Attitudes towards political engagement among lower secondary students in East Asian countries: Results from ICCS 2009

Based on student survey data from five East Asian countries, the paper contains an analysis of attitudes towards the use of personal connections in politics and towards personal morality among politicians. The first part of the analysis describes the extent and variations of these attitudes which are viewed as of particular relevance within the East Asian context. The second part of the analysis investigates the relationship of these attitudes with student background and school-related variables such as civic knowledge as well as uncovering to what extent these attitudes are related to indicators of future civic engagement among students. Introduction Many western countries are concerned about the level of participation of their citizens in civic life and the apparent lack of interest and involvement among young people in public and political life (Curtice & Seyd, 2003). The development of knowledge, understanding, skills and dispositions that prepare young people to comprehend the world, hold productive employment and be informed active citizens are among the characteristics that educational systems, schools and teachers value and attempt to foster. However, countries vary in the status accorded to civic and citizenship education as part of school education and the relative importance of developing the knowledge and understanding and dispositions to participate effectively as citizens in society. Hahn notes that ‘scholarship on education for citizenship and democracy has greatly expanded over the past decade...clearly the field of comparative and international civic education has gone global’ (Hahn, 2010). Part of that research has explored the extent to which education for citizenship follows common patterns across countries and regions rather than being bound by the particulars of individual countries. At the same time there has been an emergence of regional political institutions such as those in Europe and Latin America through which there is a sharing of interests and operational principles. Regional contexts are now important for civic and citizenship education because they shape how people undertake their roles as citizens and there have been a number of regional studies of education for civics and citizenship in