Project Citizen Preliminary Report Year One

This study evaluates the effectiveness of the Project Citizen teacher professional development program and curriculum intervention. Project Citizen is a widely used curriculum intervention that actively engages young people in cooperative, project-based learning as they work as a class to identify a problem in their community, research alternative policy-based solutions, develop a policy proposal to address the problem, and design a political action plan to convince public officials to adopt and implement the policy. PC also supports students’ development of English Language Arts (ELA) and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) knowledge and skills. The intervention includes a professional development (PD) program for teachers that increases their content knowledge, improves their capacity to effectively engage young people in PC, and increases their professional engagement with other educators.