Using a student-centered approach, Generation Citizen’s (GC) action civics model helps students gain civic knowledge and skills as they work together to take action on a local issue in their community. This paper draws upon reflections from GC’s decade-plus of teaching action civics at scale in middle and high schools across the United States, highlighting drivers for nonpartisan civics education efforts in Texas, Oklahoma, California, Alabama, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York. Reflections on GC’s work also point to the opportunities and challenges that GC encountered as it scaled We suggest future directions for research and practice for nonpartisan action civics work into the next decade.

The United States has witnessed a steady increase in concern about political polarization and its impact on youth. We systematically review and compare the empirical research literature on civic education pedagogy in the United States between 2009 and 2019 to frame efforts to construct an inclusive and healthy democracy—one that decreases polarization and increases broad youth civic participation. Despite evidence that civic education must be revitalized to address societal inequities underlying participation and polarization, few articles addressed how to achieve such education. We recommend future researchers evaluate promising practices for increasing youth participation and decreasing political polarization. There is a related need for more civic education research in K–12 schools, particularly critical research focused on program implementation and outcomes.