Democracies expect citizens to engage actively in public life by making decisions about political issues that are frequently ambiguous, with strong moral and emotional implications, and often subject to misinformation and manipulation. Strong critical thinking (CT) appears therefore as a crucial component of a reflective democratic citizenship.…

Computational thinking--a set of mental and cognitive tools applied to problem solving--is a fundamental skill that all of us (and not just computer scientists) draw on. Educators have found that computational thinking enhances learning across a range of subjects and reinforces students' abilities in reading, writing, and arithmetic. This book…

As countries experience increasing cultural diversity both within and between their borders, contemporary researchers are exploring the connection between culture and children's learning and academic experiences. One important goal is to provide all children with educational experiences that are culturally sensitive, relevant, and effective in…

In this article, the authors engage middle-grades students in a series of tasks to develop the mathematical idea of equal versus equivalent, culminating in a gerrymandering task with social, political, economic, and educational implications. The primary mathematical goals of this exploration were to involve students in solving real-world problems…

Community-university partnerships are increasingly being used to address complex, systemic problems, such as food insecurity. However, this form of research is highly labour intensive and requires substantial time and energy. Several community-university partnerships have begun to appoint individuals who act to 'bridge' such partnerships to…

New Hampshire is a place of both traditions and contradictions. Though historically New Hampshire's demographics have been primarily white, the state is becoming increasingly diverse with respect to racial and ethnic identities. There are communities with significant wealth adjacent to towns with widespread poverty and devastating rates of…

This chapter focuses on effective preparation for civic reasoning, discourse, and problem solving. It reviews literatures, including major synthetic reviews and studies from the science of learning and development (SoLD), civics education, and mathematics education. Based on these reviews, the authors make the case for a more comprehensive form of…

This article reveals the meaning and content of the linguistic and cultural studies integration into social and political science course in the training of future politicians. The article reflects the importance of linguistic and cultural studies for the formation of language competence of students as well as skills of political communication, for…

While voter turnout is often seen as one definitive aspect of civic engagement, this paper argues that there are more nuanced ways to reflect on the impact of service-learning experiences on students' environmental awareness and environmentally responsible behavior changes. Using course evaluation qualitative comments in environmental…

The Peruvian basic education and its curriculum have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, certain trends and phenomena have emerged, which shape the new normality in society and have generated many effects on the mathematics curriculum. For this reason, it is necessary to pose the problem of sketching the orientations of…

A mixed methods study was conducted to determine if a mandatory hybrid service-learning course had an effect on the civic attitudes and skills of college students attending a private university in Ecuador. The Civic Attitudes and Skills Questionnaire (CASQ) was used in a quasiexperimental design using MANOVA with follow up t tests. After this…

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…

People often make choices that go against their own best interests. In the controversial bestseller "Nudge," Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein argue that people can benefit from simple "nudges" to improve their decision-making. In an upper-level undergraduate course on political decision-making, I created a series of assignments around "Nudge." In…

Gender differences in interests and preferences are among the currently accepted potential explanations for the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. In an attempt to analyze the development of such preferences, gender differences expressed in essays written by gifted elementary students…

As school leaders, principals must seek, use, and make sense of data and information. This study presents the findings of a survey study of 182 high school principals' data use and examines the differences in the extent of principals' data use for decision making in solving various dimensions of administrative problems. Results show principals…