Strengthening democracy in the Americas through civic education : an empirical analysis highlighting the views of students and teachers / Judith Torney-Purta, Jo-Ann Amadeo

Strengthening democracy in the Americas through civic education : an empirical analysis highlighting the views of students and teachers / Judith Torney-Purta, Jo-Ann Amadeo

Washington, DC: OAS, 2004

English

The study is based on a secondary analysis of the data collected by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s (IEA) Civic Education Study in 28 countries during 1999 and 2000. Specifically, this report presents the results of mining the data from the three countries in the Americas that participated in the IEA study: Chile, Colombia and the United States. The chapters in this report contain information about the civic knowledge, attitudes and activities of 14- and 17- year-old students, as well as the opinions of teachers who teach civic education. These data, in turn, were correlated with characteristics of the students’ households, the more or less democratic environment in the schools, use of mass media, and students’ participation in social movements. Based on the results, the researchers suggest policy implications in areas such as: curriculum reform; teacher training; design of teaching materials; mass media education; inclusion of economic related topics in civic education; and participatory processes in the classroom, the school and the community.

English