Adolescents' Beliefs About Good Citizenship: Comparative Evidence from Australian Primary and Secondary School Students

Adolescence is a critical period for the development of civic attitudes and engagement. While research suggests that significant development still happens during late adolescence and early adulthood, recent research has also focused on children and early adolescents, indicating that the foundations for civic attitudes and later engagement may be set early in life. Yet, evidence indicates that recent cohorts of adolescents are less civically knowledgeable than previous cohorts, which can cause challenges for democratic societies. This is particularly concerning against the backdrop of rising populism and democratic backsliding. These challenges highlight the need to better understand adolescents’ civic attitudes and engagement, which also puts into focus schools and formal as well as cross-curricular civic and citizenship education, due to their broad reach across different demographics of the population. The current study examines representative data from Australia, collected through stratified random sampling (with schools randomly sampled in the first stage and students sampled in the second stage) in 2024 from students in early and middle adolescence. Multilevel latent class analysis that accounts for the sampling design examines adolescents’ patterned attitudes towards citizenship norms and how these are associated with civic knowledge and engagement. Multiple group analysis compares the patterns between student cohorts, highlighting distinct differences in the profiles of citizenship norms among younger and older cohorts of adolescents, which tentatively indicate that the period between early and middle adolescence may be particularly formative. Multinomial and linear regression models that account for classification reliability further determine the individual and school factors related to these profiles, showing associations with adolescents’ background characteristics (e.g., gender, parental education) and how the prevalent attitudinal profiles are associated with school characteristics (e.g., urbanicity of school location). These findings offer implications on democratic citizenship, civic education, and youth civic development more broadly, both in Australia and other democratic societies. They also allow for evidence-based recommendations for education stakeholders and policymakers striving to promote democratic citizenship and youth civic engagement in challenging times.