The Effect Teacher Led Reflection Plays on Students' Civic Responsibility Perceptions Following FFA Civic Engagement Activities

Abstract

Civic engagement activities are utilized to enhance youth’s citizenship skills and content knowledge, and to strengthen the community’s status. Post-activity reflections can be utilized to strengthen the benefits of civic engagement activities but are often underutilized. This quasi-experimental study sought to determine the influence of guided reflection following FFA civic engagement activities on students’ self-perceived civic responsibility. Through the use of a nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest design, four schools and students who participated in FFA civic engagement activities (n = 138) were randomly assigned to either a group discussion after reflection or a no-reflection group. It was found that throughout all time periods, students felt slightly connected to their community, community needs awareness, and civic efficacy. It was also found that the reflection treatment group exhibited statistically significantly higher community needs awareness and civic efficacy construct mean scores than the no-reflection group. It is recommended for FFA chapters to provide a wide variety of short-term civic engagement activities with reflection components.