Darwich (2020) asked "What Kind of Citizens Do Educators Hope Their Students Become?" in her response to "Storypath: A Powerful Tool for Engaging Children in Civic Education" (McGuire et al., 2019). She argued that civics should be rooted in social justice grounded by critical civic empathy, which requires focusing on power and…

This conceptual paper assesses prevalent critiques of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and analyzes content from the CCSS in language arts and literacy to determine whether the standards are likely to support or undermine key democratic aims of education. The authors conclude that critiques of the CCSS have some merit but are generally…

Drawing upon the African concept of "ubuntu," this article examines the epistemic orientations toward individual-society relations that inform democratic citizenship and identity in South Africa. Findings from focus group interviews conducted with 50 Xhosa teachers from all seven primary and intermediate schools in a township outside…

"What is the right use of books?" Responding to the question he famously raised, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "books are for nothing but to inspire," which we take as endorsing a pragmatic and pluralistic view of reading literature and other kinds of texts in a manner that keeps books open to a flow of continual questioning and renewal. The…