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Student civic participation in school: What makes a difference in Ireland?

This article is one of a series of publications by the authors arising from the findings of the IEA’s International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS). ICCS was a large scale international survey conducted in 38 countries of 14-year old students, their teachers and school principals. In Ireland, a sample of 3355 students from 144 schools and 1,861 teachers from 137 of those schools participated.ICCS findings from the Republic of Ireland were published in two national reports – a ‘first findings’ summary report and an extended detailed report aimed at policy makers, education professionals, and the research community. These were followed up by two conference presentations and two peer-reviewed journal articles.. The current article employs sophisticated multilevel modelling techniques to examine the student and school characteristics associated with civic participation at school. One major original contribution of this article is that it focuses on civic participation as an outcome of interest; much previous work on secondary analyses of large scale datasets focuses on measures of achievement as the only outcome of interest. It is increasingly recognised that engagement in school culture should be recognised as important outcome in its own right and this paper attempts to address the major imbalance in the education literature which prioritises measures of achievement over engagement and participation. The Hope author was also involved in the presentation of findings from ICCS to the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment and the Department of Education and Skills.

It is anticipated that the revised curriculum at lower secondary level will place a greater emphasis on student engagement; ICCS is one of a number of pieces of research which has contributed to this development.