Gender and Civic Education

Civic education includes all of the ways in which young people are educated—both formally and informally—to be citizens of their local communities, nation-states, and the global society. Traditionally, civic education focused primarily on how schools taught students the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they needed to be informed, participating members of their communities and nation. In recent years, civic educators and researchers have broadened their attention beyond the political arena to also include the ways in which young people are prepared to be active in civil society—voluntary, nongovernmental sites of democratic life—and in the global community. Additionally, contemporary civic educators and scholars have recognized that diversity plays an important role in civic education. The young people who are constructing meaning of the political world and civil ...