Educationally Tracked Democratic Equalizers: How Citizenship Education Moderates the Effect of a Political Home Environment on Internal Political Efficacy Across Educational Tracks

Abstract

Citizenship education aims to compensate for the lack of a stimulating political home environment. However, not all scholars are convinced that schools are great equalizers, as citizenship education might reinforce rather than reduce socioeconomic inequalities. This paper investigates whether citizenship education compensates, reproduces, or accelerates inequality in students’ internal political efficacy (IPE) and how this relationship differs across educational tracks. IPE is considered a key political attitude that predicts political participation and taps into self-confidence in a political setting. This political attitude is especially interesting considering the stigmatizing effects of educational tracks. We study the effect of citizenship education among senior high school students in Flanders. We examine three kinds of citizenship education: civic learning experiences, an open classroom climate, and active student participation at school. We conduct three-way interactions in multilevel models to study the moderating effect of these types of citizenship education at school on the relationship between a political home environment and IPE across educational tracks. We show compensating effects for the three citizenship education types. However, looking across educational tracks, there is a clearer compensation in the academic track compared to the technical and vocational tracks. Our findings indicate that citizenship education contributes to a democratic society where all citizens feel confident participating in the political arena. Still, technical and vocational tracked students not only receive less citizenship education, but the reduction of socioeconomic inequalities in feelings of IPE when receiving higher amounts is also less articulated than in the academic track.