While citizen science and other participatory approaches to science are increasingly used in schools to promote student science learning, rarely are these students supported to collect, analyze, and share their data with meaningful outside audiences. In this study, we used a Design-Based Research approach to iteratively develop and examine an…

Many scholars argue that the practice of educational tracking exerts a distinct effect on young people's political engagement. They point out that students in academic tracks are becoming more politically engaged than those than those in vocational ones, and suggest that this may be due to differences across tracks in the curriculum, pedagogy,…

Interactions within classrooms contribute to adolescents' democratic civic development by providing resources fostering students' political understanding. Many teachers participate in social or political groups in their communities and more broadly. These out-of-school experiences inform their classroom practices and are contextualized by national…

Meaningful source work is at the heart of social studies learning, but often a tall order for elementary-aged students. In this article, the authors describe the construction and implementation of a fifth grade inquiry on the Suffrage Movement using a focused version of the Inquiry Design Model (IDM) Blueprint. Using source analysis scaffolds…

This paper explores how PurpleState, a political simulation designed to foster skills and knowledge for informed civic participation, develops students' abilities to counter or resist the effects of political polarization and partisanship. Throughout the simulation, which has been implemented in Virginia and Wisconsin, students are asked to…

This article outlines a semester-long advocacy project that walks students through the steps to develop a successful advocacy campaign, culminating in a trip to the state capitol to "lobby" legislators. The manuscript provides faculty with the basic structure for the project and suggests gradable assignments. The project builds on the…

Secondary schools of Georgia continue to be dominated by teacher-oriented models, which are insufficient to raise citizens who are active, informed and responsible. The process of multifaceted development of each student requires the use student-oriented pedagogy that focuses on developing the competencies for their active participation. The data…

Journalism can serve as a generative disciplinary context for developing civic and information literacies needed to meaningfully participate in an increasingly networked and mediated public sphere. Using interviews with journalists, we developed a cognitive task analysis model, identifying an iterative sequence of production and domain-specific…

Global citizenship education (GCE), an educational advocacy for students to attain the competencies of being aware of and actively engaged in defending social justice, equity and sustainable development at both local and global levels, is difficult to achieve in practice. The failure can be attributed to inadequate knowledge of different effects…

This study used task-based group interviews with young adolescents in four countries to investigate their understanding of the causes of human rights violations, means for protecting human rights, and their own potential role in ensuring human rights. Although students recognized the role of personal and institutional factors in both violating and…

These days it is hard not to notice that there is an election going on. Whether glancing at a newspaper, flipping on the TV, or just walking down the street, we see ads and information nearly everywhere. In 2012, my research team's study involving hundreds of adolescents found that the mass media's increased attention to politics can contribute to…

The digital revolution has enabled important changes in political life. Opportunities to engage in "participatory politics" have expanded significantly. Participatory politics differ from institutional politics in that they are peer-based, interactive, and not guided by deference to traditional elites and institutions. These changes…

This quasi-experimental study examined how the approach of mobile learning and authentic practice (MobiLAP) may foster scientific citizenship among ninth grade students. It was hypothesized that students that form identities as citizen scientists may have more favorable attitudes to contribute to citizen science, have greater interest in science…

This paper analyses pre-service education student perceptions and perspectives related to education for democracy in Australia. Using a critical pedagogical framework datum from an online survey, it presents both quantitative and qualitative responses of contrasting understandings of democracy. It begins by outlining the concepts of thick and thin…

This manuscript explains a civic engagement activity and presents assessment data on the activity.