Final Thoughts on My Journey: Engaging Seniors in Government

Throughout this year, I conducted a study on my 12th grade U.S. Government classes. This was my first time to teach this course and I was excited to have this opportunity during an election cycle. This led me to my SET Lab research question: How can I maximize the civic engagement of my 12th-grade government students upon their graduation in time to vote in the 2020 election?

I developed this topic as a natural progression of my past research and from the desire to prepare my senior students to vote in their first presidential election. The first issue that is evident with this population includes the fact that many students lose interest in working hard in school during their senior year. This typically occurs when students have started hearing back from colleges. A second issue with this population regards civic education. Civic participation is an important right and privilege in America and current seniors in high school will be voting in their first election in the fall of 2020. Thus, it is important that they be engaged in the subject of government.

My research hypothesis stated: Teacher design of class activities along with collaboration from student ideas will create an engaging atmosphere of learning whereby students will continue to actively participate and seek knowledge about the governmental process in the United States.

Research

I reviewed academic and journal articles that examined pedagogical strategies to increase civic engagement at the high school level. I felt affirmed with many of the practices studied and was also inspired to incorporate some new activities into my classroom. These practices include:

• Project-based learning
• Engagement First — students begin project work and role-play before they are presented with lectures and readings. In this model, students ask questions about the topic through their roles, which may help them develop content interest.
• Active learning techniques: Role plays, Political simulations, Debates about political issues, Mock elections, Peer-to-peer discussions
• Provide choice — student involvement in the curricular decision-making process to increase student autonomy
• Open classroom climate — discussion of current events and political issues in a safe environment

Class Conference

To begin my data collection, I held a student conference. I wanted to find out if the student responses corresponded with my research on engaging class activities. I also wanted the students to help me develop new activities to use in class that they would enjoy. Following are the questions I asked for both the survey and conference:

• What types of activities do you enjoy doing in class?
• If you were to design a class activity, what would it look like?
• What would be your dream activity for government this year?

After analyzing the surveys and the conference data, I was pleased to find that my research correlated with student ideas. They liked:

• Projects, especially group projects
• Debates
• Role plays
• Current events discussions
• Solving real-world conflicts (political simulations)

Furthermore, students made additional valuable suggestions that I will incorporate into future lesson plans:

• Art/drawing projects
• Video projects
• Mock trial on a current issue or event

Five Activities

Following is a summary of five of the activities I conducted with my students that I measured through self-report inventories.

How a Bill Becomes a Law

Students were provided with a variety of choices to demonstrate their understanding of how a bill becomes a law. Students chose their project groups, legislation to follow that had been recently enacted into law, and type of final product. These included creating a game, website, video, and podcast. Students reported that the project was interesting, contributed to their understanding of the legislative process, and that they enjoyed the array of choices provided for the project.

Class Debate on the Electoral College

After student research, we had a debate on the electoral college, created by student request during our unit on the presidency. Students found the debate engaging and reported that they learned a lot about the electoral college from the activity. They also shared that they would like to conduct another debate on a topic of interest.

Web Site on Presidential Candidates and Issues

Throughout these two units for six weeks, students collaborated on a Google Site I designed to follow the issues that students deemed most important through a survey. The six issues were: education, health care, economy, energy & environment, gun control, and immigration. The survey provided them with ownership over the project and student participation was at 100% throughout the project. Each week involved a different issue and research on a different candidate, reporting out on Fridays. Students reported that they understood the positions of the presidential candidates on the issues better through the election issues project. The web site provided an interesting and engaging format for them to include their research, and they added pictures to their pages.

Campaign Simulations

Students participated in two class simulations regarding campaigns designed as group activities to help understand how campaigns work and simulate the decision making necessary for campaign success. Students reported high rates of engagement in the process and significant increases in the understanding of how campaigns work. Additionally, they enjoyed the group collaboration and debate portion in the simulations. In the final simulation, students individually played the Win the White House game by iCivics. Students reported high engagement levels along with increased understanding of the election process through the simulation, which had them make real-world decisions during the election process.

Creating a Campaign Advertisement

The final project for this unit was for students to create a video campaign advertisement for a real presidential candidate of their choice. Their reports were high on increased self-understanding of what is entailed in creating a campaign message. During the post-project survey, they rated elements that they enjoyed the most. The top selections were: making a video, applying what they learned about elections, and being creative.

Themes

After analyzing the data, I found four themes that emerged from my research:

• Choice leads to engagement: It provides autonomy, empowerment of learning, and ownership of learning
• Active Learning Techniques lead to engagement: Including role plays, political simulations, debates about political issues, mock elections, peer-to-peer discussions
• Open Classroom Climate leads to engagement: This means safety, free discussion of current and political events without judgement, and student-led topics
• Project-based learning leads to engagement: This includes student simulations, role-plays, debates all increased interest in topics; mock elections increased understanding of process; mock legislative process simulations, moot court, campaign simulations produced positive self-reports

What Have I Learned?

• Empowering students with a voice regarding their learning makes a monumental difference both for me as a teacher and for their engagement in government class.
• Student ownership of their learning led to increased engagement. Making students feel a part of the process has made them feel that we, teacher and students, are a team.
• All data indicates that these students are more likely to vote and participate in civic activities in the future.

I am fortunate to have worked with an amazing group of students who welcomed the collaboration and the opportunities for engaging in the study of U.S. Government. My hope is that I have empowered them to actively participate in civic life. I look forward to exploring these issues further in the new school year, with a focus on digital engagement. My journey has been documented on this Medium blog and also on Twitter, hashtags #setlab, #educationscientist, and #changebydesign.