Effective civic education Testing an educational effectiveness model for explaining students’ achievement in civic and citizenship education

Effective civic education. Testing an educational effectiveness model for explaining students' achievement in civic and citizenship education. Abstract The intended study aims at testing a causal model for " effective civic education " based on the Comprehensive Model of Educational Effectiveness developed by Creemers (1994) in relation with secondary school students' achievement in civic and citizenship education in 22 countries participating in the IEA Civic and Citizenship Study (CIVED). It is assumed that secondary analysis of international comparative studies in civic and citizenship education can provide a valuable opportunity to test and develop integrated multilevel educational effectiveness models in relation to different outcomes of learning than the ones that were usually investigated, namely civic and citizenship achievement. This secondary analysis makes use of the information gathered via questionnaires from students, headmasters and cognitive tests in order to determine how much of the variation in students civic achievement can be explained by variables located at different levels (student, classroom/school, country) and if individual variables from different levels show the expected results on students civic achievement. Multilevel analysis was employed to recognize the multilevel influences on students' civic achievement that the model assumes. The results of this study partially generated empirical support for the validity of Creemers' for outcomes in civic and citizenship education and shed a light on the importance of investigating country effects.