Schooling Citizens: The Role of School Ethnic-Racial Socialization in Citizenship Beliefs Among Youth

Background. Schools socialize students’ beliefs about race and civil society. Pedagogical choices nurture three citizenship forms: 1) personally-responsible citizenship denoting individual civil responsibility, 2) participatory citizenship emphasizing active involvement in the community and service work, and 3) justice-oriented citizenship or participation in social change (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004). Schools’ transmission of ethnic-racial messages shapes youths’ sociopolitical beliefs on how to engage in their communities (Seider et al., 2018). This study explores whether adolescents’ perceptions of school ethnic-racial socialization, which includes messages that recognize racial privilege and oppression (critical consciousness socialization—CC), celebrate cultural diversity (multicultural socialization—MC), or minimizes the role of race in society (colorblind egalitarian socialization—CBE) are related to citizenship beliefs.

Sociopolitical development theory proposes that youths’ sense of efficacy in social action (agency) and circumstances that make engagement accessible (opportunity structures such as schools) moderate the relation between critical reflection and civic engagement (Watts & Flanagan, 2007). Since we conceptualize school ethnic-racial socialization within broader notions of school climate (Aldana & Byrd, 2015), we also examine whether youths’ school agency— self-efficacy to create change within the school context—moderates the relation between school ethnic-racial socialization messages and citizenship beliefs.

Methodology. The survey study included 384 racially/ethnically diverse adolescents (Mage = 17.00, SD = 1.29, female = 51.0%). We conducted nine hierarchical multiple regressions. Adolescents’ self-reported gender (1 = male, 2 = female), race/ethnicity (1 = youth of color, 2 = White youth), and parent education were entered as dummy coded controls in Step 1. In Step 2, school ethnic-racial socialization and school agency were entered to assess the direct effects of these variables on citizenship beliefs. In Step 3, a two-way interaction between school ethnic-racial socialization and school agency was included.

Results. For critical consciousness socialization, there was a significant and positive interaction between CC socialization and school agency on justice-oriented citizenship beliefs. Simple slopes analysis indicated that youths’ perceptions of CC socialization were significantly associated with justice-oriented citizenship beliefs of youth who had high school agency (b = .16, t = 3.18, p = .002), but not for youth with low school agency (b = .02, t = .45, p = .65).

For MC socialization, there were significant and positive interactions between MC socialization and school agency on all types of citizenship attitudes.

For CBE socialization, there were significant and positive interactions between CBE socialization and school agency on justice-oriented citizenship and personally-responsible citizenship beliefs.

Conclusion. Congruent with previous research, results indicate that school ethnic-racial socialization informs sociopolitical beliefs, in similar ways, regardless of the types of messages perceived (Bañales, Aldana et al., under review). As these results speak to youths’ perceptions of their school’s ethnic-racial socialization and not necessarily personal ethnic-racial beliefs, future research is necessary to examine how school socialization and civic engagement shape students’ racial attitudes.