Democracy & Education (E-Journal)
Not a member yet
368 research outputs found
Sort by
Toward Discussion Facilitation That Enacts Collective Care. A Response to “Teaching Dobbs Where Divisive Concepts and Abortion Are Restricted”
Full text linkFor both teacher candidates and teacher educators, facilitating discussions of contested issues in hyper-polarized climates remains a heavy lift. This response to “Teaching Dobbs…” celebrates the successes apparent in Geller’s team’s work and identifies key features that supported it. While cautioning readers against adopting avatar rehearsals elsewhere, I distill four themes of planning and enactment that show clear promise for broad transference in teacher education. Drawing from research exploring the interfaces of justice-oriented, practice-based, and democratic social studies scholarship, I offer pedagogical and logistical considerations for other teacher educators and researchers engaged in this ambitious and necessary work to sustain pluralistic democracies and seek justice. Such considerations include topic and question selection; discussion goals and norms oriented around collective trust; approaches to teacher disclosure (sharing); and facilitation choices that consider sociopolitical context in substance and process
“Heated, Polarized, and Annoying”: The Characteristics and Consequences of Affective Polarization in Independent High Schools
Full text linkAffective political polarization, or a sense of political identity-based animosity or distrust, became especially heightened during the Trump presidency. However, we know little about how youth experience such polarization in school and its effect on their political socialization. With unusual access to high-status independent schools, this paper explores the characteristics, consequences, and evolution of affective polarization for adolescents during high school. We draw on open-ended responses to school climate surveys administered at nine schools, 2018-2019, in which many students described experiences of political polarization and partisan hostility present in their schools. These reports of affective polarization increased by students’ grade level. Further, we identify consequences of affective polarization on students’ political socialization through school-based peer interactions such as threats to social status, lost relationships, and the inability to speak across political differences. These findings illustrate how partisan divisions in contemporary national politics may influence the political socialization of youth in schools and demonstrate the ways schools provide democratic education, separate from any political content in the curriculum, through the social interactional spaces they create
Teaching and Developing Deliberative Capacities: An Integrated Approach to Peer-to-Peer, Playful, and Authentic Discussion-based Learning
Full text linkDrawing on theories of deliberative democracy, this article analyzes initiatives in educational settings to develop deliberative capabilities—defined here as a person\u27s motivation and abilities to explain their views based on thoughtful considerations, reciprocal engagement, and more inclusive and respectful communication. Building and expanding on previous education experiences and citizen assemblies, we propose an integrated approach that includes: (a) peer learning, (b) playful and performative activities, and (c) authentic discussions about controversial political issues in small groups. Our field experiment involving more than 500 public school students in Brazil is used to illustrate combinations of methods to develop conceptual understandings and promote practice and self-reflection. We claim that these methods should not be conducted separately, but different combinations can complement each other to achieve better results in different contexts. This article has theoretical and practical implications for programs that seek to promote democratic communication, in particular through improving deliberative skills
Agreement and Disagreement in Teachers’ Talk: Facilitative Design of Deliberation in Norwegian Initial Education
Full text linkThis article investigates the roles of the terms agreement and disagreement in teachers’ talk in Norwegian Grades 1-4 classrooms. Through an exploration of what teachers said and did when they used these terms, five different themes were identified in the teachers’ talk. The teachers tended to use the terms in relation to the process of discussion, the outcome of these discussions, and nuancing the idea of the nature of this outcome; as a function in conversation; and how agreement and disagreement are valuable in different ways. The key finding across these themes and patterns was that the lessons tended to be oriented toward consensus. This is problematized in relation to exploration and elaboration of perspectives, which is crucial for deliberation
Moving Forward Democratically from the Critical Race Theory Battles in Schools. A Response to “Reconstructing Democracy in Polarized Times: Thinking through/with the CRT Conflicts”
Full text linkThis response to “Reconstructing Democracy in Polarized Times: Thinking through/with the CRT Conflicts” explores the conditions that need to be in place to move forward with the original authors’ recommendations for taking advantage of the current debates about critical race theory in schools. The original authors argued that this moment provides an opportunity to strengthen a shared, democratic commitment to schools. This response argues that, for this democratic solidarity to occur, we must dismantle the inequitable structures currently governing who has influence and power in schools. Additionally, I explore policy and curricular shifts needed to enable the recommendations related to centering critical thinking and inquiry, developing a shared vision of the purpose of schools, and investing in robust civics education
Democratic Practices as Part of Mathematical Modeling in Schools
Full text linkWe focus on how democratic practices occur during the modeling activity “The Candy Bag of Dreams.” With democratic practices, we refer to approaches supporting inclusivity and active participation aimed at empowering students. We investigated one group of preservice teachers implementing an optimizing modeling activity during practicum in two fifth-grade classes, where students modeled their dream candy bags. Students engaged in mathematical modeling where mathematics was embedded in their social context, and they negotiated meanings and developed perspectives. Through this, they experienced lived democracy by actively engaging in and through democratic practices.
We found democratic practices such as students inviting peers to negotiate, showing consideration for peers, respecting different opinions, standing up and arguing for own interests, constraining self-interest, and discussing maximum fairness. They exercised their rights and responsibilities as learners and, by doing so, became empowered. The preservice teachers provided room for students’ dialogues, discussions, and spaces for disagreement, a mathematics classroom for and as democracy. Implications of this study suggest that mathematical modeling activities can offer fruitful grounds for empowering students through their lived democracy. However, careful considerations should be made to ensure students’ democratic practices during their group work
Un/learning to Disagree. A Response to Pragmatist Thinking for a Populist Moment: Contingency and Racial Re-valuing in Education Governance
Full text linkHow should education governance respond to increasing polarized perspectives? Drawing on contemporary African American pragmatism, Knight-Abowitz and Sellers’s article Pragmatist Thinking for a Populist Moment: Contingency and Racial Re-valuing in Education Governance interrogated the critical case of Black Lives Matters and anti-critical race theory protests in the USA education governance and concluded that inquiry and deliberation are needed to embrace more pluralistic forms of democracy. In our response, in which we engage with decolonial, agonistic, and speculative theories, we share Knight-Abowitz and Sellers’s analytical framings. Yet we wonder to what extent inquiry and deliberation can push off racial habits and whether we should aim to pluralize the same procedures of educational governmental negotiation beyond the traditional pragmatist framework
Educating for Equitable Voting
Full text linkVoting instruction typically provided to students is focused on educating for informed voting, but we believe it is essential that schools educate for informed and equitable voting. Indeed, in a well-functioning democratic society, participants need to be prepared to engage in critical, but civil, discourse with and about people who look and think differently from themselves, which necessitates learning about issues of equity. Drawing on the efforts of 20 in-service educators to promote equitable voting ahead of the 2020 election, this study examines the ways in which participants incorporated issues of equity into their instruction and the conditions that supported or limited these efforts. We also discuss our concerns with how voting was taught by participants and provide recommendations for what educating for equitable voting might look like, a goal that has taken on added importance given recent challenges to how K–12 teachers can talk about issues of equity in the classroom
Heavy on the Solidarity, Light on the Adultism: Adult Supports for Youth Activism
Full text linkThis data-based theoretical paper explores the contrasting tensions of adults being in “solidarity” with youths while not reproducing systems of oppression through adultism. Written by adults who have been engaged side-by-side with youth activism, the purpose of this article is to better understand what adult solidarity and support look like according to youth activists themselves as we grapple with the unintentional mechanisms of reinforcing oppressive power dynamics between young people and adults in activist communities. Extending on the Gaztambide-Fernández’s (2012) notion of relational solidarity, the findings offer four types of actions (modeling, connecting, supporting, and protecting) adults can do to authentically support youths and thereby adds conceptual clarification and nuance for adults seeking to work in solidarity in more authentic youth adult partnerships (YAPs)
Democracy Can Be Dangerous Work: The Story of Youthbuilders Civic Education Program 1938-1948
Full text linkThis article describes the work of a civic education program in New York City schools called Youthbuilders, which existed from 1938 to 1948. Youthbuilders\u27 aim was to engage youth in civic education projects and teach them about their place in a democracy and worked with them to support racial and social equality. Shortly after World War II, they were attacked by a conservative Catholic organization that was working to eliminate groups associated with so-called Communist beliefs like social justice and racial equality. Youthbuilders shut their doors by 1948. The story is one that helps us understand the fragility of working for democracy and race equity in times of social anxiety