The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between news media and political education within consumer society. We argue that political education today needs to be understood as part of consumerism and media culture, in which individuals selectively expose themselves to and scrutinize various media representations not only of…

What should activist-scholars teach in the social problems classroom? In this conversation, I challenge the assertion that advancing a sociology of social problems is an overly academic enterprise of little use to students and other publics. I introduce the potential of a pedagogical framework for promoting social problems literacy: a set of…

Stoddard, Banks, Nemacheck, and Wenska suggested that there is a tension between the goal of the iCivics games and the goals of democratic education. In this response, we suggest that iCivics can be utilized to help meet the goals of democratic education and to encourage our nation's youth to become active civic participants if used alongside…

This paper is about memory, the elusive process of remembering and of an encounter between a researcher and a participant who after five years reunited to remember. The object under study is a high school social justice curriculum with a central focus on the development of social action projects. Grounded in Pitt and Britzman's work on difficult…

National offices and organizations, such as the U.S. Department of Education and the Association of American Colleges & Universities, have called for higher education curriculum that better prepares students for lifelong civic engagement. Many institutions respond to this appeal by creating more service-learning opportunities for students.…

This article reasserts the centrality of reasoning as the focus for moral education. Attention to moral cognition must be extended to incorporate sociogenetic processes in moral growth. Moral education is not simply growth within the moral domain, but addresses capacities of students to engage in cross-domain coordination. Development beyond…

In a violent clash between rival gangs from Asnières and Gennevilliers in the banlieue north of Paris, a 15-year-old boy was killed at the metro station Les Courtilles, the last stop on Line 13. Inevitably, revenge attacks occurred. Security was heightened with hundreds of police patrolling the area, but residents and city officials alike…

In concert with policy trends, theory and research on the ways in which school context affects student outcomes have focused almost exclusively on academic achievement in recent years. Given the fundamental role that schools should play in civic education, and the potential for schools to affect civic equality, more empirical and theoretical…

This article studies variance in the political participation of adolescents depending on achievement in civic education. The aim is to discover whether low achievers represent a distinctive pattern of political participation, and whether this varies across participation types (i.e. horizontally) and across current participation in school and…

Science is a way of knowing about the world. At once a process, a product, and an institution, science enables people to both engage in the construction of new knowledge as well as use information to achieve desired ends. Access to science--whether using knowledge or creating it--necessitates some level of familiarity with the enterprise and…

The Civics Education Initiative is a project of the Joe Foss Institute, an organization dedicated to shaping "young Americans for civic engagement as voters and informed members of their community." The initiative, which launched in 2015, has three goals: (1) To ensure students graduate with the tools they need to become informed and…

Despite the increasing attention to afterschool science programs, little is known about the conditions under which children likely engage in meaningful scientific practices, such as argumentation and scientific explanation in those settings. This analysis draws on X hours of video data collected of elementary-aged children (n = 4) during a 14-day…

Undergraduate leadership courses are becoming increasingly important venues to promote civic engagement. Despite their prominence, the nature of civic engagement in leadership courses has not been examined systematically. This study examined 77 introductory undergraduate leadership courses and the role of civic engagement in these courses. Results…

Science projects, which engage non-professional scientists in one or more stages of scientific research, have been gaining popularity; yet maintaining participants' activity level over time remains a challenge. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential for a short-term, focused campaign to increase participant activity in a…

In this essay, I undertake a philosophical investigation into the nature of "graduateness" based on two distinct ideas on the educational purposes of universities. One draws on European existentialism emphasising how human being is affected and deals with the various challenges of being in the world; the other is grounded in the North…