The development of social and civic responsibility: A case study of Centro Educativo Nuevo Mundo (Samborondón, Ecuador)

Educational institutions exist to impart information, mores, and self-worth to the persons who pass through their system. Generally, both public and private motives are imbedded within a curriculum, making it necessary for schools to provide diverse civic training and advance increasingly precise personal goals, respectively. The former is often measured by a student\u27s social development—specifically, that of his or her value in the labor pool and sense of civic responsibility. In contrast, private (an individual\u27s) goals are often guided by one\u27s economic and political improvement. In developed nations, school-related academic literature is extensive; however, few have analyzed the ways in which schools in lesser-developed nations manage these competing goals. As an exploratory case study, this research examines the ways in which one school in Ecuador, a lesser-developed nation, reconciles such public and private interests. This study accomplished this by interviewing students, questioning their identification with several school-identified social and civic goals. Various ways in which students routinely interact with their community were also analyzed to measure their social consciousness and sense of citizenship, as conceptualized by the school\u27s institutional mission and curricular definitions. Findings show that students\u27 understanding of the instructional goals parallel those stated by the school. Students expressed personal examples of social and civic development, but these notions were generally associated with personal interest rather than participatory responsibility. The social justice orientation of citizenship (as expressed by the critical consciousness and social justice goal of the school) was acknowledged, but with limited detail. Overall, data indicate that the site school influences civic identity via its academic coursework, service—learning engagements, and various nonclass activities. Several descriptions of civic responsibility and social-minded action were present, but examining to what degree or effect was difficult to ascertain given the overlapping descriptions provided by students. The relatively small number of student participants in this study also precludes any speculative association regarding the efficacy of the instructional program as a larger initiative; specific relationships between identity development and curricular goals can be made, but the overall efficiency of the model to do so en masse is unknown