Associations of Civic Attitudes in Service Learning

Abstract

Civic responsibility is comprised of actions and attitudes associated with democratic governance and social participation. Students enrolled at institutions of higher education have the opportunity to transform their social interests into advocacy through personal connections with the community. Service learning is an effective method of increasing citizenship participation and civic responsibility by incorporating community service activities with academic coursework.

This study used survey research to examine the civic attitude scores of service learning students at a large, public, mid-Atlantic state university. The research questions attained information on the associations among students who perform written and discussion reflection activities (outside of class and in-class) regarding civic attitude by gender, class year, and grade point average. The associations between interest in future service participation and civic attitude were also examined.

The data were collected using surveys. Crosstabulation procedures and chi-square tests were used to analyze the data. It was found that students who performed discussion reflection activities and reflected outside of class had higher civic attitude levels and more interest in future service participation.