Civic attitudes and behavioural intentions among 14 year olds. How can education make a difference toward a more democratic and cohesive Europe?

Using data from the 2016 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS), this policy report provides a detailed analysis of adolescents’ civic attitudes and behavioural intentions, and the mechanisms shaping them, with a particular emphasis on the broader role of education. ICCS 2016 offers broad information on 14-year-old students’ civic and citizenship knowledge, their civic attitudes and behaviours, as well as their individual characteristics and the school and community contexts. We focus on the 14 the European Member States participating in ICCS 2016. This reports aims at improving the understanding of the associations between students’ school experiences and their attitudes towards citizenship values, the equal rights to minority groups, students' expected political participation and their level of institutional trust. Our findings support the expectation that school can have a role in educating engaged and open-minded young individuals. In particular we find that maintaining an open classroom climate is a key factor associated not only with students’ civic knowledge and later engagement but also with civic attitudes and behavioural intentions. Likewise, motivating students to take part in various forms of within-school activism is likely to increase their interest in actively engaging in democratic processes in later life. Active community involvement (which could be promoted by the school) is also positively associated with attitudes towards social-movement-related citizenship in almost all the participating countries. Above these education approaches, both civic and citizenship knowledge and civic efficacy remain important predictors of students’ civic outcomes. Their roles are very different, though: while efficacy is consistently positively related to all the non-cognitive outcomes across all the countries, for civic knowledge this is true regarding only some attitudes. Finally, we also show that there is no systematic, universal gap between immigrant and native students’ democratic attitudes. A significant gap between immigrant and native students is apparent in most Member States participating in ICCS only with regard to expected electoral participation. On the other hand, immigrant students are generally more in favour of equal rights for minorities. Policies implications are also discussed.