About

Researchers from a wide variety of disciplines study civic education, civic action, and the many relationships between the two. Civic Learning, Engagement, and Action Data Sharing (CivicLEADS) provides infrastructure for researchers to share and access high-quality datasets which can be used to study civic education and involvement.

Funded by a grant from the Spencer Foundation and part of ICPSR's Education and Child Care Data Archives at the University of Michigan, CivicLEADS provides a centralized repository for this multi-disciplinary research area, with data being created across education, political science, developmental sciences, and other disciplines. Researchers can access quantitative and qualitative data on a broad range of topics for secondary analysis as well as sharing their own primary research data. CivicLEADS includes datasets from other ICPSR archives and seeks out emerging data collected by studies still in the field.

Beyond facilitating the sharing and discovery of data, CivicLEADS seeks to create a learning community around civic education and engagement research. We strive to form relationships with and between investigators and researchers at every level—from students to emeriti faculty. Data shared in this archive have been documented with thorough metadata, and tools drawing upon these metadata allow researchers to explore and compare variables both within and between studies. By providing tutorials, webinars, and in-person training, CivicLEADS connects researchers with data and facilitates the future of civic education and civic action research.

Advisory Committee

CivicLEADS regularly seeks the input and guidance of the members of our Advisory Committee to ensure that our data are among the highest quality available in the fields studying civic education, engagement, and action and to facilitate research in these areas as well as possible. Our current Advisory Committee members are:

Joseph Kahne, Ph.D. is the Ted and Jo Dutton Presidential Chair for Education Policy and Politics at the University of California, Riverside and Chair of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics. Joe's current research draws on a national longitudinal survey of youth (conducted in partnership with Cathy Cohen at the University of Chicago) to examine ways participation with digital media is shaping youth civic and political engagement. He also studies ways that educational efforts can improve the quantity, quality, and equality of youth civic and political engagement. A former high school social studies teacher, Joe is Co-Principal Investigator (with Erica Hodgin) of Educating for Democracy in the Digital Age—A district-wide effort in Oakland California to provide all youth with rich and equitable opportunities to work for change in their communities. He sits on the steering committee of the National Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, on the iCivics Research Advisory Board, on the advisory board of CIRCLE (the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning), and he is a Senior Advisor to the Spencer Foundation's New Civics Initiative.

Peter Levine, Ph.D. is the Associate Dean for Research and Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs in Tufts University's Jonathan Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service. He has a secondary appointment in the Tufts philosophy department. He was the founding deputy director (2001-6) and then the second director (2006-15) of Tisch College's CIRCLE, The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, which he continues to oversee as an associate dean. Levine is the author of We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Promise of Civic Renewal in America (Oxford University Press, 2013), five other scholarly books on philosophy and politics, and a novel. He has served on the boards or steering committees of AmericaSpeaks, Street Law Inc., the Newspaper Association of America Foundation, the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, Discovering Justice, the Kettering Foundation, the American Bar Association Committee's for Public Education, the Paul J. Aicher Foundation, and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium. As a political philosopher with normative concerns, Peter is especially interested in measures of high-quality civic engagement and learning that draw on numerous disciplines.

Veronica Terriquez, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University California Santa Cruz. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology at UCLA, her Masters degree in Education at UC Berkeley, and her B.A. in Sociology at Harvard University. Her research focuses on youth transitions to adulthood, civic engagement, social inequality, and immigrant integration. She is the principal investigator of the California Young Adult Study and the Youth Leadership and Health Study. Much of her research has implications for policies affecting low-income communities of color. Her research has been published in the American Sociological Review, Social Problems, Social Science & Medicine, Education Policy, and various other journals.

Judith Torney-Purta, Ph.D. is Professor Emerita of Developmental Science and Educational Psychology at the University of Maryland. She has written numerous books and articles on social and political cognition, civic education cross-nationally, research related to social policy, interaction in technology-rich environments; and social studies learning. She was senior author of the IEA's first civic education study in 1975 and was Chair of the International Steering Committee of the IEA's second Civic Education Study (CIVED) from 1992-2002. Her book Civic Education across Countries: Twenty-four National Case Studies from the IEA Civic Education Project, received a CHOICE award from the American Library Association as an Outstanding Academic Book. She has been co-editor of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology and is a member of the US National Committee for the International Union of Psychological Science. She was elected to the National Academy of Education in 2014 and is a Fellow of AERA and of APA; she won the APA Award for Distinguished Contributions to the International Advancement of Psychology. She has been supportive of innovative and rigorous measures of young people's attitudes and of data sharing since her first research on the political socialization of young people conducted at the University of Chicago during her doctoral studies in the 1960s.

Staff

Contact Us

Email:
civicleads@umich.edu

Telephone:
734-615-7967