Journal of Social Science Education (JSSE - Universität Bielefeld)
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„Places of Remembrance“: Spaces for Historical and Political Literacy. A Lesson Report
Get PDFPurpose: The article shows the use of specific educational media in social studies in vocational schools to foster a differentiated historical and political literacy.
Design/methodology/approach: Accordingly, the article examines a sequence of lessons taught by the author in a vocational classroom, fostering reflexive historical-political awareness of Germany’s post-war coping with the fascist constitution 1933-1945 and specifically of contemporary legal proceedings concerning the persecution and subsequent murder of six million Jewish people during the Holocaust.
Findings: Teaching techniques comprise explorative learning through guided city walks, document analysis and expert visits, in-class-discussions, the and individual student-teacher-conversations and, particularly, contact with exhibits employed as educational media, originating from an art exhibition in public space covering various unsettling steps of exclusion against Jewish citizens before 1942.
These materials turn out to bridge the gap from ignorance to learning by the acquisition of knowledge, demonstrating the use of artistic visual representations as educational media in the social studies classroom, especially while addressing students with little prior knowledge and understanding.
Research limitations/implications: As a lesson report, the article draws on classroom observations.
Practical implications: The approach presented includes various implications for classroom application
European Identity and Citizenship in Estonia: Analyses of Textbooks and Theoretical Developments
Get PDFPurpose: This article aims at elaboration of a relevant framework for European identity and citizenship. On this basis, comparative studies like ICSS, Estonian curricula, civic syllabuses and textbooks will be critically reviewed.Methods: The framework relies on former studies on democracy and education. The work also draws on normative materials for European citizenship, comparative empirical and critical studies. The conceptual system relies on the literature on basic sociological and semiotic concepts. This framework is used for analyses of the Estonian civic education system. Findings: The most general concepts like individual, society, culture, social actors and structures are defined as mutually inclusive. This has enabled to address complex and controversial social issues and achieve the aims of European identity and active citizenship.The Estonian curricula, civic syllabuses and textbooks herald democratic ideals, but fail to provide for them relevant concepts. They focus on empirical and normative descriptions of main political institutions. The books hardly describe how could active citizens evaluate and influence these institutions. Their content avoids complex and controversial issues like hierarchical power relations and social inequality and fails to describe both the hierarchical public administration and the system for public participation in Estonia. All this rather hinders students’ political literacy, critical thinking and active participation
„Am I a politics person?“ A Qualitative Study of Students`perspectives on Mock Elections as Political Education
Get PDFPurpose: The purpose of this study is to examine mock elections as political education in school, taking the Norwegian case as an empirical example.Methodology: This study’s qualitative content analysis is based on data collected through fieldwork in five upper secondary schools in the Western region of Norway, through observations and in 18 ordinary language interviews with 18-year-old students in the 3rd grade.Findings and implications: In the mock elections at Norwegian schools, the students meet and interact with three different identities of political participation: ‘the politician’, ‘the party member’ and ‘the voter’. How do the students use the mock election (ME) to shape their conceptions of their political selves? The interview data shows that the students who are active members of political parties accept the three analytical categories of political identities, and the students who are not members of political parties, reject ‘the politician’, but accept ‘the party member’ as part of their peer group. Finally, the MEs simulate an ordinary election and offer a norm of voting which the students accept as a school assignment. The students vote in the mock election because they are told to do so and generally do not view voting in the mock elections as a way of expressing the voice of their generation
Talking About Sustainability Issues When Teaching Business Economics - The ‘Positioning’ of a Responsible Business Person in Classroom Practice
Get PDFPurpose: This paper presents a study of the roles of a business person privileged by teachers when the concept of ‘sustainable development’ is incorporated into the subject of business economics.Methodology: A logics approach to discourse analysis was used to analyse the empirical material, which consisted of video recorded observations in five teachers’ classrooms collected two years after the inclusion of the concept in the upper secondary school syllabus in Sweden.Findings: The results show how different rules and conditions for doing business are foregrounded in classroom practice. This in turn has different implications for whether a responsible business person is expected to: a) adapt to self-interest, b) respond to customers’ increasing interests in sustainable products, or c) be sensitive to the needs or interests of others (including humans, animals and nature), when making business decisions. The results also illuminate how talking about ‘homo economicus’ as ‘real’ can hinder, how talking about customers in altruistic terms can facilitate, and how talking about the complexity of others’ interests can suggest ways of doing business (more) sustainably.Practical implications: The empirical examples that illuminate the privileging of specific roles could be used for critical reflection in order to make students better equipped to address uncertain and complex sustainability issues
Our Silent Day”: One White Gay Teacher Explores Teacher Agency in Counter-Socialization during the National Day of Silence
Get PDFPurpose: This study examines one “out” gay teacher’s participation in the Day of Silence (DoS), an international event highlighting the silencing of LGBTQ people in schools, to illustrate teacher agency in counter-narrative teaching, particularly for countering the typical civic exclusions of LGBTQ people.
Design: Civic education and queer theory inform this interpretive qualitative case study based on four semi-structured teacher interviews and document analysis.
Findings: When all 150 students chose to participate and nearly all found DoS meaningful, the ritual’s possibilities for counter-socialization and civic inclusion deepened, expanding teacher agency and suggesting increased trust and communal concern, particularly for students of color. Though being “out” may often be perceived as a constraint or liability for social educators, this teacher drew on his identity and queer theory as clear assets for crafting effective, experiential counter-socialization learning.
Research limitations: District concerns limited data to those collected from the teacher, limiting triangulation efforts.
Practical implications: “Out” LGBTQ teachers able to contextualize counter-socialization learning with their own experiences of civic exclusion may have particular assets for social education. DoS and queer theory may offer useful tools for non-LGBTQ educators, especially when multiple or intersectional meanings are validated
Understanding Media Opinion on Bilingual Education in the United States
Get PDFPurpose: This study evaluates stances toward and characterizations of bilingual education by US editorial and letter-to-the-editor writers from 2006-2016 with references to perspectives offered in academic outputs. We are principally interested in bilingual education that supports English language proficiency (rather than heritage language proficiency).
Findings: It was found that 45% of media articles based on a sample of 6 newspapers and magazines, compared to 95% of research articles (from a sample of 40 publications), were in favor of bilingual education. These results were compared with those of McQuillan and Tse (1996) who examined a similar set of newspapers and magazines and academic outputs that were published during the period 1984-1994. McQuillan and Tse (1996) also reported a 45% rate of pro-bilingual education pieces in the media from 1984-1994, and slightly fewer pro-bilingual education articles (82%) in published research articles.
Implications: We indicate the nature of the arguments that are raised in media and research outputs regarding bilingualism. We suggest that the division between ideas and issues presented in media and research publications has increased
Teaching About the Other in Primary Level Social Studies: The Sami in Norwegian Textbooks
Get PDFPurpose: The aim of this article is to discuss to what extent and in what ways the Sami people are included in national imaginary in textbooks. The article sheds critical light on important aspects of democracy, inclusion and multi-culturalism in education through the example of indigenous peoples in Norway. The article also explores what opportunities textbooks provide for promoting anti-oppressive education and pedagogical subjectification.Method: Social studies textbooks for primary school are analyzed based on critical discourse analysis (CDA) and elements from multi-modal analysis. The analysis focuses on the use of vocabulary and pronouns signaling inclusion and exclusion. Specific attention is paid to the hidden curriculum.Findings: The Sami are essentialized and actively constructed as the Other through the structure and content of narratives. This corresponds to the strategy described in anti-oppressive education as education for the Other. Externalization of the Sami from the story of the Norwegian national day and in particular, treatment of the discriminatory Norwegianization politics, reinforce the image of Norwegian exceptionalism.Practical implications: Potential for education that promotes social change and subjectification through disrupting hegemonic discourses are located. Extended knowledge on this implicates further research on the workings of discourse in educational practice
American Democracy in Distress: The Failure of Social Education
Get PDFThe primary purpose of this essay is to further understanding of the relationship between social education programs in public schools in the United States and the health of its democracy. A secondary purpose is to encourage reflection on the condition of democracy in other countries and the adequacy of social education programs in these countries in preparing youths for democratic citizenship. Extant data on social education in American public schools are analyzed and discussed in relation to selected social and economic conditions and the health of democracy in the United States. The conclusion is that social education programs in the United States do not adequately prepare young people for political participation and this deficiency has contributed significantly to distress in American democracy
Group Problem Solving as a Different Participatory Approach to Citizenship Education
Get PDFPurpose: The main goal of this article is to define and justify group problem solving as an approach to citizenship education. It is demonstrated that the choice of theoretical framework of democracy has consequences for the chosen learning goals, educational approach and learning activities. The framework used here is an epistemic theory of deliberative democracy. It is argued that such an approach enhances teachers’ and pupils’ autonomy. Design/methodology/approach: First, it was discussed what kind of theory of democracy lies behind the mainstream approach to citizenship education. Then, it was demonstrated how a chosen theory of democracy and citizenship leads to a specific translation into educational principles. In order to define and translate the chosen framework into educational principles and learning activities, different disciplines were drawn upon: political philosophy, cognitive and educational psychology.Findings: Group problem solving was defined as an alternative participatory educational approach to citizenship education and four educational principles were defined: argumentation, connected learning, decision making and thinking together. Practical implications: Educationalists, policy makers and researchers working on citizenship education should discuss their ideals of democracy and citizenship in order for these to become an object of scrutiny in the curriculum
Segregation and Socialization: Academic Segregation and Citizenship Attitudes of Adolescents in Comparative Perspective?
Get PDFPurpose: There is a tendency to assess educational systems in terms of their efficiency in gaining high scores on cognitive skills. Schools perform, however, also a socializing function. The whole policy debate tends to ignore the impact of educational systems on attitudes or democratic values. This contribution focuses on the impact of the organization of education in European societies on the civic attitudes of adolescents. Design/methodology/approach: We explore the impact of academic segregation – the practice of segregating children on the basis of their scholastic achievement – on attitudes of adolescents living in different educational systems. We use the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (2009) relying on multilevel models.Findings: Pupils differ in their outlook on fellow citizens, according to the ways in which educational systems select and differentiate throughout school careers. More specifically, there is a negative impact of academic segregation on the attitudes towards immigrants and ethnic minorities. Research limitations/implications: The experience of adolescents based on their educational achievement seems to affect how they perceive other people. We have not answered the question why this is the case. We hope to have provided a minimal indication of the impact of inequality on social outcomes