Experiential Civic Learning for American Democracy: A Portrait of the Field

A healthy constitutional democracy always depends on reflective patriotism. The need to unite a deep love of country with a clear understanding of its strengths and shortcomings becomes even more urgent in times of transformation. The ability to see both the good and the bad in our past equips us to navigate the future; commitment to our constitutional democracy and to one another empowers us to find solutions together in our pluralistic society. In recent decades, we have neglected to adequately prepare younger generations for the responsibilities of democratic citizenship. As a result, our nation—the oldest constitutional democracy on Earth—has grown vulnerable, weakened by both disillusionment and a longing for the past as it nears its 250th year. Meanwhile, deep political divisions among adults have deprived young people of the meaningful civic education they need and deserve. Yet resources abound for overcoming this challenge in communities across the nation, and the time has come to recommit to educating our young people for informed, personally meaningful, and engaged citizenship. The 2021 release of the Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy (EAD Roadmap) and the Pedagogy Companion to the Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy (EAD Pedagogy Companion) addressed some fundamental aspects of civic education—in particular what and how to teach. The EAD Roadmap, however, also left some questions unaddressed, including the question of when, where, and how experiential learning might be a valuable part of civic education. Intended as a companion to the EAD Roadmap and the EAD Pedagogy Companion, this white paper offers basic definitions of experiential learning, a taxonomy of types, an analysis of barriers to participating in experiential learning opportunities, and approaches to evaluation, including how to address effectiveness. This allows for an articulation of the breadth, diversity, and value of practice-based approaches to civic learning as well as parameters for quality in this space. While our focus in this paper is primarily on K–12 civic education, the characterization of experiential civic learning that we offer here is also of relevance to higher education and other adult learning contexts. The authors are all practitioners in this field. We work in widely varied locations, from Utah to Massachusetts to North Carolina, and brought a diversity.