Civic Learning and Democratic Engagements: A Review of the Literature on Civic Engagement in Post-Secondary Education

Three main conclusions emerge from reviewing the literature on civic engagement in American higher education. First, civic engagement is a term that lacks a cohesive definition within higher education. On many campuses it is viewed primarily through the lens of service-learning and other apolitical forms of community involvement. But an emergent strand of scholarship, discourse and campus practice has advocated the standpoint of civic engagement as a set of skills essential for democracy-building and as an activity that is fundamentally politically-oriented. Second, the practice of civic engagement on campuses is as multi-form and disparate as its definition. Even among those campuses engaging in service-learning, this model can have various degrees of intensity, involvement within community, interaction with peers and community members, and depths of reflection. Third, empirical evidence of the effects of these practices is largely confined to service-learning experiences.