This study examined the learning trajectory of five US humanities teachers when navigating learning to teach the difficult history of school desegregation within a context of a six-month inquiry-based professional development. The research questions were: What do teachers frame as problems when teaching difficult histories? How do they…

Australia achieved marriage equality in 2017, following a controversial and divisive postal survey which invited all Australians to 'vote' on whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry. The 'No' campaign focused on the alleged negative impact of marriage equality on children's education. Scare-mongering television clips claimed that boys…

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…

The demand for a significant advance in democracy that allows greater civic participation takes place in different countries and historical times. In Catalonia, the process toward self-determination shakes the social and political debate from 2010 to the present day, when the population feels that their rights are being curtailed and begins to…

The scholarship of interdisciplinarity provides a potentially powerful response to anti-intellectual and anti-democratic impulses. It recognizes that proof and disproof are generally impossible, and that scientists can be biased in their evaluation of the evidence. Yet it proposes a set of strategies for transcending scholarly disputes in order to…

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…

Political participation is seriously unequal. For example, young adults who finish college vote at almost three times the rate of contemporaries who have dropped out of high school. That gap translates into disparities by race and class. Effective civic education can reduce such inequality and make our democracy more representative. Teaching…

This summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in "Shelby County v. Holder" that Congress had exceeded its Fifteenth Amendment enforcement authority when it reauthorized a part of the Voting Rights Act (a coverage formula) that forced places with a history of discrimination to get federal approval before making changes to their election laws.…

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…