Browsing by Subject "Civic Engagement"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    The Board Chair and Executive Director Dyad: Leadership Role Perceptions Within Nonprofit Civic Engagement Organizations
    (2016-07) Mathews, Melissa
    Scholarship has identified that board and executive director leadership consists of dynamic interactions and enactments; however, limited research has examined the board chair and executive director leadership dyad within explicit organizational contexts. The purpose of this study was to understand how board chairs and executive directors perceived their roles within leadership dyads of nonprofit civic engagement organizations. Civic engagement organizations are recognized by municipalities for representing and engaging neighborhood constituencies through participatory processes. This inquiry also determined how leadership role perceptions varied as a function of dyadic position and according to individual, organizational, and environmental characteristics. The research was structured as an instrumental multiple case study analysis of 17 board chair and executive director dyads of neighborhood councils within a municipal civic participation system. The study’s findings indicated that executive directors and board chairs reported diverse leadership perceptions and varying accounts of inter-dyadic role congruence, ambiguity, and conflict. Specifically, leadership role perceptions varied within dyads and according to dyadic position. Board chairs and executive directors interpreted their leadership roles as facilitating participatory processes, organizing communities, and representing neighborhood constituents. Further, the majority of participants characterized leadership as situational and noted the importance of assessing circumstances to determine leadership needs. The findings underscore the complexity of nonprofit leadership and reveal latent influences of organizational fields on board chairs’ and executive directors’ dyadic leadership role perceptions. This exploratory qualitative study concludes with suggestions to enhance board chair and executive director dynamics within civic engagement organizations. Recommendations for future research are provided to advance human resource development research concerning nonprofit organizational leadership. Keywords: board chair, executive director, leadership, dyad, role perception, nonprofit organization, civic engagement, neighborhood council, human resource development, instrumental multiple case study, qualitative research, role theory
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    Community Playgroups as a Platform for Civic Engagement
    (2025) Kane, Kali
    This study explores community playgroups' multifaceted role in creating stronger, healthier, and more resilient families and communities through research data and a case study of Tod Pod in Bloomington, Minnesota. In addition to the research, the project includes the creation of a toolkit for parents interested in forming a playgroup. Results show that community playgroups can support young children's developmental needs by providing a safe space to engage in play and opportunities for social activities. Playgroups can mitigate mental health issues in parents and caregivers by cultivating social connections and offering emotional support. Playgroups can also be credited with creating more civically engaged families by connecting them with their local communities. By improving developmental growth in children and parental well-being, community playgroups can be credited with long-term economic benefits for society by reducing government spending.
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    Data Informed Solutions for Youth Voting and Civic Engagement
    (2019-11-06) Kawashima-Ginsberg, Kei; Dean, Michael; Simon, Steve; Kessler, Pat
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    The dynamic components of citizenship education and student engagement: lessons for leaders and educators
    (2010-05) Anderson, Timothy J.
    The study utilized a traditional qualitative case study approach to investigate two curricula offered at a single middle school in a suburb of a major metropolitan area. Three groups of participants, totally 50 individuals, were interviewed. Participant groups included middle school administrators, middle school teachers, and middle school students. Interviews were analyzed by using idiosyncratic analysis within each participant group and nomothetic analysis across all participant groups. Interview analysis was augmented with document analysis. Pre-interview questionnaires were used to provide a prelude to this qualitative study.Information from a review of four focused literature sets provided the foundation for the conceptual framework for this study. Through an exploration and review of literature, several key concepts were found to contribute to student engagement. The themes that consistently appeared in literature that were germane to this study were divided into three main categories: academic engagement, civic engagement, social engagement. Data were analyzed by examining characteristics that impact student engagement identified by administrators, teachers and students. Major findings of the study revolved around the characteristics most often perceived by participants as causing student academic, civic, and social engagement. Without a doubt, the components of citizenship education that produce full student engagement are numerous. In sum, full student engagement is the result of a variety of external and internal components whose nature can be characterized in terms of "doing", "being", or both. A newly introduced Model for Capturing Descriptions of Engagement (Figure 3, p. 237) summarizes these various components, and suggests the difficult reality that exists when interpreting qualitative data in a highly quantitative paradigm.
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    No Church in the Wild: The Politics of American Nonreligion
    (2019-07) Stewart, Evan
    The number of Americans with no religious identification has grown to nearly a quarter of the population in 2018. What are the political implications of this cultural change? Current research views religious disaffiliation as an example of either backlash to the religious right (expecting the unaffiliated to be engaged partisans) or drift from institutions (expecting them to be disengaged from politics). I address this debate with three studies that examine political engagement, opinion formation, and organized advocacy among the nonreligious. Across all three studies, theories from cultural sociology suggest that simple categorical measures of nonreligious identity hide substantive differences in how people engage nonreligion in their personal lives (through low religious practice, non-belief, and nonreligious identification) and in public life (through opposition to religious authority in the public sphere). For engagement, new analysis with existing survey data with validated voter turnout shows that classic measures of low church attendance associate with higher odds of turnout among unaffiliated respondents. For opinion, analysis of original survey data shows that measures of public nonreligion are more closely associated with progressive political views than measures of personal nonreligion. For advocacy, analysis of tax and lobbying records of forty nonreligious organizations shows how a focus on personal nonreligious identities creates a closed network of groups with a more narrow agenda than organizations lobbying for the separation of church and state. By focusing on the substantive differences between cultural repertoires of personal and public nonreligion, I highlight how public religious considerations are an important explanatory factor in political life. Slippage between these repertoires can explain why the nonreligious appear to have large political potential, but limited political impact.
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    Student Voice in Education Policy: Understanding student participation in state-level K-12 education policy making
    (2019-07) Holquist, Samantha
    Purpose: K-12 education systems are expected to prepare students to participate in society, but education leaders often neglect to ask students how policy decisions affect their learning. Educators have begun to incorporate student voice into classroom, school, and district decision making. However, students are still a largely untapped resource in statewide K-12 education policy change. One reason may be that there is no clear understanding of how students may participate. The purpose of this study is to examine how students, through student voice efforts, collectively participate in and influence the policy-making process for state-level K-12 education decision making. Research Methods/Approach: This study employs a qualitative case study and utilizes document analysis, observations, and interviews with students and adults participating in two statewide student voice efforts. Findings: Students are able to participate in and advocate for policy reform adoption in the K-12 education policy process. Statewide student voice efforts are generally structured to include the following components: (a) power shifts, (b) shared practices, (c) adult supports, and (d) student relationships. Within these structures, students participate in the policy making process by (a) identifying a problem and policy solution, (b) assessing social, political, and economic capital available to move a policy forward, (c) building a coalition for support and to gain access to additional resources, and (d) engage in grassroots and grasstops advocacy. Students utilize their status to gain power in the grassroots arena; however, this status also decreases their power in the grasstops arena. Conclusions and Implications: This study reveals the importance of providing a structured space for students to access support from their peers as well as adults when engaging in student voice efforts. It also demonstrates the importance of shifting different aspects of power within student voice efforts, particularly social order power dynamics, to ensure that student voice efforts do not become homogeneous and representative of a particular student voice. Finally, it shows the ways in which students harness their own power and access the power of others in order to engage in the policy process.