In the United States, people have long had a tendency to see the immediate, personal benefits of new technologies as contributing to human progress well before understanding their long-term social consequences. Facebook offers an instructive (and destructive) example. Facebook has failed to build infrastructural safeguards or accept the ethical…

Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange's photojournalist activism during World War II was a direct response to President Franklin Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 (EO 9066), which led to the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans in 10 camps across seven mostly western states. Approximately two-thirds of those imprisoned were U.S.…

This article shares lessons from committed and inspirational educators from across the country with whom the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) worked in 2020. Their experiences reinforce that nonpartisan teaching about democracy is possible (i.e., not teaching who to vote for, but rather how the system…

Change comes when individuals transform themselves first and then move outward into the world. The C3 Framework lays out a vision for civic action within Dimension 4 of the Inquiry Arc in a section titled "Taking Informed Action." The Framework emphasizes that "It is important to note that taking informed action … should be grounded…

In this article, the authors begin by describing a classroom activity from part of the Diplomacy Challenge unit in their Problem-Based Learning (PBL) Advanced Placement (AP) World History Curriculum when students discover and analyze the history of the Early Modern Era (1450-1750). In this article, they explain how they have adopted PBL, its…

Recent publications have highlighted a growing concern among American educators, parents, and policymakers about the increasingly ubiquitous role of computer technology in the lives of children and teenagers. These authors warn that young people are becoming "technology addicts" as they spend upwards of 10 or 11 hours a day in front of a…

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is increasingly popular in K-12 schools, not just in the United States but around the world. PBL is a great way to engage students in their learning. In this article, the author presents what PBL is and is not.

The social studies curriculum travels through time and space and is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. To an outsider, the social studies curriculum is a single line on a program of studies, 45 minutes of a student's school day. Those on the inside, however, know that the field covers history, geography, civics, economics, and much…

High school can be stressful for any student. For resettled refugee youth, there are often the additional demands of a new language and customs, the challenge of fitting into a new community and culture, and the need to support their family emotionally, logistically, and even financially. Many of the newcomer youth arrived in Durham, North…