‘We have the right to stand up’: Elementary students’ conceptual understandings of civic virtue and engagement

Early purposes of education in the United States concentrated on preparing young citizens to understand democratic principles in order to participate in their democratic communities. Today elementary instruction has contracted in response to years of high stakes accountability measures. Social studies has not been a focus of federal accountability measures and therefore has become increasingly absent in elementary classrooms. The purpose of this study was to examine how elementary students understood and applied their knowledge of civic virtue and engagement within an integrated social studies and literacy unit of instruction based on the framework of Critical Democratic Literacy. A modified version of Design-Based Research was used with a classroom teacher in a multiage first, second, and third grade classroom with the goal of ‘improving practice’ and engaging in ‘an iterative, collaborative design’ in an authentic instructional environment. Findings demonstrated that the elementary students understood the concepts of civic virtue and civic engagement in both historical and present contexts, as well as its relevance to their lives and the lives of others as helping and standing up in the face of injustice.