The Science of Experiential Civics

For over a century, schools have been hoping that instilling knowledge of the US civic system—how a bill becomes a law, the three branches of government, the history of constitutional amendments—would lead young people to embrace the concept of democracy and commit to engaging in it. Yet today, young people’s trust in democratic institutions has plummeted.[1] Youth, especially those from marginalized communities, are feeling disillusioned, disconnected, and undervalued.[2] But recent research makes clear that this disconnection results not only from a failure to deliver teens enough or good enough content on civics: It is because they do not feel their perspectives and ideas shape the systems in which they live.[3]

State education leaders can turn to neuroscience and developmental psychology for help in remaking civics learning to unlock teen engagement. The research in these disciplines suggests that young people do not become ardent participants in democracy by memorizing facts or by teachers exhorting them to care, read, and vote. Just like in other academic subjects, teens become active, engaged learners of civics and history when they are invited into and challenged in environments that nurture their sense of self, belonging, curiosity, agency, and purpose.[4] For young people to develop their civic selves, they must experience the power of the core principles and practices of democracy through their own relationships and experiences.

Understanding Teen Development

Adults who seek to nurture participation in civic society must be attuned to where teens are in their development.[5] The teen years are a thrilling period when many things unfold: consciousness, self-awareness, judgment, insight. The brain is getting remodeled, with a pruning of existing neural connections and establishment of new ones that pave the way for reflection, analysis, judgment, and critical thinking.

Even more important, identities are forming, purpose solidifies, and young people begin asking: “Who am I in the world? What matters to me? Do I matter? What kind of future can I build?” These questions demonstrate critical capacities that are essential to becoming healthy, capable adults. Responding to the questions teens pose can, at times, be exasperating for adults, but it is normal for teens to exhibit strong emotions, take risks, reexamine how they see the world, and challenge the belief systems of authority figures in their lives.[6]

Too many young people move through K-12 school environments in which their developmental needs are not well understood, and their questions go unanswered. Instead of experiences that foster connection, reflection, and contribution, young people often experience standardization, disconnection, and what feels like irrelevant learning.[7] Far from feeling respected as emerging contributors to society, young people feel seen primarily for how they disappoint or annoy their elders.[8]

By creating experiences that unlock adolescents’ agency and curiosity—and with that, the fullest expression of who they are as human beings—educators and school leaders can shift this paradigm. Civics learning must leverage the science of connection and context. Such learning recognizes that a human relationship is a biological event; it triggers an enormous cascade of helpful hormones and neurotransmitters that promote students’ readiness to explore, absorb something new, and mobilize effort.[9]

Applying this knowledge can help educators get young people excited about learning from history—a prerequisite to effective civic engagement.[10] Teens are wired to explore and to connect learning to their innate creativity, sense of justice, and longing for connection—not for absorbing monolithic narratives about the past. While it may seem like it has become ever harder for teens to absorb history, history education has never been designed in a way that worked for teens. But when designed for how adolescents learn, it can unlock their capacity as curious, caring learners and community members.

The Power of Community-Connected Learning

We saw what that can look like at the 2025 Troutbeck Symposium, a regional initiative held in Amenia, New York, to showcase youth projects in local history. Teens from 20 schools showed us what is possible when young people are invited not just to study history, but to make it. The model is simple but powerful: Students engage in original research driven by their curiosity, rooted in local archives, oral histories, and community museums and then present their findings publicly. This moment of public recognition is key. Teens are validated not just as learners, but as historians and storytellers with something meaningful to contribute.

Starting with students’ own questions is the heart of experiential civics: “What happened in that abandoned factory?” or “Who lies beneath a headstone marked with only a single letter?” These inquiries send them into deep investigation, sparking insights into how local economies, cultural norms, justice, and institutions evolve. Data gathered in surveys and interviews show that this process builds durable skills—research, critical thinking, communication. Even more important, it fosters a sense of belonging and agency, as students come to see themselves as learners and teachers, who by unearthing untold stories become part of a long human story of resilience and creativity.[11]

Projects like these, which we have been testing and scaling through our Real World humanities learning initiative in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, flip the civics script. Rather than beginning with abstract structures, students begin with wonder and the desire to add value to community institutions. From their questions and passions, they “ladder up” to understanding how institutions, policies, and systems shape the world—and how they can shape it too.

In short: Civics becomes real when students start local, lead the inquiry, and are seen and heard. And the educators in the room are not just teaching civics. They are nourishing engaged civic actors.

The Biology of Belonging

Epigenetics is an emerging field that explains the power of experiences like those we observed among the teens at Troutbeck and in Kansas City. “Epi” means above, what sits above the gene, dialing genetic expression up and down like a dimmer switch. Understood this way, genes are not destiny. Human potential is vast, but it is unlocked only when learning environments provide safety, challenge, and connection. In environments intentionally designed to nourish healthy development, young people thrive cognitively, emotionally, and civically.[12]

At the History Co:Lab and its design lab iThrive Games, staff research and design these kinds of experiences, in which young people

• interview community elders about their stories of migration and resilience;
• co-create tours and museum exhibits;
• make podcasts that link global issues to their own lives and those in their communities;[13]
• co-design games; and
• participate in making agreements, leading town halls, designing simulations, or conducting policy design sessions.

None of these experiences are “enrichment.” They are essential to sparking the “aha” moments that students need so that they can find an onramp into civic curiosity and engagement. As students gain insights about their own capacity to discover and create, their relationship to others, the complexity of the systems around them, and their role in shaping the world, they start seeing themselves as curious, capable, agentic individuals with a connection to a larger whole.

Once they sense their own potential, students can see and explore further ways to both learn more about the institutions and laws that are the foundation of democracy and engage in more advanced participatory, entrepreneurial civic endeavors. Research from across the globe has demonstrated the impact of service learning, participatory budgeting, and media literacy initiatives in select US locations and throughout the democratic countries of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.[14]

Five Design Principles

We have been fortunate throughout our careers to work in a wide variety of settings: from democracy building in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall to private practice in child and adolescent psychiatry; from social entrepreneurship in youth development to building global movements for systems change; from teaching high school history to designing trauma-informed learning ecosystems. We have collaborated with practitioners, researchers, and civic innovators across the world. Drawing on that experience, we offer five core design principles for policymaking—principles that can reshape not only how to teach civics but how to structure school itself.

1. Democracy lives in relationships. Because relationships are the most powerful driver of gene expression and brain development, a teen’s first civic experience is not voting—it is having an adult take them and their questions seriously. Schools can do this work when they create spaces where students feel safe, seen, and respected—with advisory models, looping, co-design, and emotionally attuned teaching. But the principle extends to every adult in a student’s ecosystem—from librarians to museum educators. As students in Pittsburgh’s Civic Learning Ecosystem—powered by Remake Learning—are showcasing with their “map of sites of belonging,” weaving a web of institutions and individuals who know how to show up for and nurture teens is essential for the civic health of a community.

2. Context itself is curriculum. Environment and community-connected experiences drive genetic expression. Students can engage deeply as learners when they explore topics connected to their lives with people they trust. Local history, family stories, and neighborhood challenges provide entry points into the broader human history. As an example, a high school class in Kansas City, Missouri, partnered with their local museum to co-create a migration history exhibit, drawing on family oral histories. In projects like this, over 90 percent of students report feeling a stronger connection to their community and their own identity after participating.

3. Co-creation nurtures agency. Development accelerates when learners have voice, choice, and meaningful challenge. Instead of asking students to recite how democracy works, teachers can invite them to practice it by co-designing learning experiences, shaping projects, and making real decisions. This exemplifies a key developmental principle: With the encouragement of someone they trust, learners are introduced to their “zone of proximal development” by trying new, harder things they never thought they could do. Students in Dallas, for instance, worked with game designers to create a tabletop game that helps adults see teen creativity as civic genius.[15]

4. Emotion drives cognition. You cannot separate emotion from learning; the amygdala is an integral part of the limbic system and the learning center of the brain. Civics learning must provide space for exploration of frustration, hope, empathy, and possibility. Storytelling, art, and dialogue circles let young people process complex issues in meaningful ways. In Pittsburgh, teens created podcasts exploring their neighborhood’s history with redlining. Their emotional connection to these stories led them to testify at a city council meeting on equitable housing.

5. Civic identity is intergenerational. Adolescents are meaning makers, and they locate themselves in relation to the past, present, and future. When students see themselves as part of a long arc of history—heirs and ancestors—they gain both humility and responsibility. Facilitating and integrating intergenerational connections between teens, adults, and elders in communities fosters teens’ civic identity. It also creates meaningful relationships that can deepen community connections and address issues of loneliness.[16]

What State Boards Can Do

State boards of education have powerful tools to align public education with adolescent development, civic purpose, and belonging. Drawing on insights from research on designing a learner-centered ecosystem,[17] we recommend six concrete actions:

1. Align standards with adolescent development. Revise civics and social studies standards to embed relationship-centered, culturally connected, and project-based learning. Use models like Kentucky or South Carolina’s Profile of a Graduate to ground standards in developmental outcomes like purpose and agency.

2. Modernize teacher preparation. Require educator training in adolescent brain science, trauma-informed practice, and the science of belonging, so that educators know how to activate the biology of learning through experiences that connect students through relationships and context—in history and civics and across the curriculum. States like Utah, California, and Massachusetts offer technical assistance and professional learning aligned with these priorities.

3. Support community-connected learning. Fund partnerships with museums, libraries, and civic institutions so adolescents can tackle real-world problems. Follow Real World Learning in Kansas City, or regional initiatives like Remake Learning in Pittsburgh, which recognize the value of and award credit for learning beyond school walls.

4. Redefine assessment. Include portfolios, exhibitions, and student reflections in accountability systems. In its partnership with ETS on the future of assessment, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is piloting new formats across eight states to catalog and nurture deeper learning and contribution.

5. Create civic pathways. Develop humanities and civics career pathways—e.g., museum or archive internships and journalism labs—within existing college and career frameworks.

6. Convene cross-sector stakeholders. Convene K-12, postsecondary, civic, and cultural partners to align the approach to civics learning. States with children’s or workforce cabinets—like Indiana’s—illustrate how to structure this collaboration effectively.

Conclusion

Democracy will not be rebuilt by teaching students to memorize the Constitution. It will be rebuilt by creating learning environments that reflect and activate the values at the core of democracy: trust, curiosity, shared agency, and shared purpose.

We believe that it is missing the point to merely issue a call for more civics tests. Instead, we urge state leaders to fundamentally redesign civics learning so that students can know and feel why civic life matters and so that democracy lives on in the values and practices of each of its future citizens.

When students experience civic connection and the power of participation through relationships, when they see their stories reflected in what they learn, and when they see their ideas shaping the future, they do not just understand democracy, they become democracy.

Notes

[1] Zach Hrynowski and Stephanie Marken, “Gen Z Voices: Lackluster Trust in Major U.S. Institutions,” Gallup, March 11, 2024.

[2] Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School, “50th Edition of the Harvard Youth Poll, Spring 2025” (April 2025).

[3] Deborah Apau et al., “How Does Gen Z Feel about Democracy? Insights from Three Profiles of Youth and Democracy,” report (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University and Protect Democracy, March 2025).

[4] Mary Helen Immordino-Yang et al., “Weaving a Colorful Cloth: Centering Education on Humans’ Emergent Developmental Potentials,” Review of Research in Education 47, no. 1 (March 2023): 1–45, https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X231223516; Fernande Raine and Emily Wegner, “Leveraging the Community as a Civic Classroom,” in Byron Sanders and Shannon Epner, eds., Built for More: The Role of Out-of-School Time in Preparing Youth for the Future of Work (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2024).

[5] Pamela Cantor, “5 Myths of Adolescence,” post, April 20, 2022; Fernande Raine and Susan Rivers, “Patriotism Done Right: We Can’t Lecture Teens into Loving Our Country,” opinion, Education Week, April 16, 2025.

[6] Susan Rivers and Michelle Bertoli, The Power of Play (ASCD, forthcoming 2026).

[7] Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop, The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better (New York: Crown, 2025).

[8] Ellen Galinsky, The Breakthrough Years: A New Scientific Framework for Raising Thriving Teens (New York: Flatiron Books, 2024).

[9] Pamela Cantor et al., “Malleability, Plasticity, and Individuality: How Children Learn and Develop in Context,” Applied Developmental Science 23, no. 4 (2019): 307–37, https://doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2017.1398649.

[10] Sam Wineburg, Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).

[11] E.g., the Kauffman Foundation collected data on its Client Connected Projects in History during 2023 and 2024, and Troutbeck’s team collected videos and podcasts on the symposium projects’ impact on students. In years of survey data on student impact, the History Co:Lab finds that over 85 percent of learners who complete a project of this kind report an increased sense of belonging and agency.

[12] Pamela Cantor et al., Whole-Child Development, Learning, and Thriving: A Dynamic Systems Approach (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

[13] See, for example, the history podcast UnTextbooked.

[14] Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, “Engaging Young Citizens: Civic Education Practices in the Classroom and Beyond,” OECD Education Policy Perspectives, no. 65 (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2023), https://doi.org/10.1787/2166378c-en; Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Linda Darling-Hammond, and Christina R. Krone, “The Brain Basis for Integrated Social, Emotional, and Academic Development,” report (Aspen Institute, National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development, 2019).

[15] See e.g., “Teen Co-Design Is Teen Learning: The Story of the Porcelain Child,” blog (iThrive Games, June 6, 2025).

[16] See, for example, the website “Can Intergenerational Connection Heal Us?”

[17] Sarah Bishop-Root, “Progress and Possibilities to Support Learner-Centered Education and Ecosystem Design,” State-Level Policy and Conditions Landscape Analysis (Education Reimagined, May 23, 2024).