Handbook of Research on Civic Engagement in Youth

Lonnie R. Sherrod, Ph.D.Yale University 1978, is Executive Director of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) and Distinguished Lecturer in Fordham University's Applied Developmental Psychology Program (ADP). Dr. Sherrod has served in several academic and policy making organizations which further positive youth development. He edits the SRCD Social Policy Reportand has served on the editorial boards of numerous journals, including Developmental Psychology, Journal of Research on Adolescence, and Applied Developmental Science.

Judith Torney-Purta, Ph.D.University of Chicago, Professor of Human Development at the University of Maryland. She has written or edited six books reporting research on political knowledge and attitudes. One of the most recent was Citizenship and Education in Twenty-Eight Countries: Civic Knowledge and Engagement at Age Fourteen (reporting data from 90,000 students tested in 1999 in the IEA Civic Education Study in 29 countries). She served from 1994 to 2004 as Chair of the International Steering Committee for the IEA Civic Education Study.

Constance Flanagan is a professor of youth civic development in the Department of Agricultural and Extension Education and co-director of the minor in Civic and Community Engagement at Penn State University. Her research concerns adolescents’ theories of the 'social contract', i.e., their views of the rights and responsibilities that bind members of a society together, and on age, ethnic, and class differences in these views and their correlates. She is a former William T. Grant Scholar, a member of the MacArthur Foundation's Network on Transitions to Adulthood, a board member of CIRCLE (www.youthcivic.org) and a fellow in the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Division 9 of the APA.