The Institute for Citizens & Scholars brings together diverse people, across traditional divides, to build a constitutional democracy that works for all. In 2019, Citizens & Scholars released the whitepaper From Civic Education to a Civic Learning Ecosystem: A Landscape Analysis and Case for Collaboration, which noted a surprising consensus among practitioners in the civic education space that the current approach to developing effective citizens needed to be updated for the 21st century.
Building on that work, Citizens & Scholars has launched a multi-year initiative on Civic Measurement. The first major milestone is a new report, Mapping Civic Measurement: How are we assessing readiness and opportunities for an engaged citizenry?
Mapping Civic Measurement is a comprehensive civic measurement landscape review and a first-of-its-kind framework for mapping civic readiness and opportunities.
The report features a collection of measurement tools, rubrics, and more than 200 resources in use by practitioners across education, business, philanthropy, community institutions, media, government, and civil society. You’ll come away from the report with new ways to think about measuring civic learning impact, new research to inform your work, and new opportunities to connect with other practitioners.
Now is the time to come together to cultivate people as informed, engaged, and hopeful citizens. Creating a common knowledge base and practices to measure civic readiness and opportunities will enable us to chart the course to a healthy and robust democracy that works for all.
The Challenge
The diverse and active citizen development space lacks common knowledge base and practices to measure civic readiness and civic opportunities
The Research
Citizens & Scholars interviewed 75 experts and analyzed over 200 tools, reports, and resources across the civic space
The Impact
A shared path forward for cultivating an engaged citizenry and stronger democracy
Creating the Maps
The goal of this project was to conduct a comprehensive, though not exhaustive, landscape review of existing civic measurement resources to identify what tools exist to help answer a central question: how do we know our efforts to improve our constitutional democracy are working?
To survey the terrain, the Citizens & Scholars team interviewed more than 70 people conducting or curating research and data on civic readiness and civic opportunities. The team also collected a broad range of measurement tools, rubrics, and studies, including both qualitative and quantitative research, as well as articles that compile and summarize these tools.
Based on these interviews and resource collection, Citizens & Scholars developed a framework to organize how sectors including education, business, philanthropy, community institutions, media, government, and civil society define and measure different aspects of civic readiness and civic opportunity. This framework is presented as the Civic Measurement Maps.
While the maps were initially intended to identify where tools exist, where gaps remain, where tool creation should be prioritized, and how limited resources could best be deployed, the team is learning they may have utility beyond measurement.
In one case, they are being used to help design an out-of-school program that supports young people in solving problems in their communities. They have also been useful to a funder seeking to focus investment in a particular aspect of citizen development. Ultimately, the hope is that Mapping Civic Measurement will provide a common language across the many contributors working to strengthen our democracy.
Key Findings
The Citizens & Scholars team interviewed more than 70 people who are conducting or curating research and data on civic readiness or civic opportunities. The team also collected as many measurement tools, rubrics, and studies as they could find, including both qualitative and quantitative research and numerous articles that compile and summarize these tools.
This collection included measurement efforts conducted by those who think of themselves as part of the field of civic learning—those individuals, organizations, and others working to develop the civic knowledge, skills and dispositions of young people. It also included that of researchers and practitioners in ostensibly related fields: character formation, social-emotional learning, public participation, workforce development, and others.
After drilling down to identify the common elements, the team uncovered a common framework to help sort the various tools. The key findings that have emerged are as follows:
- Civic Readiness is Being Measured Much More Than Civic Opportunities
- Notable Gaps Exist Among People Doing the Measurement Work as well as the Kinds of Tools Available
- Voting Dominates Civic Measurement
- There Are Varying Definitions for What Good Citizenship Means, All of Which Need Examining as our World is Changing
A Call to Action
Across this large, diverse, and still largely undefined field, people can come together to create shared tools and practices to monitor, measure, and evaluate the effectiveness of civic learning.
Advancing civic measurement is not only about refining methodologies or mobilizing resources. Practitioners, researchers, and funders must also collaborate to network, share best practices, and co-create solutions around shared goals:
Define citizenship and civic readiness in ways that speak across sectors, disciplines, and models
Evaluate the efficacy of existing tools mapped in the Civic Measurement Maps
Fill gaps where measurement is lacking
Build bridges between individual civic readiness and civic infrastructure
Understand the influence and impact of equity on civic infrastructure
With these goals in mind, we have identified recommendations and an implementation roadmap.
A Shared Path Forward
Whatever your role—educator, scholar, practitioner, researcher, policymaker, leader—this report will leave you with new ways to think about measuring civic capacities, new tools and resources to inform your work, new connections and ideas, and renewed energy for building a more inclusive, healthy, and robust democracy that works for all.
Ready to put this research into action? We’ve teamed up with the National Civic League to create the Guide to Civic Measurement—a hands-on resource designed to help you make an impact in your community. Explore the Guide.
