Author:

Keywords:

School climate, Political Participation, Citizenship education, Political socialization

Abstract:

This article assesses how relations between school characteristics as part of the school climate can influence students’ future engagement. Until now, multiple political socialization researchers found evidence for a relation between formal citizenship education in school and students’ participation levels. There is less consensus, however, in how informal political socialization can contribute to individuals’ participatory acts. Therefore this article focusses on multiple dimensions of school climate comparable to the analyses in the work of Konold (2014) and Lenzi (2014). In educational sciences this approach enabled researchers to assess relationships with various achievement outcomes. We will observe its relationship with future electoral participation as a civic outcome. This article relies on the English and Irish ICCS 2009 data to include multiple perspectives and multiple dimensions of the school climate. The school climate is measured by a model including both aggregated student and teacher questionnaires. The theoretical model is estimated by structural equation analysis using Mplus complemented with a regression part. In order to engage students, schools should focus not only on the formal curriculum, but – and especially related to civic and social topics – also on the school climate.