Book Review | Teaching Civic Engagement Across the Disciplines

Teaching Civic Engagement Across the Disciplines. Edited by Elizabeth C. Matto, Alison Rios Millett McCartney, Elizabeth A. Bennion, and Dick Simpson. Washington, DC: American Political Science Association. 2017. ISBN: 978-1878147561. 454 pages. Paperback, $30.

Teaching Civic Engagement Across the Disciplines is a new collection of essays edited by Elizabeth C. Matto, Alison Rios Millett McCartney, Elizabeth A. Bennison, and Dick Simpson, and published by the American Political Science Association. As a former high school teacher and current university faculty member who also directs my institution’s Center for Teaching, it was immediately clear to me how this book could be influential to educators not only “across the disciplines” but also across hierarchies and grade levels. Contributors to the collection share information varying from such topics as university assessments of community engagement to a collaborative learning project between college and elementary students. Comprising 23 chapters that explore the importance of civically engaged education from numerous perspectives, this book is a significant new resource for educators interested in promoting civic engagement through curricular means. The book is organized into three sections, each of which offers the reader a distinctive vantage point, from the theoretical, to the curricular, to the structural/contextual.