Beyond Politics As Usual

Paths for Engaging College Students in Politics

Ray Minor, Ileana Marin

• Publisher: Kettering Foundation
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781945577031
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Beyond Politics as Usual: Paths for Engaging College Students in Politics sheds light on the political learning, thinking, and acting of college students today. The book, edited by Kettering program officers Ileana Marin and Ray Minor, endeavors to reveal the current practices and approaches that faculty and staff at institutions of higher learning and other nonprofits employ to instill democratic concepts, values, and skills in students. Chapters in this volume include: • Introduction, Ileana Marin and Ray C. Minor • Political Learning Opportunities in College: What Is the Research Evidence?, Constance Flanagan • Deliberation as Communicative Politics: Building Civic Engagement in College Students, Elizabeth Hudson • (Striving for) Democracy in Small Groups: Engaging Politics in a Communication Studies Course, Timothy J. Shaffer • Practicing Deliberative Democracy at Gulf Coast State College, Elizabeth Trentanelli • Political Participation Exercises as a Means of Teaching Civic and Networking Skills, Lindsey Lupo and Rebecca Brandy Griffin • The Potential of Living-Learning Communities as Civic Engagement Incubators, Mark Small • Civic Outcomes of Student Engagement in Sustained Dialogue, Rhonda Fitzgerald, Jo Constanz, and Darby Lacey • Campus Network: Galvanizing a New Generation to Participate in Making Public Policy, Joelle Gamble with Lydia Bowers, Taylor Jo Isenberg, and Madeleine McNally • Reengaging Students in Our Democracy: Lessons from the CSU Center for Public Deliberation and Its Student Associate Program, Martín Carcasson • Lessons Learned from College Student Moderators, Lisa-Marie Napoli • Learning to Deliberate: Implications for Political Participation after College, Katy Harriger, Jill McMillan, Christy Buchanan, and Stephanie Gusler • Afterthoughts: Democracy and Higher Education, David Mathews

(Striving for) Democracy in Small Groups:
Engaging Politics in a Communication
Studies Course

Timothy J. Shaffer
Kansas State University

MANY SCHOLARS WHO HAVE EXPLORED the political context of classrooms argue that one of the most important functions of the educational process is to prepare students for participation in a deliberative and engaging democracy. As Hess and McAvoy (2014, 4) put it, “schools are, and ought to be, political sites.” In a similar vein, Westheimer and Kahne (2004) acknowledge that “[at] the level of rhetoric, most educators, policymakers, and citizens agree that developing students’ capacities and commitments for effective and democratic citizenship is important.” But, they continue, “when we get specific about what democracy requires and about what kind of … curricula will best promote it … most of that consensus falls away” (241). Others have also noted the promise and challenges to integrating not only civic opportunities but also democratic thinking and structure into classrooms and other educational settings (Boyte and Finders 2016; Flanagan 2013; Levinson 2012). While much of this writing about the intersection of educational spaces and the preparation of students for democratic life concerns public school settings, the applicability of these statements resonates with those in higher education as well.

With increasing institutional commitment to civic and community engagement in both rhetoric and practice, colleges and universities have transformed service opportunities into universitywide initiatives that embrace the engagement movement as a manifestation of the public mission of higher education (Hoy and Johnson 2013; McIlrath, Lyons, and Munck 2012; Saltmarsh and Hartley 2011). Many universities have established or expanded centers for civic engagement to sustain partnerships between universities and communities as well as to provide resources for faculty and staff (Beere et al. 2011; Welch and Saltmarsh 2013a, b). In a review of research on engaged pedagogy, Eyler (2011) concluded that service-learning produced favorable outcomes on students’ political interests and efficacy, their sense of connectedness to community, their social responsibility, their future interest in community life, and their life skills. The impact of such pedagogical approaches is significant. Yet while community-based experiential-learning opportunities have increased and afford more opportunities to potentially develop political interest and efficacy, what is the connection between these opportunities and actually becoming more politically aware, involved, and engaged? Service learning has been recognized as a “powerful pedagogy” and a “high impact practice,” but to what end (National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement 2012, 59)?

While the engagement movement has exploded in recent decades, young people (ages 18 to 24) voted in 2014 at the lowest rate in 40 years (CIRCLE 2015). Looking back to surveys conducted in 2000 and 2001, 85 percent of undergraduate students felt that “community volunteerism” was better than “political engagement” as a way of solving community problems (Spiezio 2002, 15). And for many of those students, there existed a “clear conceptual distinction between political engagement and other forms of civic engagement.” More recent research has reinforced these findings, showing that college students disassociate from formal politics even if they are civically engaged (Longo et al. 2006). There has been a call for university leaders to “encourage the development of students’ ‘practical mind-set’ from direct service to more political action” (Hollander and Longo 2008, 7), but a serious challenge to doing so is that institutions—administrators, faculty, and students alike—can have a strong preference for engaging public issues in apolitical ways, focusing on more immediate needs and issues rather than on the underlying “wicked” public problems fraught with formal manifestations of “politics” (Carcasson and Sprain 2012; Ramley 2014).

One of the primary ways that colleges and universities can encourage the development of a more explicit understanding of politics is by integrating it into course content and through pedagogical approaches. Shifting away from the notion that “democracy” and “politics” are synonymous with elected officials and government, and toward a focus on the role of individual citizens as civic actors, is not only an important conceptual idea but also one that can and should transcend disciplinary boundaries. Addressing the question, “what should you and I do?” can be asked in a variety of settings and should not be limited to those in disciplines like political science.¹

This article describes an effort to embed the study of democratic practice and theory into a communication studies course focused on small-group discussion methods. Further, as described below, explicit engagement with political issues was woven throughout the course, not only into its content but also into its pedagogical approach.

Engaging Politics Unexpectedly

At Kansas State University, the Department of Communication Studies offers an upper-level undergraduate course focusing on small-group discussion methods. With 80.2 percent of undergraduate students enrolled at public universities in Kansas, the student body at Kansas State University reflects a Midwestern culture historically rooted in a pragmatic approach to politics. At one time, Kansas was home to a Progressive movement that fought for the abolition of slavery and farmers’ rights (e.g., Lansing 2015). In recent decades, however, a decidedly more antiestablishment brand of conservatism has come to shape the state in dramatic ways (Farrier 2015; Frank 2004; Wuthnow 2012). For example, in 2008, when Barack Obama beat John McCain by seven points in the popular vote nationally for president of the United States, McCain won Kansas by 15 percentage points (Wuthnow 2012, 3). This ideological and political climate is not disconnected from the classroom. In the 2014 edition of the Princeton Review’s “The Best 378 Colleges,” Kansas State University was ranked as the 18th most conservative student body in the United States. Counter to the stereotypical view of universities as hotbeds for liberal thought, Kansas State students embody ideologies across the political spectrum and do not hesitate to express conservative views about politics.

In recent years, our course, Communication Studies 326: Small-Group Discussion Methods, has focused on communication in team and workplace settings (Rothwell 2007).² Significantly, however, group discussion as a subfield in communication studies has a long, albeit largely overlooked, history rooted in democratic practice (Keith 2007; Shaffer, in press). My approach to the course is rooted in this longer tradition of what is possible in group discussion.

While the Department of Communication Studies is situated in the College of Arts and Sciences, students from across the university enroll in Small-Group Discussion Methods because it meets a distribution requirement for numerous academic programs. Students enrolled in this course during the 2015-2016 academic year came from a wide range of disciplines, including agricultural-based programs, such as agribusiness, animal science, agricultural engineering, horticulture, and agricultural technology management, as well as from fields including communication, education, social work, computer science, and business.

For these students, I redesigned the course with an explicit civic focus. The central theme of the new iteration of this course was that small-group discussion is a critical element of a deliberative and democratic culture, both within organizations and in the broader civic life. For this reason, John Gastil’s Democracy in Small Groups: Participation, Decision Making, and Communication (2014) was used as the central text for the course. Students were introduced to democratic theory and practice through additional readings on American history and public philosophy (Dionne 2012), deliberative democracy and adult education (Carcasson and Sprain 2012), civic capacity (De Souza Briggs 2008; Levine 2013), complex “wicked” problems (Berry 2002; Rittel and Webber 1973), politics as relationship (Saunders 2005), and the promise and peril of democracy in the workplace (Estlund 2003; Pierce et al. 2008). These readings complemented efforts throughout the course to have students work in small groups and present on various themes relevant to democratic decision-making processes. Further, every student observed an outside group engaged in a decision-making process. In the fall 2015 term, many students spent time observing and studying city, county, or township governmental bodies. And in the spring 2016 term, many students elected to explore student organizations or to be involved with a deliberative forum on campus about an impending change of state law regarding concealed handguns on university campuses in Kansas.

In both semesters, students were introduced to concepts of democracy designed to help them take a broader view of democratic practices as part of a larger system—and to help them move beyond a narrow definition of politics as related chiefly to voting and elected officials (Barber 1984; Mathews 2014). Further, the opportunity to be directly engaged in deliberative experiences about an issue impacting the university community helped to make real the otherwise theoretical and conceptual course content.

The Survey: Methods

Near the end of each semester, an anonymous online survey was administered to allow students to elaborate on the content they had learned about throughout the course. Of the 45 students from 2 sections of Small-Group Discussion Methods in fall 2015, 100 percent completed the surveys. Students were primarily juniors and seniors (n = 42); the other 3 students identified as sophomores. In spring 2016, 22 out of 26 students completed the same survey, with 21 identifying as juniors or seniors and 1 student identifying as a sophomore.

Drawn from a joint-learning agreement between the author and Kettering Foundation seeking to better understand how undergraduate students understand their own political efficacy, five open-ended questions were asked in the survey:

1. How do students understand their political efficacy?

2. How do students believe they can make a difference?

3. In general, what does politics mean to students?

4. How do students think politics affects their daily lives?

5. What would students like to learn about politics?

This qualitative approach was chosen because the students had articulated nuanced approaches and understandings of small-group interactions through a deliberative and democratic lens during the semester, and I wanted to allow them to articulate these views.

Responses to these questions ranged from very brief comments to more elaborate commentaries on students’ thinking about themselves as political actors and as members of a democratic society with varying degrees of agency. Qualitative research is inherently interpretive and requires the researcher to have both an understanding of the content as well as the context (Schram 2006, 11). Being able to conduct this research at the end of a semester-long course enabled me to understand and interpret the responses accordingly.

The level of interaction that came from regular, weekly contact with students in the Small-Group Discussion Methods course aided in the identification of themes developed from the written responses. After spending two entire semesters engaging in discussion with students about readings and experiences exploring democracy in small-group settings, I felt I could better appreciate what Lael Gerhart (2009) expressed in an article about her community-based qualitative research: “These were among the words that I would hear ringing in my ears. What made me feel so excited was talking with different people and hearing their words resonating with each other in my head like an echo.” The findings below are not exhaustive, but they reflect the major themes that emerged from the responses of 67 undergraduate students in 3 sections of the course.

The Survey: Findings

How do students understand their political efficacy? The primary theme that emerged from responses to this question was an explicit articulation of lack of faith or trust in the government. This statement was often generally stated, but there were explicit statements about the federal government, that is, the president and members of Congress. One student wrote, “I’ve never really thought about [my political efficacy]. At this point I don’t really have any faith or trust [in] our current president. And the government isn’t really doing much to make me have faith or trust either.” Some students expressed a mild distrust of the government, while others were more definitive in their views: “I think I can confidently say that I am not confident in my government’s ability to make good decisions.” Strikingly, the student who spoke “confidently” about the government’s inability to make good decisions went on to say that she felt she could influence political affairs, but it would have to be in a “forum-type situation, versus my vote, as sometimes I really wonder if all these votes do much.” What is interesting in this statement is the degree to which she expressed a lack of confidence in elected officials to make good decisions but saw herself as a political actor in a “forum-style situation” that shifts political agency away from officials to ordinary citizens. Without stating it, this view expresses a civic republican philosophy with ...