Learning by doing or just doing

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Learning by doing or just doing?

• Conf. dr. Adrian Hatos

Participation in school based extracurricular
activities, associative membership and the
interest in politics of adolescent students?
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The good democratic citizen

• Actively involved in politics
• Politically competent
• Strongly attached to democratic values like
  tolerance
• The Problem
• Participation deficitDemocratic deficit
• Lowered voter turnout are explained greatly by
  youth absenteism
• Yout is less and less interested and informed in
  matters of politics (Hooghe, 2004)
• The top of political interest is attained during
  early adolescence (Easton Hess, 1962)
• It is, evidently a problem of political
  socialization

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The political interest among Romanian youth is
relatively large

• Adults
• UE 17 (ESS, 2006)
• România 20-25 (Com?a, 2007)
• Youth
• IEA 1999 anticipated political participation
  above the international average (Torney-Purta,
  2002)
• 36 of youth declared themseves interested in
  national problems (Strâmbeanu, 2004)
• For 90 of teenagers (aged 14 to18) entertainment
  is on the top of their concerns while politics
  comes last (Strâmbeanu, 2004)

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Research questions

• What is the distribution of political involvement
  of youth aged 13 to 18 in Oradea?
• Which are the covariates of political
  participation of youth aged 13 to 18 in Oradea?
• What is the effect of school based
  extracurricular activities on political
  participation of adolescents?

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Educating citizens in school

• The potential for civic socialization of formal
  civic education is quite limited (Galston, 2004)
• Non/Informal civic socialization seems to be of
  great value student parliaments and
  organizations (Torney- Purta, 2002),
  participative methods are of greatest impact
  (Finkel, 2003)
• Effectiveness of school-based extracurricular
  activities is to be assesed

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Impact of SBEA (school based extracurricular
activities)

• General positive effects (Feldman Matjasko,
  2005 Fredricks Eccles, 2005, 2006)
• Structured SBEA have positive effects better
  school results, lower dropout rates, lowered
  incidence of drug consumption, better
  psychological adjustment, lower delinquence
• SBEA effects depend on
• Friends, peers, networks (ex. Crosnoe, 2002)
• Type of activities (Feldman Matjasko, 2005)
• SBEA effects on civic attitudes are less often
  approached
• Zaff, Moore, Papillo, Williams, 2003
  consistent involvement in SBEA ? better academic
  results, prosocial behavior, 50 increase in
  probability of vote
• Strambeanu (2005) school activism is an
  important covariate of political participation of
  adolescents aged 14 to 18

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Predictors of adult political participation

• Nie, Junn si Strehlik-Bahry (1996) verbal
  competence, organizational membership, network
  centrality and education.
• Com?a (2007) Strongest predictors length of
  schooling, perceived political competence.

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Other classes of predictors

• SES
• Education 1) status, status reproduction 2)
  competence and elimination of cognitive
  constraints
• Gender political involvement is gender specific.
  Men are more involved in politics than women.
• Voluntary membership
• Putnamians involvement in voluntary associations
  is a fertilizer of social participation including
  that of democratic political participation and of
  generalized trust
• Evidences Verba et al 1995 Niemi, 1998 Dekker,
  1997 Com?a, 2007.
•  Critics it is not true that participation
  produces democratic attitudes
• (Stolle, 1998 Uslaner, 2002, Rossteutscher,
  2002)

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?
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?
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Data, variables, method

• Second wave of survey Adolescents, future
  citizens. (november, december, 2007)
• N2985 (grades 8-12) random, stratified,
  cluster sampling

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Interest for politics

• Additive scale of three Likert items
• I know more about politics than most of the youth
  of my age
• I am interested in politics
• I feel close to the values, principles and the
  leaders of a political party
• Missing values replaced with the item medians.

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SBEA

• Measure of SBEA participation count of type of
  SBEA activities involved in excluding proms and
  parties
• Associative membership number of voluntary
  associations the person is member of (85 belong
  to no association, the average is 0,32)
• Type of leisure 2 factor scores of six measures
  1) social leisure 2) cultivated leisure

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Distribution of political index interest
alpha 0,82
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Results

• OLS regression
• Path analysis

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R20,13
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(N2961 RMSEA0,037, CFI0,975 parametri
standardizati)
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Conclusions
Class habitus
Gender
Political participation

• Personal characterics -- social activism
• Extroversion
• Intelligence