Reading Hester & Besing (2017)

For readers tracking this series, this piece aligns closely with other scholarship calling for honors programs to move beyond intellectual enrichment toward public purpose and social responsibility.

Hester, J. A., & Besing, K. L. (2017). Developing Citizenship through Honors. Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council, 18(1), 169-187. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1172637.pdf

Hester and Besing’s 2017 article Developing Citizenship through Honors explores how honors education can intentionally cultivate civic engagement and active citizenship. This one is a pretty quick read as it really only covers 10 pages of the 20 pages. They included a large table in the back half of the paper. They really dug into survey data and were very focused on extending and testing several lines of reasoning. Drawing on examples from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, they describe how service learning, reflective writing, and community-based projects can transform honors coursework into a platform for democratic participation. I will be curious to see where this research ends up going directionally as the trajectory here could be interesting in terms of recommendations to drive change.

For readers tracking this series, this piece aligns closely with other scholarship calling for honors programs to move beyond intellectual enrichment toward public purpose and social responsibility. I’ll be curious to learn more about the civic engagement hypothesis going forward.

You can read the full text of the article here: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1172637.pdf