A school effectiveness approach to good citizenship

Schools are traditionally considered agents of political socialization. However, the school’s capacity to promote citizenry among students is often considered limited, in comparison to the expected influence of the socioeconomic background of students’ families. Using data from IEA’s International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS), this chapter inquires if schools’ differences are related to students’ citizenship norms endorsement, focusing on the relationship between civic learning opportunities and open classroom discussion of schools on promoting citizenship norms endorsement among students. To this end, a multilevel multinomial base category logit model is used, including students’ and schools’ characteristics specifying citizenship norms profiles as the dependent variable. Citizenship norms profiles is a nominal variable, that summarize the way students endorse 12 different citizenship norms, across countries. Results suggest that schools explain a non-ignorable portion of the variance of students’ citizenship norms endorsement. Additionally, civic learning opportunities and open classroom discussion are school practices that promote a comprehensive endorsement of citizenship norms, above students’ socioeconomic background, and students’ civic background across countries. Implications for civic education are discussed.