@EdWorkingPaper{ai26-1522,
title = "Making Civics Salient: Local Political Knowledge for Democratic Participation",
author = "Abigail Dym",
institution = "Annenberg Institute at Brown University",
number = "1522",
year = "2026",
month = "July",
URL = "http://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai26-1522",
abstract = {Civic education can provide students with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to become informed and engaged citizens. However, empirical research reveals that civics curricula have achieved limited or inconsistent success in meeting these democratic imperatives for young people in a pluralistic and multiracial United States. Drawing from scholarship on personal issue salience and local political mobilization, I test whether a curriculum that centers salient local political issues, rather than relying on less salient national politics, improves student political outcomes. Original fieldwork findings from a participatory and randomized civics minicourse and randomized survey experiment (n = 586) provide evidence that salient local political curriculum increases student political knowledge and self-efficacy. While I observe variation in the relationship between access to salient local political content and trust in government, I link these findings to existing evidence that lower trust can be a mobilizing force, which solidifies the argument that local and issue-salient civics may more effectively make engaged citizens.},
}