Facilitating Political Sophistication through Service Learning
19
social roles and from normative expectations” (2002;18). Arnett’s theory is based on the
argument that demographic changes in the median age of marriage, the age of first childbirth,
and the number of individuals obtaining higher education have led to developmental changes
among young people in industrial societies (2002). Since the trend is for young people to enter
into marriage and parenthood later than in previous years, it is no longer necessary for them to
enter into long-term adult roles during their late teens and early 20s. For college instructors in
America and other industrialized societies, Arnett’s theory implies that our students are even
more likely to be engaged in a process of questioning and exploring possible adult roles for
themselves.
Arnett’s conceptualization of emerging adulthood is built in part on Erikson’s work, which
referred to a period of “prolonged adolescence” which is typical of youth in industrialized
societies. According to Erikson, young people in such societies were often granted a
“psychosocial moratorium” within which they were free to explore and experiment in order to find
their societal niche (Erikson, 1968;156). Erikson considered the development of political
knowledge and engagement to be part of the overall identity formation process wherein
adolescents developed an understanding of who they are within social-historical contexts (1968).
If our students are experiencing a period of emerging adulthood, then our efforts to facilitate their
political growth and the development of political efficacy must speak to their questioning natures
and a possible resistance to proscribed social roles.
When we consider the ways in which young people develop their sense of political
identity, we can draw on the work of political psychologists such as Robert William Connell, who
wrote about the ways in which children develop an understanding of politics. In his study of 119
children in Syndey, Australia, Connell found that as children learn about the political order, they
continuously organize political information in a way that allows them to either fit new information
into pre-existing schemas, or create new schemas as their development progresses (Connell,
1971). Students in the 19-24 year-old range should have a fairly sophisticated grasp of the
political order. However, it is important to remember that our students may be uncertain as to
how and where they will fit in that order. For assessment purposes, it might make more sense if
Prepared by Zahra Ahmed for the 2006 meeting of the American Political Science Association
Convention