Schools carry the important task of fostering democratic values like equality and tolerance among students. This study examined to what extent a valid and reliable measurement instrument can be developed to gain insight into students' attitudes towards democratic values and what can be concluded based on this measurement. We constructed the…

This paper engages with conversations with two teachers who each build socially just pedagogies and engage in minor gestures in response to the socio-educational-political reality they were confronted with -- namely, a pupil disappearing from the classroom when her parents' application for immigration was rejected. In an assemblage connecting the…

This study aims to analyse the media excerpts found in the officially approved textbooks for the social studies course in Turkey from the perspective of the thematic areas included in UNESCO MIL's [Media and Information Literacy] Curriculum. In the study, the descriptive analysis method was applied and the data were collected using document…

An arts-based afterschool program is introduced in advancing children's democratic citizenship and a sense of community. The ARtS Initiative (Aesthetic, Reflexive thoughts, & Sharing) has reimagined arts and aesthetics for young people in urban settings, providing an unquantifiable experience focused on promoting pluralistic societies. The…

The purpose of this paper is to exemplify a "grass-roots" change based on Dewey's experimental progressive education model employed in the "Bridge over the Valley" bilingual school, a Palestinian-Arab and Jewish school in Israel. In order to identify the progressive "approach" underlying this change, the…

This comparative case study examines the manner in which 2 middle-level social studies teachers established connections between the past and the present within their curriculums. The teachers who participated in this project worked in different school districts: one teaching a 7th-grade U.S. History curriculum and the other teaching a 6th-grade…

The aim of this study is to identify the perceptions of democracy of primary school students, identify the factors that affect these, and compare the results with those obtained from other countries. The research was carried out during the 2011-2012 school year with 1,667 students from the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades who were chosen from 26 cities in…

The social studies curriculum was recently revised in Turkey, running in a pilot scheme in the school year 2004-05. It was then implemented in primary schools all over Turkey from 2006. This study describes the kind of citizen it aims to form by analysing all of the documents relating to social studies teaching. The social studies curriculum for…

This is the account of a practitioner using action research in his classroom. Lamenting a lack of democracy in his teaching, the teacher is advised by his critical friends to present the problem to his sixth grade students. Together, they come up with a plan to try to democratize their classroom one period at a time. Using both student and teacher…

This article describes a case study that is part of a broader research project in which schools set up processes of school improvement inspired by the proposals put forward by students. The project furthers the initiatives of the student voice movement and seeks to implement more participative pedagogical models. This as a whole represents a novel…

In 1997, fifteen council meetings were observed and recorded at the Albany Free School and subsequently analyzed. Unbeknownst to the school, the council meetings were found to be very similar to what Lawrence Kohlberg had in mind when he developed his Just Community Model. This article discusses how this council meeting forum compares to…

This paper draws on a large Australian commissioned research study that mapped classroom pedagogies called "productive pedagogies". The model of pedagogies derived from an admixture of theory and empirical observations and worked together what Fraser (1997) calls a politics of redistribution and a politics of recognition in its desire to…