Alienated and disaffected students: Exploring the civic capacity of 'Outsiders' in Asian societies

As an important group of students, the alienated and disaffected students are often overlooked in more general studies of civic education. Based on data from the International Civics and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS 2009), the study investigated alienated and disaffected students in Asia and explored the development of their civic attitudes. Student samples from Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand were involved in the study. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to identify alienated and disaffected students across the five Asian societies, and multilevel multinomial logistic regression (MMLR) was used to explore factors related to group membership. Students' future civic intentions were analyzed under the framework of Personal Investment Theory (PIT) by multilevel regression. Based on LPA, three groups were identified: the Outsiders, the Moderates, and the Active Participators. The results showed that Outsiders scored lower on all conventional civic values and tended to endorse negative civic behaviors. The results of MMLR showed that boys were more likely to be Outsiders than girls, students' expected education level, their socio-economic background, and home literacy were negatively related with being in the Outsider group. By combining PIT with multilevel analysis, the study identified that students' sense of self and facilitating condition accounted for their future civic engagement. Students' positive attitudes toward traditional culture, morality of politicians, and good citizenship were predictors for conventional civic participation—adult electoral participation and negatively related to their future illegal protest. The study demonstrated the role of traditional values in promoting future civic engagement. Copyright © 2018 Education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.