Democratic government is not easy; becoming an effective participant in
democratic government asks citizens to do things that are not natural or normal activities
in everyday life. Yet, little that we do in the education and preparation of citizens speaks
to building the “skills” necessary to do so. We spend so much time teaching students
facts and discrete items about government without spending enough time teaching
students how to make sense of politics, and how to be most effective as citizens when
they are motivated to action. Knowledge is important both as a determinant of political
skill and as somewhat of a prerequisite for political participation (Delli Carpini and
Keeter 1996). However, as Lupia (2001) has shown, civic competence involves much
more than knowledge; in fact, it is possible that people who might fail a traditional
political knowledge test could be capable, competent citizens.
My work focuses on one group of citizens – college students enrolled in an
introductory American government course – and investigates the effectiveness of a
simulation-based approach in the cultivation of “civic competence.” The course
discussed here has been redesigned with an explicit focus on teaching democratic
citizenship and developing students’ civic competence. This approach is outcome-
driven; I explicitly aim to have students leave my class fully capable of participating in
politics when the spirit moves them.
Since productive participation in politics typically
requires that one possess a certain set of skills – briefly summarized as the ability to
manage information, people and strategy – the class takes a skills-based approach. This
differs from the more content-based approach common in other versions of this class.
In addition to speaking to those with an interest in political learning and attitude
formation, this paper also fits within the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL)
literature (for some of the central works in this area, see Bass 1999; Boyer 1990;
Glassick, Huber and Maeroff 1997; Huber and Hutchings 2005; Hutchings and Shulman
1999; Shulman 1993). SOTL work makes teaching public, submitting it to critique and
evaluation. This is in contrast to most teaching, which takes place behind closed doors
and rarely generates conversation the way more traditional “scholarship of discovery”
(Boyer 1990) does. It also involves “question-asking, inquiry, and investigation,
particularly around issues of student learning” (Hutchings and Shulman 1999, p. 12). As
such, this paper provides a model of how we may think intentionally about what we do in
our classes, why we do it, and what we want our students to learn. It also provides a
Convention