Youth participatory action research can turn your classroom into a site of meaningful, relevant civic learning, in which young people gain a sense of civic empowerment as they discuss, investigate, analyze, and speak with authority on issues that directly affect them and their communities. Through stories, examples, and the reflections of youth…

The Minnesota K-12 Academic Standards in Social Studies represent the work of the Social Studies Standards Review Committee. This committee included K-12 teachers, administrators, college faculty, and representatives of educational and community organizations. Beginning in 2020, the Social Studies Standards Review Committee reviewed the 2011…

Political history lends itself to traditional patterns of teaching and learning in social studies such as students memorizing facts presented in lectures or textbooks. This article presents a recurring activity structure for teaching U.S. political history--Consensus Circle Presidential Rating (CCPR)--which requires students to read across…

This resource has been developed for pre-K-20 educators in order to help students use primary sources to go beyond simple acquisition of content knowledge and rote memorization. The procedures and approaches outlined in this book are designed to help students use primary sources in discipline- and inquiry-based ways to develop and enhance cultural…

Ultimately concerned with how citizenship education for peace can be enriched through interdisciplinary learning, this edited volume reveals the role of peace education in global citizenship by illuminating instruction for comprehensive citizenship. A truly international collection, this volume offers timely insights from countries including…

Courses: Introduction to Rhetoric and Communication, Basic Course, Public Speaking, Classical Rhetoric. Objectives: To re-establish disciplinary commitment to civic education in perilous democratic times through "imitatio."

This tool is part of the Countering Truth Decay initiative, which is focused on restoring the role of facts, data, and analysis in U.S. political and civil discourse and the policymaking process. RAND researchers developed this educational tool, consisting of five sequenced lesson plans for middle school teachers, with the goal of improving RAND's…

Online activism is a space of opportunity for students to encounter social justice issues, explore the possibilities of visual rhetoric, practice persuasive speaking skills, and actively contribute to the momentum of social movements. At the same time, digital activism raises concerns about "slacktivism," limiting the necessary…

This article presents a guiding framework for K-12 arts education. The framework lists four goals for arts education and outlines six areas of teaching practices to support these goals. This framework is presented adjacent to specific political moments, executive orders, and movements from the 2017-2018 political landscape in the United States,…

While reading, writing, and arithmetic remain important, they are no longer enough. For learners to thrive, they must move beyond traditional literacies to modern fluencies--the unconscious mental processes that are learned, adapted, and applied in the context of real-world problems and challenges. In this book, the authors unpack the fluencies…

We want students to master academic standards, and we want them to be confident, adaptive, and socially responsible. Above all, we want them to find meaning and satisfaction in their lives. Achieving these goals requires a concerted focus on the social-emotional skills that empower students in and beyond the classroom. In "Teaching to…

This classroom narrative explores how teachers can build and sustain an intellectually and emotionally fulfilling teaching practice while changing the way students experience school. Written by an English and history teacher in a Philadelphia public high school, this book presents a framework of teaching for a living democracy--supporting learners…

Courses: This teaching unit is for intercultural communication but could be used for any course related to globalization, including public speaking, popular culture and communication, or environmental communication. Additionally, the teaching unit is well-suited for other disciplines, including geography, environmental studies, and global studies.…

What should activist-scholars teach in the social problems classroom? In this conversation, I challenge the assertion that advancing a sociology of social problems is an overly academic enterprise of little use to students and other publics. I introduce the potential of a pedagogical framework for promoting social problems literacy: a set of…

This lesson prompts students to explore the ways that individuals, groups, communities, and nations define who belongs and who does not. The outlined activities examine what it means to belong by introducing the idea of a "universe of obligation," the term sociologist Helen Fein coined to describe the circle of individuals and groups…