The Effect of We the People…Project Citizen on the Civic Skills and Dispositions of Taiwanese Senior High School Students

Author: Show-Mann Liou(Department of Civic Education and Leadership,National Taiwan Normal University)

Vol.&No.：Vol. 49, No. 1
Date：April 2004
Pages：63-90
DOI：10.3966/2073753X2004044901004

Abstract：

We the People…Project Citizen is a civic education program for secondary school students that promotes informed and responsible participation in local government. The purposes of this study were to evaluate the effects of Project Citizen upon the civic skills and dispositions of Taiwanese senior high school students, to explore factors associated with its effectiveness, and to document teachers' perceptions of Project Citizen.
This research employed a non-random, pretest-posttest comparison group, quasi-experimental design. Twelve Taiwanese senior high school teachers each with two classes of students, one experimental and one comparison, participated in this study. During the Fall semester of 2001 (September 2001 to January 2002), the experimental students received instruction in Project Citizen as an adjunct to the traditional instruction of Civics or Three Principles of the People; the comparison students received traditional, discipline-based instruction that focused on the hierarchical model of knowledge acquisition.
Hierarchical ANCOVA of the posttest, using pretest as the covariate, indicated that students participating in Project Citizen significantly outperformed students in the comparison group in civic skills, political interest and commitment to rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Factors significantly associated with the effect of Project Citizen on the civic skills and dispositions of Taiwanese high school students included classroom climate and exposure to news of various resources.
Qualitative analyses of the teacher interviews revealed that all participating teachers responded positively toward Project Citizen and showed interest in implementing it again in their classes. The results also suggested, however, that time constraints, students' abilities, and the pressure from the Joint College Entrance Examination, among other factors, pose significant challenges to implementing Project Citizen in the Taiwanese context. Valuable suggestions to address these challenges, such as correlating Project Citizen with current curriculum frameworks and simplifying the procedures and materials, were provided by the participating teachers.

Keywords：We the People…Project Citizen, Civic Skills, Civic Dispositions, Hierarchical Analysis of Covariance (Hierarchical ANCOVA)

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