The Student Hubs theory of change explains our belief that when students are supported to learn about social issues, are able to connect with like minded individuals, and are provided the opportunity to do something meaningful, several wonderful things happen. We’re really good at talking about the first two; students benefit from insight and skill development, and communities benefit from the enthusiasm and expertise students bring. The third level of our impact is that students leave university as ‘active citizens for life’, taking the ‘do’ far past their graduation.
In our fifteen years of delivery we’ve always alluded to the fact that we support students to be socially active or aware but we’ve always just assumed everyone knew what we meant when we said this. But that’s not fair, and if we want to really shout about active citizenship as an important part of the work we do (which it is!) then it’s time to figure it out. In true Student Hubs fashion, we want to do this collaboratively with you.
Is it even a word?
If we take a literal look at the specific words ‘active’ and ‘citizen’, we can begin to draw some thoughts on what active citizenship might mean. To be a citizen means that you belong to a group, perhaps a country, region, or town. It could even be to a group of people with shared values and ideas. When we add ‘active’ on to it, it suggests that you take an intentional role in being a citizen. For example, if you are a British citizen, taking an active role might look like voting in elections.
Around the 2010s, the government invested time and resources into thinking about the role of youth citizenship in the country. Lots of really fascinating work came out of this (including supporting the development of parts of our work at Student Hubs, such as the #iWill campaign, Step Up To Serve, as well as many other youth social action action organisations). A lot of the government’s research looked at citizenship education and how we support youth social action specifically. Adding ‘social action’ to our definition of active citizenship opens the door to more thoughts on the role we might play. Taken from the government’s definition, social action is about people coming together to improve their lives and solve the problems that are important in their communities. Some examples of this are volunteering, donating money, and community action.
Work by Westheimer and Kahne in the early 2000s looked at the programmes supporting the development of active citizenship within education in the United States, and their work detailed a spectrum of ‘citizenship’ that we think is a really helpful way of breaking it down.
In their paper “What Kind of Citizen”, Westheimer and Kahne define three conceptions of a ‘good’ citizen. The first is the personally responsible citizen, someone who acts responsibly in their community, for example, they might volunteer, vote, and recycle. They’re the type of person who would lend a hand and give time or money to help those less fortunate. If we were to simplify this into one generalised example (taken from this paper), this is the type of person who would donate food to a food bank. The second is the participatory citizen. This is someone who actively seeks to be a part of the social life of the community: they’re more likely to have an organising role in activities and engage more in policies and processes, with a focus on building relationships and collective vision. Extending the example, a participatory citizen would be the person organising the food bank. The third is the justice-oriented citizen. This is someone who is engaged in critically understanding and interrogating the structures which uphold social issues and injustices. Following our example, this would be the person who would be seeking to understand why people needed to use the food bank and then acting to address the root cause.
Westheimer and Kahne’s definitions are really helpful in recognising that there are many different ways to be an active citizen, and that our involvement is on a spectrum rather than a set, defined role we sit in and can’t move from. It’s also important to recognise that there are a wide range of factors which may limit or support us to be at different levels of the spectrum during different parts of our life.
What it means to us
Drawing all of this closer to our work, there are two key elements that stand out to us. First, it’s about feeling like you have the ability to imagine a future that is better than it is now, and knowing that you have the skills to get there. A lot of our work with our students looks at developing what we call ‘skills for life’. These skills are what we believe to be core competencies in having the knowledge that you can enact change. They include skills like communication, teamwork, leadership, and resilience. In 2022-23, 74% of our students felt our activities had improved their ability to lead others, 80% felt it improved their ability to work with others, and 82% felt it improved their ability to adapt and overcome challenges.
This is partnered with learning about social issues and being exposed to new ideas and ways of thinking. These opportunities allow us to explore more deeply why the world and certain issues are the way they are, and work with others to come up with ideas on how the world could be better. 89% of our students felt our activities increased their understanding of social issues/challenges. If we were to align this with our theory of change, this is about learning and connecting.
The second element is about taking action, the doing. You’ve built the skills and you’ve got a vision for the future, but being an active citizen is about taking all of this together and doing something about it. From our experience this comes down to two factors: confidence and sense of belonging. In order to act on how you feel, there’s a certain amount of confidence you need in believing this will work out in your favour. As humans, we’re far less likely to do something if we think it’s going to fail. 88% of our students felt that our activities increased their confidence in approaching challenges, and 85% shared that they were more likely to tackle further social challenges as a result of their participation in our activities. To us, this is coupled closely with connection to others and the sense of belonging you have within your community; you are more likely to want to take action and make things better for people and communities you are a part of, or have a sense of connection to. On average, 66% of our students felt connected to other volunteers and their local community at the end of their engagement with our activities, and 68% shared they had a sense of belonging within these communities.
At Student Hubs, being an active citizen is about continually learning about social issues, connecting with others, and then using your experiences, relationships, and vision, to do something to make the future better.
What next?
It can be complicated and tangled up with lots of other thoughts we each may have about what it means to be a good person. We’re not going to be able to tell you definitively what that looks like or how to do it: instead, we want to shape our understanding of active citizenship with you. Over the next few months, we have blogs lined up from our team and wider community where we’ll be sharing their thoughts on activities which embody being an active citizen. If you’d like to get involved, get in touch! If you are a student or alumni you can submit a proposal for a paid-for blog. Please feel free to get in touch with our Operations & Activities Manager, Amy, if you have any questions, at amy.bond@studenthubs.org.
We look forward to exploring this space with you.