From the 1890s through World War II, the greatest hopes of American progressive reformers lay not in the government, the markets, or other seats of power but in urban school districts and classrooms. "The Importance of Being Urban" focuses on four western school systems--in Denver, Oakland, Portland, and Seattle--and their efforts to…

In this article, the authors examine the potential in developing a model of curriculum design for Humanities/Liberal Arts courses in urban universities that focuses on cultural pluralism, community organizing, and collective inquiry as a means to foster university students' self-development and self-understanding as citizens, and active…

Recent scholarship on civic education has introduced some useful ways to engage students in learning about controversial topics, debating them, and participating in democratic life. However, while those are valuable tools for active citizenship, they're not sufficient. Democratic education should focus on issues that matter intensely to students'…

Learning communities (LCs) provide an ideal context for civic learning because they foreground the integrative and interactive nature of learning and skills development. While the academic benefits of LCs have been well documented, their potential to promote civic learning and engagement has received less attention. Indeed, the potential of LCs to…

Portland State University's (PSU) reputation as an engaged, urban-serving university continues to distinguish it both nationally and locally. Key partnerships with local, public, and private partners provide students, faculty, and staff with remarkable opportunities to contribute to the physical, social, and economic development of the Portland…

This article explores civic learning, civic participation, and the development of civic agency within the Council of Youth Research (the Council), a program that engages high school students in youth participatory action research projects that challenge school inequalities and mobilize others in pursuit of educational justice. We critique the…

Under the guise of increasing quality and accountability, many urban teacher education programs and professional development models characterize educators as mere transmitters of standardized content knowledge. The authors argue that such dehumanizing practices, which are rooted in the discourse of neoliberalism, prevent teachers from helping…

This article addresses issues regarding implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) within formal education systems. In particular, it seeks to identify the basic essential components of ESD pedagogy. The authors present a theoretical pedagogical framework based on accumulated theory and experience in the field. The framework…

This article describes a children's opera about bullying that was presented to five classrooms in three schools and evaluated with a pre-post design. Data were available for 104 Grade 4 and 5 students who completed a bullying prevalence survey and bullying knowledge quiz before and 6 weeks after the opera. Bullying knowledge increased…

Community colleges educate students from both oppressed and marginalized groups, yet there is almost no literature on community colleges and issues of social justice. Student participation in service learning has been tentatively linked to development of a social justice lens. In this study, I analyze community college students' post-course civic…

This book explores four interrelated themes: rethinking civic education in light of the diversity of U.S. society; re-examining these notions in an increasingly interconnected global context; re-considering the ways that civic education is researched and practiced; and taking stock of where we are currently through use of an historical…

This research brief outlines six major studies of magnet school student outcomes. Magnet schools are programs with special themes or emphases designed to attract families from a variety of different backgrounds. They were originally established to promote voluntary racial integration in urban districts. The studies are located within a much…

This report examines the effects of exposure to various elements of a civics curriculum on civic participation, two forms of political knowledge, internal political efficacy, political cynicism, news elaboration, discussion elaboration and various forms of interpersonal and mediated political communication behaviors. The data are based on a…

The purpose of this article is to review a partnership between a teacher education department and a dropout prevention program. The partnership developed from a variety of communities' needs, no less of which was that of reconnecting marginalized youth at a local dropout prevention school with their community through cultural and civic…

In the tradition of critical ethnography, this study demonstrates the development and use of a structured approach to the qualitative study of an urban alternative public high school. It responds to the need for research that begins to connect the language of possibility in critical educational theory with an emerging language of possibility in…