You may wonder why a book containing essays primarily by faculty outside of political science—from history, communications, mathematics, and even chemistry—would be reviewed in the pages of Perspectives on Politics. Even with the title Citizenship Across the Curriculum, such a volume would seem to have limited appeal to political scientists. There are, however, many things to recommend about this book.

The volume was born out of a year the different authors spent together as Fellows in a Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) program. These scholars' commitment to advancing teaching and learning in their own courses and disciplines caused them to realize that, in different ways, they were also contributing to the civic education of their students. The different essays that comprise the book demonstrate how faculty teaching courses that range from communications and English to history and political science to chemistry, mathematics, and physics look at questions of citizenship and politics. More importantly, invoking the writing across the curriculum (WAC) movement, the book makes a powerful argument against sequestering citizenship education within a single discipline like political science. Each author's exploration of the citizenship dimensions of his or her different courses and disciplines contributes to this larger argument.

Herein lies one of the main contributions of this volume for us as political scientists. There is much to take away in the different definitions of citizenship that emerge from the authors here. Cultural linguist Rona Halualani talks about citizenship as being “actively involved and immersed in one's surrounding community and civic society” (p. 37), with an emphasis on intercultural understanding and communication. Communications expert Carmen Werder uses the metaphor of “self-authorship” to convey an understanding of citizenship as how one understands personal identity in relationship to others (p. 64). Chemist Matthew Fisher makes important connections among science, citizenship, and public policy (p. 113), and physicist David Geelan sees citizenship as “being able to participate in an informed way in the ongoing social conversation around the issues and problems facing a society” (p. 149). Michael B. Smith, a scholar of history and environmental studies, uses the phrase “adaptive capacity” (p. 181) to capture the essence of citizenship in an interdependent world. The book even contains more spiritual understandings of citizenship, with Howard Tinberg's discussion of building “a soulful relationship with others” (p. 86) and Rebecca S. Nowacek's definition of citizenship as “vocation … something we are called to do” (p. 95). Taken together, the authors offer a rich conception of citizenship, one made up of a complex integration of different forms of knowledge, competencies, and values, all leading to more effective (and reflective) public action. Political scientists can learn much from this composite definition of political identity and participation.

Another clear contribution comes from understanding that citizenship is a perspective that needs to inform our teaching, in a way that takes the teacher beyond the role of disciplinary expert and content conveyer and teaching beyond mere cognitive development, as important as these things may be. In the lone essay by a political scientist, Jeffrey L. Bernstein makes the case for this “citizenship-oriented perspective” in his chapter on teaching American government. Through his own case study and comparative course research, he finds that a discipline-based content knowledge orientation is limiting, because “disciplinary knowledge alone is quickly forgotten by our students.” He concludes that a “citizenship-oriented perspective can give students tools and dispositions to be more effective participants in their government and community…. [T]hese lessons will last longer than lessons about checks and balances ever will.” (p. 14).

A third significant contribution is the book's implicit claim, woven through the fabric of each essay, that, to use David Scobey's words, “the crux of civic education lies in the pedagogical encounter between teacher and student” (p. 192). In each essay, the author narrates a powerful and personal tale of educational transformation on the part of her/his students. And the story of student learning is not a general or theoretical case, but often centers on the teachers' use of particular assignments or exercises and the analysis or essays that students in the authors' classes produce. For example, Carmen Werder's chapter analyzes students' written responses to an assignment asking them to construct metaphors for themselves as “learners,” “communicators,” and “citizens,” while Michael Smith examines the revision of his environmental history course to include an experiential local component. The case/course narratives, as exemplary reflections on the scholarship and art of teaching, will be useful to teachers in any discipline, including those of us in political science.

There is one significant flaw in the book that diminishes its contribution to the field of citizenship education in the college curriculum. The authors miss the opportunity to connect their arguments and course narratives to an existing literature in civic learning and engagement. In the introduction, ironically titled “Ending the Solitude of Citizenship Education,” Smith, Nowacek, and Bernstein invoke the WAC movement to make an argument about citizenship education. But this argument has been made for at least a decade, as Edward Zlotkowski's concluding essay indicates, and was the basis for an entire effort begun in 1999 by Campus Compact to engage a number of different disciplines in the enterprise of citizenship education. In political science, the American Political Science Association began its own civic education initiative in the 1990s, featuring curriculum workshops, resources from conceptual essays to syllabi, and a standing committee on Civic Education and Engagement. The course narratives and reflections that make up the bulk of Citizenship Across the Curriculum were preceded by an entire set of more than 20 discipline-based monographs on educating for engagement through service-learning (see, e.g., Richard M. Battistoni and William E. Hudson, eds., Experiencing Citizenship: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Political Science, 1997), none of which is referenced by any of the authors. It would have bolstered the arguments in this volume for the authors to have incorporated the findings in these monographs.

Even some of the definitions of citizenship announced by the different authors would have been bolstered by reference to other works. For example, Nowacek's understanding of “citizenship as vocation” has been expressed most recently by Ross Roholt, Roudy Hildreth, and Michael Baizerman (Becoming Citizens, 2009), and would have been strengthened by reference to their arguments about the formation of civic vocation in young people. The irony is that one of the main reasons for this book was the building of a community among the authors through their CASTL residency at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The book's arguments and contributions would have been enhanced by an effort to “build community” outside of the volume's authors, with an extensive larger literature in the field of citizenship education and engaged learning.

In the end, the insights that emerge from the essays about citizenship, teaching, and learning more than make up for the flaws made by the authors in failing to address the larger literature of civic engagement and education. At a time when other academic disciplines and courses are paying attention to the development of citizens who can understand and address the issues confronting us in our public life, political scientists would do well to think about what it means to be a citizen in the twenty-first century, and how our own scholarship and teaching can produce these capacities in our students.