Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Research tells us that systematically incorporating newspapers into school curricula improves standardized reading and math scores. But there is little research to tell us whether these efforts are effective in increasing political knowledge or efficacy among students. We address this gap in the literature with an experiment involving 361 students in four high schools in New Jersey. After conducting a baseline survey measuring political knowledge, efficacy, and information-seeking among students, we randomly assigned the students' social studies classes to one of three conditions: a treatment group assigned to read and discuss articles about politics in a newsweekly magazine in class for eight weeks; a treatment group in which students were assigned to read and discuss the same articles at home with their parents, with the students subsequently also discussing the articles in the classroom; and a control group that did not receive the magazine and did not engage in discussion. We followed up with surveys of the students at the end of the eight week intervention, and then six weeks later to measure for longer-term effects of the experiment. We find that the combination of reading the articles and discussing them at home is related to an increase in internal political efficacy, while the same was not true for the group that discussed the articles only in class and the control group that received no exposure to the magazines. The combination of reading and discussion also was related to increased information-seeking and political knowledge for at least some members of the group that discussed the articles at home and in the classroom. Our results could provide guidance to practitioners looking for ways to enlist potentially powerful allies – parents – in reinforcing what happens in the classroom by extending political discussions to the home as well.