"SHOULDN'T EVERYONE KNOW ABOUT THEIR GOVERNMENT?": AN EXPLORATION OF CURRICULAR VALUES IN ADVANCED PLACEMENT GOVERNMENT CLASSES

Prevalent models of secondary education in the United States have tended to privilege the acquisition of knowledge of scientific disciplines that is often peripheral to the experiences of students. My Advanced Placement Government classes were no different, and this caused me to wonder whether my classes were meeting the often-stated goal of the social studies - citizenship education. This situation, along with anecdotal evidence of disconnection, led me to wonder what, if anything, my students were taking out of my classes. The purpose of this teacher action research study was to better understand what students found valuable in our AP Government classes. I used an interpretive framework and qualitative methodology to study the thoughts and actions of forty-four students, including how the transactional nature of our experiences interacted within our situation. Data collection involved the use of a Likert-scale survey, an open-ended questionnaire, field notes, and in-depth group and individual interviews. Findings indicated that students expressed that there was value in our course, and I categorized findings of value as primarily passive, academic, or active. The first two categories were more prominent in the findings and often revealed less of a connection to lived experiences. Other students communicated value in ways that actively connected content knowledge beyond the school setting. Students' reactions to some assignments helped me realize that we often had mismatched goals for the course, and this seemed to distance my students and me from better knowing each other. With these findings in mind, I conclude that we must create more spaces for educative experiences that might foster citizenship growth while cultivating situations where students and teachers may better know each other

Together We Are Better : Professional Learning Networks for Teachers

In recent years, many educators have turned to professional learning networks (PLNs) to grow in their craft with peers who are more accessible online because of reduced temporal and spatial constraints. While educators have cultivated PLNs, there is a dearth of research about the effects of PLNs. This manuscript reports the findings of a qualitative study that investigated PLN experiences through the analysis of survey data from 732 P-12 teachers. Data analysis suggests that the anytime, anywhere availability of expansive PLNs, and their capacity to respond to educators\u27 diverse interests and needs, appear to offer possibilities for supporting the professional growth of whole teachers. These findings have implications for defining the present and future of teacher learning in a digital age

#SocialMediaEd: Perspectives on Teaching about and with Social Media in Higher Education

Within the field of education and informational technology, technologies like social media — near ubiquitous in the lives of today’s high school and college students — raise interesting questions about learning, teaching, literacy, design and democracy for researchers and educators. In this panel we considered multiple perspectives on teaching with and about social media from researchers at five different institutions. Three panelists: Greenhow, Gleason and Krutka all teach variations of a Social Media in Education course within graduate programs at their respective universities and each presented an overview of their course goals and curriculum. Description of these courses was enriched by commentary from the panel chair and moderator, also social media in education researchers. The session was organized for maximum audience participation to advance conversations about an essential social media in higher education curriculum across institutions and how to implement and evaluate it

"Remixing" Current Events: Navigating the Transmedia Terrain with Fifth Graders

This article discusses two democratic media literacy skills that teachers can model and teach to help students as 21st century citizens

Democratic Twittering: Microblogging for a More Participatory Social Studies

This article uses the example of the Arab Spring to discuss how new media lowers barriers so that more voices may be heard

Platforms, Purpose, and Pedagogy: Reclaiming Context and Resisting Technopoly with Participatory Media

This article examines the work of media theorist and cultural critic Neil Postman in the wake of participatory media

Social Media Diaries And Fasts: Educating For Digital Mindfulness With Pre-Service Teachers

With social media access nearly ubiquitous, teachers and students must explore how to mitigate distractions and unhealthy uses. In this mixed methods study, the authors invited 60 pre-service teachers across two universities to cultivate mindfulness around social media beliefs, habits, and behaviors by completing a social media survey, diary, and fast. Participants identified reasons for regular social media use, including unconscious impulses, and made new realizations about what is gained and lost in social media engagements. Participants were optimistic about teaching similar lessons. The authors recommend pedagogical guidelines for social media mindfulness that allow for complexity, variance, and idiosyncrasy

The Enlightenment Meets Twitter: Using Social Media in the Social Studies Classroom

This article explains how social studies educators can, and have, used the microblogging service Twitter

Videoconferencing for Global Citizenship Education: Wise Practices for Social Studies Educators

This article reviews literature on videoconferencing for global citizenship education and analyzes those efforts towards cosmopolitan citizenship

Videoconferencing for Global Citizenship Education: Wise Practices for Social Studies Educators

Videoconferencing activities hold particular promise for social studies educators hoping to mediate humanizing experiences that will help students grow as citizens of the world. In this paper, we review literature on videoconferencing for global citizenship education and analyze those efforts towards cosmopolitan citizenship. Through our analysis of scholarly, popular, and practitioner sources, we present three general, and often overlapping, purposes for videoconferencing -- intercultural experiences, intercultural projects, and learning about cultures -- while providing a variety of examples and options from elementary to higher education. Educators encourage intercultural experiences when the primary purpose for participants’ videoconferencing activities is to learn about the people, communities, and cultures with whom they engage. The primary aim of intercultural projects is for participants to utilize videoconferencing to complete some task together. Educators can help students learn about cultures by bringing in people from different countries or cultures to share their expert knowledge or perspectives. We hope educators can glean insights from the videoconferencing cases provided in the text so as to make decision appropriate to their unique students’ needs. None of these approaches is necessarily superior to the others, but they may require different time and energy commitments. We also share technology requirements and common problems with videoconferencing. Finally, we conclude with implications for educators and researcher