceived policy and academic agendas. Bakker and Denters (2012) go on to suggest the design experiment methodology represents a way forward (the term "design" referring to the blueprint of a new instrument that is to be developed during the research process). Stoker and John (2009) similarly indicate that if experimentation is stripped of its black box dogmatism and researchers try to directly observe and understand apparent change, then comparison groups can still play an important role in providing policy makers with the type of evidence they respond to.

### **7. Conclusions**

The number of control trials which truly address Citizenship Education for political engagement is unsurprisingly small. Not only does the field have a history of institutional abandonment and co-option, but there is some reluctance within the research community to fully embrace controlled trials. This concern is based on a desire to promote the interests of powerless and unrepresented groups, but those who champion controlled trials also share that same goal and see those groups as poorly served by a lack of understanding as to which educational methods really do work to break the cycle of political socialization which reproduces and exacerbates inequalities. Reconciling these epistemological tensions within the field will doubtless be an ongoing theme over the coming years.

It would be premature to draw too concrete conclusions, given the very limited evidence base, but the general picture is one which appears to broadly confirm the existing knowledge in the field rather than revealing new findings, underlining the role of control trials in ensuring that an existing educational method is effective. The starkest gap in the evidence base is geographical, with 17 out of the 25 studies being from the US or UK and only four studies evaluating projects from the global south, with two of these from China. This is particularly important, given that there can be no safe assumptions that findings in one cultural context will stand in another.

The studies identified are quite evenly split between those which aim to improve knowledge and skills and those which seek to change attitudes or behaviors. These two domains do not necessarily cross-pollinate, and many of the studies which showed enhanced cognitive learning did not show alterations to behavioral change, a point made most explicitly by Green et al. (2011). However, the studies do suggest some nuance is necessary with this view, as it seems that the provision of basic knowledge on civic

duties, such as how to vote and why it is important, may initiate changes in attitudes and behaviors in circumstances in which this base awareness is lacking (Pang et al. 2013; Syvertsen et al. 2009). Likewise, the teaching of psychosocial or noncognitive skills, even when separated from political education, appears to yield promising results (Holbein 2017). But most of the studies which led to changes in attitudes or behaviors were essentially participatory. The clearest examples of this participatory approach is perhaps Ozer and Douglas (2013) study of a participatory research class and McDevitt and Kiousis (2006) study of simulated political discussions within families. There are also signs that the participatory approach to attitudinal and behavioral change is also applicable to online interventions, with the evidence being that active engagement (as opposed to passively viewing) and peer feedback mechanisms play a similarly critical role online, as they do offline (Smith et al. 2009; Strandberg 2015; Margetts et al. 2009), though whether online engagement translates into offline action remains in doubt (Vissers et al. 2012). The evidence also supports the effectiveness of a whole school approach (Gill et al. 2018) and of the necessity of quality teacher training (Barr et al. 2015).

**Author Contributions:** Writing—Original Draft: S.D., B.H. Both authors have participated in all sections. Both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This report was supported by the Robert Bosch Stiftung.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interests.

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