Looking across high-impact practices: First-year student democratic awareness & democratic participation

Abstract

Creating educated and informed citizens for our diverse democracy has long been one of the objectives of the U.S. educational system. Traditionally, service-learning has been the primary tool for colleges and universities to promote civic outcomes; however, other practices also hold the potential to improve civic outcomes. In this study, we find that service-learning, learning communities, and research with faculty are positively and significantly correlated to two measures of democratic engagement for a multi-institutional sample of first-year students. The results have important implications for how postsecondary institutions promote civic outcomes.