Four forms of youth civic engagement for diverse democracy
Introduction
This paper analyzes four forms of youth civic engagement for diverse democracy, and some of their educational practices: Grassroots organizing, citizen participation, intergroup dialogue, and sociopolitical development. These four forms are not the only ones – others include community service, public advocacy, and neighborhood development – but are among the important ones.
The paper examines each form according to analytic categories, compares similarities and differences, and raises questions about education for engagement. It draws on work in psychology, sociology, and other academic disciplines; and on intergroup relations, multicultural education, social work, and other professional fields which encompass this topic. Our hope is that this clarification of engagement will strengthen scholarship and, in so doing, contribute to practice.
Section snippets
Perspectives on practice
Civic engagement is when people join together and take action on issues of public concern. It can include initiatives to “organize” action groups, “participate” in community agencies, “advocate” issues in a school board or city council, and other approaches too numerous to mention (Ekman & Amnå, 2012).
Civic engagement is instrumental to democracy, and its forms should be adapted to changes in society. As American society increases in its populations of African, Asian, and Latin American
Forms of engagement
In this section, we distinguish among forms of civic engagement in a society whose populations are changing, as summarized in Diagram 1.
We caution that typologies are heuristic devices which provide conceptual clarification but which should not reified in actual practice, for most situations include “mixing and phasing” of approaches (Rothman, 1968, Weil et al., 2012).
Mixing and phasing
Overall, each form of civic engagement is distinguishable from the others. For example, there are young people who participate in formal politics and “work within the system”; who form grassroots groups to influence agencies by organizing around them; or who employ intergroup dialogue to increase communications among diverse community members.
There are young people who assume that democracy is color blind and that majority rule will produce a public interest; who assume that democracy benefits
New civics for diverse democracy
Society is changing and new epistemologies of civic engagement will be required to build capacity for the future. Whereas once citizen participation might have sufficed, today's society is searching for new forms of engagement and new ways of thinking about them.
What are some ways to prepare young people for civic engagement in a diverse democracy? Education for citizen participation emphasizes involvement in established institutions which complement existing power structures; grassroots
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