Data Collection and Analysis

Because of time and financial constraints we chose to use email and an online questionnaire. Because we only wanted political scientists who are currently teaching, we used political science department web sites as our source for e-mail and mailing addresses (see Dillman 2000). Approximately 2,275 valid email addresses were collected. The faculty survey was placed on a web site for online completion and also sent as an email attachment. Six hundred and ten faculty responded by completing the online faculty survey, for a response rate of slightly over 20%. Surveys were also mailed to a random sample of 600 political scientists; 200 surveys were returned from this mailing–a response rate of 33%. The respondents reflected the population of political science faculty reported by the APSA (2001). The percentage of male and female respondents mirrored the percentage of political science faculty who are male and female. However, respondents were more likely to be in small (fewer than 10 faculty) departments (81% vs. 65% for APSA members) and in social science or combined departments rather than political science (38% vs. 26% for APSA members).

The survey asked faculty their perception of their department's mission, their personal specialties, how they define their role, their feelings about the appropriateness of civic education, whether they teach civic education courses, and how they assess such courses. To complete the analysis, primary faculty activity was recoded as TEACHING to include the responses teaching, teaching and research, and teaching and service as (1) and all others (0). Professional specialty was recoded as POLICY to include the responses public policy and public administration as (1) and all other specialties coded (0).

Regarding civic education, we stated, “There are many ways in which a faculty member might teach civic and political responsibilities or involve students in civic activities,” and then asked them to check all the activities that they personally undertook. The activities included teaching a course with explicit goal of teaching civic responsibilities, organizing a program or event with an explicit goal of teaching civic responsibilities, teaching a course with an explicit goal of stimulating civic engagement, and organizing a program or event with an explicit goal of stimulating civic engagement. We created the variable ED ENLIGHTEN as a dummy variable to include faculty who checked either “teach course with explicit goal of teaching civic and political responsibilities,” or “organize a program or event with an explicit goal of teaching civic and political responsibilities.” The variable ED ENGAGE was created as a dummy variable for the responses “teach a course with an explicit goal of stimulating civic engagement,” or “organize a program or event with an explicit goal of stimulating civic engagement.”

Citizenship Education

To what extent do political science faculty consider education about citizenship to be a primary teaching objective? Two questions were established to measure faculty attitudes about the appropriateness of teaching civic education. In response to our question, “How appropriate do you think it is for political science faculty to teach students about the principal civic and political responsibilities or duties incumbent upon citizens in a democratic society?” (abbreviated APPTEACH), more than 97% of the faculty responded that it was appropriate in some pedagogical situations, while 43.5% said they considered it to be a duty for all faculty. Despite these responses, 20% of the respondents who believe it is a duty to teach civic responsibilities do not do so themselves. Faculty who are expected to excel in research are least likely to feel teaching civic responsibilities is appropriate, while those who specialize in policy or public administration are most likely to feel it is appropriate: 60% of these faculty saying it is a duty to teach civic responsibilities.

Another question (abbreviated APPREQUIR) asked, “How appropriate do you think it is for political science faculty to require civic and political engagement or activities and political participation among students?” received a less favorable response rate, with 16.3% responding that such a requirement was inappropriate, and only 8.5% indicating it was a duty for all political science faculty. Seventy-five percent, however, felt it was appropriate in some pedagogical contexts. Again, fewer faculty actually teach or supervise programs to accomplish these goals than say it is appropriate to do so. Almost 26% of those who consider it a duty do not teach or organize programs that require civic or political engagement. Faculty who are expected to excel in research or teaching and research responded most negatively, while faculty who teach public administration or public policy responded most positively. Almost 90% (89.3%) of the public administration/policy faculty felt that it was appropriate in at least some contexts to require civic or political activity among students; in contrast, only 77.7% of political theorists felt that it was sometimes appropriate. It appears that faculty who are more directly tied to the study of political action in America are more likely to believe students should be engaged in civic or political action than methodologists, theorists, and those specializing in international relations or comparative politics. Male faculty were also more likely to believe the requirement was inappropriate (19.4% for male versus 9.2% for female faculty).

Faculty Political and Civic Activism and Civic Education

Are the faculty who rank citizenship education as a very important pedagogical objective more likely to be participants in civic and political organizations? Using APPTEACH and APPREQUIR as measures of faculty attitudes about teaching civic responsibilities and stimulating civic engagement, and our computed variables #HOURS, which counts the number of hours per week the faculty member engages in civic or political service, and #ACTIONS, which counts the number of civic actions reported by the faculty member during the past year, we find that faculty members who are civically active are more likely to believe teaching civic responsibility and requiring political engagement by students are appropriate pedagogical tools. As the regression results reported in Table 1 indicate, both #HOURS and #ACTIONS variables were significant contributors to both the perceived appropriateness of teaching and the appropriateness of requiring civic and political engagement, although #ACTIONS is the most significant. Although primary faculty role (TEACHING) was included in the model, it was not significant. Field of teaching, the number of hours of community service, the number of civic actions, and gender all contribute to faculty attitudes about teaching civic responsibilities. The model is very similar when regarding faculty attitudes about requiring civic engagement, but the faculty role (teaching vs. research or service) makes a difference in this model. Interestingly, it is a negative relationship, indicating that research faculty are more likely to think requiring civic activities is appropriate. Faculty attitudes about requiring civic engagement are strongly related to their personal level of civic participation and to their gender, role, number of hours of community service, and teaching area.

Political science faculty's attitudes about civic education appear to be affected by the type of volunteer or civic activity in which the faculty member engages. Family and church related activities are not correlated with attitudes about teaching civic responsibility. Attitudes about requiring civic and political engagement are, however, correlated with church activities and service on boards as a volunteer but not with other volunteer activities. Attending hearings and writing letters are the two civic actions most strongly related to attitudes about both teaching and requiring civic or political activities.

To what degree does faculty behavior reflect faculty attitudes about teaching? We asked faculty whether they taught a range of courses or organized programs with the specific goals of teaching civic responsibilities or stimulating civic action. The majority of respondents teach or organize at least one of the courses or programs we listed. Over 39% teach a course to stimulate civic engagement; 53% teach a course that teaches civic responsibilities; 35.1% organize programs to teach civic responsibilities; and 33.9% organize a program to stimulate civic engagement. Only 30% responded that they neither taught nor organized any of these four options. Although a majority of faculty (53%) indicated that they teach a course with an explicit goal of teaching civic responsibility, we do not have course syllabi or other evidence to describe the manner by which this goal is achieved. Approximately 26% of faculty responded that they teach a service-learning course, a pedagogy with an often-stated goal of promoting civic engagement, although only three syllabi were offered to support this contention.

As with attitudes about teaching, faculty who engaged in either volunteer activities or civic activities also appeared to be more likely to both teach civic responsibilities and teach or require civic action among their students. An OLS regression, reported in Table 2, found that perceived appropriateness of teaching (APPTEACH), #ACTIONS, and whether faculty require civic participation of students (ED ENGAGE) were most significant in predicting whether faculty would teach civic responsibilities (ED ENLIGHTEN). With regard to required student civic and political engagement, the results were similar. The only non-significant variable in this model was POLICY (faculty member's specialty). The variables #HOURS, GENDER, and #ACTIONS were the strongest predictors. Interestingly, the significant variables measure personal attitudes and behavior rather than professional and institutional attributes. These results suggest that the employment of politically committed faculty could further the civic education of undergraduates. Also, personal civic engagement is more important than volunteer work in guiding faculty members' decisions to teach civic education courses. Therefore, we conclude that the political science faculty who rank citizenship education as a very important pedagogical objective are more likely to be participants in civic organizations. Political and civic activism by faculty motivates their efforts to offer civic and political education and stimulate the political engagement of students.

Faculty Choice of Experiential Education

If faculty believe citizenship education is a duty for all faculty, are they more likely to use experiential learning pedagogy? How do they measure the success of this activity? Because service-learning is often touted as a method for either teaching civic responsibilities or stimulating civic engagement, we asked whether faculty use service-learning. Approximately 26% of faculty respondents said that they use service-learning. The use of service-learning is highly correlated with #HOURS and #ACTIONS–our measures of faculty civic and political engagement, APPREQUIR, APPTEACH–our measures of the appropriateness of teaching and requiring courses on civic enlightenment, and ED ENLIGHTEN and ED ENGAGE–our measures of faculty actions such as organizing programs related to civic responsibility or stimulating civic engagement. In addition, tenured associate professors are most likely to use service-learning (34.3%) while those faculty with more than 25 years of teaching are least likely to report using service-learning (19.3%). Female faculty are more likely to use service-learning (32.2%) than male faculty (24.4%).

The third section of Table 2, labeled SERVICE LEARNING, shows the results of an OLS regression analysis with the teaching of service-learning as the dependent variable and–as independent variables–gender, rank, #HOURS (hours of community service), POLICY (teach policy field), ED ENLIGHTEN, ED ENGAGE, TEACHING (primary faculty role), #ACTIONS (number of civic activities), APPTEACH (appropriateness of teaching civic or political responsibility), and APPREQUIR (appropriateness of requiring civic or political engagement). This model indicates that ED ENGAGE, #HOURS, and APPREQUIR are the most important predictors of teaching service-learning. These variables measure attitudes about requiring civic activity and teaching courses to stimulate civic activity. Whether the faculty member teaches in policy or public administration and GENDER are next in importance. Faculty who are themselves active, who teach in a field that is often applied, and who believe courses that involve students in civic activity are appropriate are also the faculty who are most likely to use service-learning as a pedagogical tool. Most significant is whether they organize programs to stimulate civic engagement. It appears that most faculty perceive service-learning as a tool to achieve that particular goal. The model thus suggests that the political science faculty who use service-learning are politically and civically committed faculty who plan classes to require student's civic engagement. Faculty who are not personally engaged are not likely to push students to become engaged. Degree of personal civic involvement and whether they think it is appropriate to teach civic responsibility do not predict the use of service-learning.

Assessment of Activities

As Table 3 indicates, a majority of faculty who report that they teach courses or organize programs to stimulate civic engagement provide no formal assessment at all. Exams are the most common tool used by those faculty who assess their students' activities. Almost a majority (46.3%) of faculty who report teaching courses or organizing programs with an explicit goal of teaching civic responsibility also provide no formal assessment. Of those faculty reporting that they use service-learning, 19% report no formal assessment of civic understanding and 21.1% do no formal assessment of student's political engagement. Exit interviews are the most common form of assessment (53.3% for civic understanding and 69.2% for political engagement). Also, 42.7% report that they use exams, papers, or a senior thesis to measure students' level of civic understanding, and 52.1% use these methods to measure students' political engagement. Perhaps most interesting, but also disturbing, is that 11.1% of those faculty who say they use service-learning do not require any form of reflection. Because reflection is considered to be an essential component of service-learning, it appears that more than 10% of the faculty who say they use service-learning leave out an important component of the pedagogy or misunderstand what a service-learning course should include.

Incentives for Civic Education

Do departments promote and reward faculty efforts in civic or political education? Overall, it appears that very few faculty receive any extra rewards for teaching such courses. Only 20.3% of faculty members reported receiving any incentives. However, the more of these courses or activities in which faculty members were engaged, the more likely they were to receive some form of incentive. Over 35% of those who taught all four types of “civics” courses reported incentives. The most common incentive reported (12%) was consideration of the activity in promotion and tenure decisions. The existence of incentives did not contribute significantly toward attitudes about teaching, requiring civic activity, nor did it predict whether faculty taught any of the 12 possible civic education options.