IEA Releases Latest Results of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study, ICCS 2022

THE HAGUE, Netherlands, Nov. 28, 2023 /PRNewswire/ —

Results reveal upward trends in ICCS stalled in 2022 

Today, in an event hosted in partnership with the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in the Netherlands, results of the third cycle of IEA’s ICCS 2022 were released.

Targeted at students enrolled in the eighth grade, ICCS investigates the changing ways in which young people are prepared for their roles as citizens. This round of the study set out to address aspects related to global citizenship, sustainable development, migration, changes to traditional political systems, and the use of digital technologies for civic engagement, while also continuing to monitor changes in civic knowledge, attitudes, and engagement over time.

The largest international, and only dedicated, study of civic and citizenship education

Countries around the world face persisting and new challenges in educating young people for citizenship. Over the years, promoting young people’s civic knowledge and dispositions toward active participation has become an increasingly important topic in education policy across many countries, as it fundamentally underpins the ability of citizens to engage productively in society.

ICCS is the only international study dedicated to collecting and analyzing information on students’ knowledge and understanding of concepts and issues related to civics and citizenship. Importantly, ICCS also studies young people’s attitudes to, and engagement with, aspects related to civic and citizenship education.

ICCS also collects rich contextual data on different aspects that help teachers to teach and students to learn. These include the organization and content of civic and citizenship education in the curriculum, teacher qualifications and experiences, teaching and classroom practices, school environment and climate, and home and community support.

Commenting on the results, Dr. Dirk Hastedt, IEA Executive Director, said:

“These ICCS results come at a time when young people are facing unprecedented challenges. We have been seeing crises all around the world, including health and financial crises, war, and political turmoil.

The 2022 results reveal many decreases in civic knowledge and no increases across countries when comparing to 2016 results. This marks a clear contrast to trend results of the previous cycle, where between 2009 and 2016 we instead saw increases and no decreases.

Reliable statistics are what X-rays are for doctors: they help us to shape important decisions. The data available from ICCS can facilitate additional research on specific issues that can help in planning national reforms and can support the development of research on civic and citizenship at both the national and international level.”

About IEA

Founded in 1958, IEA is an independent, international cooperative working to research, understand, and improve education worldwide.

Link to ICCS 2022 International Report 

Link to ICCS 2022 infographics

Civic knowledge did not increase across countries that participated in 2016 and 2022.

Between 2016 and 2022, there were decreases in civic knowledge in six countries while no increases were recorded. By comparison, between 2009 and 2016 increases were observed in many countries while no decreases were recorded.

Female students demonstrated higher civic knowledge than male students.

Female students had higher average achievement in 18 countries, while there were no differences between the averages of female and male students in two countries. There were no countries in which male students had higher average achievement.Across the three cycles of ICCS, the achievement of female students has been consistently higher than that of male students.

Students from homes with a higher socioeconomic status demonstrated higher average civic knowledge than students with a lower socioeconomic background.

Socio-economic status of students and the socioeconomic compositions of schools remain important predictors of civic knowledge.

Civic knowledge tended to be positively associated with a broad range of attitudes and engagement indicators. 

Students with higher levels of civic knowledge tended to be more supportive of gender equality, equal rights for immigrants and all ethnic groups in society, and they were more supportive of environmental protection and more likely to expect to vote in elections.

Civic Engagement

On average, around one third of students reported being quite or very interested in political and social issues.This proportion was much higher among those students who also reported that their parents or guardians were more interested in civic issues.The most common source of information about political or social issues was watching television, followed by accessing internet sources, and then by reading a newspaper in print or online formats.Even though television and newspapers have declined as sources of information over the 13 years since the first ICCS survey, they remain relevant to students as sources of information. Interestingly, internationally, there were no increases in students’ use of the internet as a weekly source of information about social and political issues since the last cycle.While only relatively few students expected future participation in illegal protest activities or conventional political activities, most young people expected to vote as adults and become involved in environmental protection activities.

Civic Attitudes

Most young people viewed globally oriented citizenship behavior as important and endorsed environmental protection activities. Concerns about climate change as a global threat increased since 2016, while we observed considerable variation in the extent of these concerns across countries.ICCS 2022 revealed considerable variation in students’ views of the political system across countries. While most young people tended to view democracy as the best form of government (on average around three quarters of students internationally), many students also expressed critical views of how the democratic system works.On average across countries, a little over one half of students agreed that their elected representatives represent the interests of people in their country well.ICCS 2022 showed considerable differences across countries in the level of students’ agreement with the imposition of restrictions in a national emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic.Student involvement in civic-related activities at school are positively associated with expected engagement.

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