It is important to remember that elections are but one piece--albeit an important one--of much larger processes of politics and governance. Moreover, in the United States they are increasingly implicated in the construction of identities and places. What goes on in the course of electoral politics (creating electoral systems and voting districts,…

How is the president of the United States elected? Why is this the method used? Is this the best and most efficient way of electing the president of the United States? Questions such as these are well suited for a mathematics discussion that promotes numeracy, because, "notwithstanding the immense value of numeracy for education and vocation,…

Commitment to democracy and democratic norms is declining to the point where many Americans question the current political system as a form of democratic governance. Americans are deeply divided along lines of social identity, political preferences, and lived experiences (Pew Research Center, 2017a). The rhetoric and divisiveness of the 2016…

Despite a strong societal commitment to ensuring that individuals with intellectual disability (ID) fully participate in their communities, few people with ID vote. Little is known about voting experiences from the perspective of people with ID. In-person, semistructured interviews were conducted with 28 adults with ID (M[subscript age] = 37…

This paper examines prime minister Robert Menzies decision to support science education in Australian schools in 1963. This was a landmark shift in policy for the federal government, but in many ways mirrors the decision of Eisenhower who brought down the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) in 1958. The paper uses a transnational approach to…

The Net Generation, a generation which grew up with digital media, differs from older generations which entered the world of digital media and the Internet afterwards. The Internet itself opened new possibilities of communication and participation in the sphere of politics as well. Research was conducted among students at the Faculty of Teacher…

One of the biggest debates in South Africa is the use and usefulness of apartheid categories when analysing society and societal behaviour. This paper examines the process of learning and unlearning that took place when a political reporting lecturer and an academic staff developer sought to explain racially biased voting in South Africa and its…

Institutions of higher education (HE) are increasingly expected to rise to the challenge of preparing environmentally literate graduates, equipped to bring a sustainability perspective into their professional function. While considerable research has explored the relationship between HE and tendency for political participation in general, studies…

This study uses measures from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement to examine rates of volunteerism, use of political voice, and electoral indicators between college students and college student-athletes attending three institutions with Division I athletic programs. Findings illustrate increased volunteer…

There are many approaches that schools could take to prepare and encourage young people to vote. These approaches may be less dramatic than linking registration to graduation, but they are more comprehensive and likely even more effective in the long term. In this article, the author encourages educators, particularly the social studies community,…

In the United States courses on civics or government are often marginalized in most states' social studies curricula in favor of courses in United States or world history. The origins of this history-dominated approach have roots in the debates between the American Historical Association and the National Education Association at the turn of the…

In early July, the country of Sudan, wracked by civil war since the 1980s, officially split into two separate nations, Sudan and South Sudan. Six months earlier, over a seven-day period, the people in southern Sudan had voted in a national referendum on whether to secede from the North. The voters had two choices: "Separation" or…

This article presents what the authors consider to be the ten top websites for teaching about issues in the election season. These include: (1) The Annenberg Political Fact Check--a non-partisan organization that assesses the accuracy of candidates' information in ads, speeches, and debates; (2) The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Ads…

The 2012 U.S. presidential election is the perfect opportunity to present a timely civics lesson on how a U.S. president is elected. More important, it offers opportunities for students to reason mathematically about election issues--for example, about how much time and resources the candidates should invest in particular states. The results of…

On the morning of September 1, 1960, Herb Klein and Pierre Salinger met in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., to discuss the details of what would be the first televised presidential debate. Klein was press secretary for Republican candidate Vice President Richard Nixon and Salinger was press secretary for Democratic candidate Senator John…