5 Strategies That Foster Student Citizenship

One factor is repeatedly recognized as essential for the successful functioning of schools and communities: informed, committed participation. This is more likely to happen in schools that help students develop the skills needed for it, and when schools do this effectively, communities benefit from the carryover.

Across the globe, five instructional strategies have been identified that activate these essential citizenship skills in students: establishing norms, listening to and respecting peer opinions, understanding points of view different from one’s own, knowing how to creatively craft one’s communication to meet the context of one’s audiences, and having a generalizable problem-solving strategy to apply to a range of educational and social issues, problems, and situations. Here is a guide to each strategy.

1. Norms: Attune the Classroom Culture for Safe Expression

Laying the groundwork for student safety and security is the first step to creating an environment for expressive risk-taking. This involves establishing norms. Cocreating expectations for how everyone will treat each other as a classroom community fosters the psychological safety for open dialogue and peer opinion sharing. Some expectations that might be helpful are “Share the airtime,” “Be present,” and “No cell phones,” all of which hold students accountable for being present in learning and for their classmates.

Creating norms also engages students in the social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies of responsible decision-making and relationship skills, as they work together as a classroom community. Ultimately, students need strategies that guide them in how to think about social issues, both current and historical, while not telling them what to think about those issues. We’ll work our way to just such a strategy.

2. Yes-No-Maybe: Get Comfortable with Peer Opinion Sharing

Expressing and justifying opinions on issues is a formative democratic activity. With norms in place, the Yes-No-Maybe strategy helps students share their views on problems that impact their school community. Bringing democratic discourse alive, students respond with “Yes,” “No,” or “Maybe” to a series of statements drawn from a source on a topic that is unsettled, contentious, or debatable, or that has no clear solution, like bullying, cheating on tests, caring for the environment, or food service in the school.

At first, the students aren’t exposed to source material when they share their opinions. After reading the sources in the context of the curriculum or class discussions, students revisit the statements they made, making any changes to their original opinions and sharing their reasoning with peers. This promotes self-awareness, as students reflect on whether their ideas change after gathering more information, and social awareness, as students actively listen to others’ diverse opinions. The strategy gives students permission to change their views on issues as they learn new information, are exposed to hearing multiple perspectives, and reflect on the realities of an increasingly multicultural world.

3. Respectful Debate: Listen to Build Collective Understanding

Disagreement and debate don’t have to lead automatically to harmful contention and personal attacks. Engaging in disagreement and debate while treating others with dignity is a skill that students can learn. In a respectful debate, students switch sides and argue the key facts on both the pro and con sides of the issue. They practice summarizing what they’ve heard from the opposing side and ask for clarifying statements to ensure that they heard them accurately. Rich in self-regulation and social awareness skill-building, this strategy teaches both teachers and students how to engage in constructive debates on issues that build shared understanding and a sense of community as they work through disagreements.

For example, students and teachers in the Northern Burlington County Regional School District in central New Jersey spoke in support of the high school’s “No Place for Hate” program at a February 2022 Board of Education meeting. They were able to successfully present arguments and respond to the opposing sides’ arguments with research-based facts. As a result, the superintendent reaffirmed the district’s commitment to the program in a statement to the public.

4. Audience-Focused Communication: Foster Impactful Public Speaking

It’s wonderful to have good ideas, but that does not bring those ideas into practice. Doing so requires communication skills. While standing up in front of others to effectively communicate an impactful message to an audience can be intimidating—as it can be to speak aloud to one’s classmates or teammates—this represents a skill that can be learned.

Through active practice, audience-focused communication helps students develop competence and confidence by deliberately teaching presentation literacy skills (such as tone, posture, breathing techniques, grounding techniques, and positive self-talk) and analysis of the presentation context (e.g., timing, location, specific audience for communication).

By focusing on the social and emotional learning competencies of self-management and self-awareness, students rehearse how to connect with and influence an audience to ensure that their messages are effectively delivered.

5. PLAN: Engage in Social Problem-Solving to Lead Democratic Change

The social problem-solving strategy PLAN (Problem description, List options, Action plan, and Notice successes) builds on audience-focused communication and helps organize action planning. With PLAN (or any other systematic problem-solving strategy that students are learning), teachers can help students role-play and emulate the process required to organize school or community stakeholders to consider change. Students draw upon a school-based problem, historical problem, situation in a book being read, or current issue to engage in the process of problem identification, brainstorm possible solutions, and formulate a viable action plan. They then evaluate their action plan or compare it with an actual historical solution to identify ways to enhance inclusive methods to make a change.

For example, in the SEL- and character-based MOSAIC curriculum, students examine artwork created during World War II by Norman Rockwell to reflect “The Four Freedoms” outlined by President Franklin Roosevelt: Freedom from Want/Hunger and Fear, and Freedom of Expression and Religion. Students review and analyze Rockwell’s and another actual approach to addressing the task, and then, using PLAN, engage in their own solutions. This strategy harnesses the power of relationship skills, critical thinking, and responsible decision-making. In addition, students learn that leading any change process is complex and iterative, often requiring multiple attempts to meet challenges.

These instructional strategies can be added into, not on top of, existing curriculum and instruction. Over time, students build both the skills and dispositions to engage in civic commitments for the improvement of their schools and communities.