This piece maintains that, despite 50+ years of successful practice and development, Philosophy for Children (henceforward, P4C) is undervalued--but that, suitably re-presented, it may yet become the most important agent of educational change of the 21st century: a change that is essential, if not existential, given the challenges facing humanity.…

In Latvia the implementation of the new National Curriculum is oriented towards a competence based approach that focuses on learning by doing and is based on theoretical constructs of constructionism and social constructivism. For the first time since Latvia gained independence in 1990, the new National Curriculum will provide a unique opportunity…

Satirical news is a type of humorous media that mixes parody and satire to critique contemporary figures, events, and situations (Ermida, 2012; McClennen & Maisel, 2014; Peters, 2013). In addition to satirical television news programs like The Daily Show, satirical news websites such as "The Daily Mash," "The Onion," and…

The "sociological imagination"--the recognition of the relationship between "private troubles" and "public issues" (Mills [1959] 2000. "The Sociological Imagination". Oxford: Oxford University Press: 8)--is central to the discipline of sociology. This article reports findings of a 2014 study which…

Over the last year and a half, a number of scholars, pundits, and journalists have criticized college campuses for coddling students by constructing environments that protect them from offensive opinions and evidence that disconfirms their prior attitudes. In this article, I suggest two pedagogical techniques that can help students encounter and…

Located across 30 different states, there are more than 1,700 symbols of the Confederacy including 772 monuments and statues on public property, and 100 schools named after prominent Confederates. Questions about the appropriateness of keeping these tributes to the Confederacy in places of honor have become flashpoints for public controversy in…

This article shares the case of a student-driven?investigation?into?social issues from an eighth-grade civics class at an American school in Mexico. Through vignettes about the teaching and learning process, the author argues that a focus on students' inquiry into their social contexts rather than on specific social justice content is a key…

This article describes a study that took place in Helsinki, Finland in late 2015. A Canadian education professor conducted individual interviews with Finnish educators: six practicing teachers in Helsinki schools, two education professors at the University of Helsinki, and the advisor to the president of Finland's teachers' union. Although all…

Efforts to solve and control social problems are the responsibility of social studies teaching and learning in junior high school. One way to support such efforts is by empowering students' critical thinking skills. For effective empowerment of critical thinking skills, emancipatory learning was developed. The goal is to enable students to…

In early January 2017, educators and leaders at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum considered how they could best address the need for news literacy training in the wake of the fake news eruption. In the spirit of shared authority, the Reagan Library and Museum partnered with Pepperdine University to create a public forum,…

This article considers the power of approaching young adult literature from a critical literacy perspective in teacher education and how that affects emerging teachers' ability to consider its role in their future teaching. Specifically, the authors explore how critical literacy--the exposure to a variety of texts, ways of approaching texts, and…

Michael Young's notion of powerful knowledge is attractive to many: to teachers wishing the best for disadvantaged students, to neoliberal governments that continually stress the need for teachers and students to improve their performance. This essay takes issue with this understanding of education. Firstly, it shows how classrooms are mediated by…

In this article, I examine the extent to which, given how critical thinking has been most commonly conceptualised and taught in schools, the subject indeed develops modes of thinking, relating and reasoning that allow individuals to collectively work towards the appreciation and solution of social problems. In the first section, I outline a number…

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of Sustainable Development (SD) and its goals to the students of the Faculty of Education, future teachers, in order to become skilled and knowledgeable and then introduce these Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to their students. As such, this study tries to link the concept of English…

In this article, we investigated the level of transfer of authentic pedagogy among 12 classroom teachers after participating in a three-year professional development project using scaffolded lesson study. We met with teachers for 2 weeks each summer and provided historian-led content sessions and teacher educator facilitated model pedagogy…