Preparing to Teach Democracy: Student Teachers’ Perceptions of the ‘Democracy Cake’ as a Set of Teaching Materials in Social Science Education

Purpose: Few studies have examined student teachers’ perceptions of teaching materials on democracy. For the purpose of addressing how teacher education in social science might contribute to student teachers’ qualifications for teaching democracy, this study investigated student teachers’ perceptions of the ‘Democracy Cake’ as a set of teaching materials for teaching democracy in social science education. Design/methodology/approach: This study relied on a survey and observations among 47 student teachers in a social science didactics course. Findings: Analyses of student teachers’ perceptions revealed concerns about teaching social science concepts, engagement of secondary school students in classroom discussions and the theoretical framing of the teaching materials. Research limitations: The study focused on 47 student teachers’ perceptions of a particular set of teaching materials and may not be generalisable. Practical implications: This study indicates that social science teacher education might benefit from involving student teachers in the examination of teaching materials

Between the lifeworld and academia: Defining political issues in social science education

Highlights: • We identified four aspects for defining political issues. • Political issues are collective. • Political issues are conflictual in nature. • Political issues are contemporary issues. • Issues are political due to contextual factors. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to discuss mutual understandings of political issues among students and academics. The aim is to suggest a framework that teachers can use to address politics from both the discipline’s and the students’ perspectives. Design/methodology/approach: This study is based on semi-structured interviews with twelve students in six upper secondary schools and eight social science academics in Norway and Sweden. Findings: We identified four guiding aspects for defining political issues in social science education to connect disciplinary thinking with students’ views of the political. These aspects are: 1) collective, 2) contemporary, 3) conflictual, and 4) contextual. Limitations: This study relied on interviews with a selection of students and academics and what they chose to express. The results may not be applicable to other samples. Implications: The framework presented can be used in social science education to understand and discuss the nature of political issues

Students’ Perceptions of Citizenship Preparation in Social Studies: The Role of Instruction and Students’ Interests

Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to explore how 16- to 17-year-old students’ experiences within the social studies classroom and their online political communication are related to their perceptions of citizenship preparation in social studies. Design/methodology/approach: To meet the purpose of this study, regression analyses were executed based on a survey of 264 Norwegian students aged 16–17. The dependent variable was the students’ perceptions of citizenship preparation in social studies. Findings: The analyses indicated that enjoying social studies was strongly associated with students’ perceptions of citizenship preparation in social studies. The teacher’s contributions, discussing democracy and politics in social studies lessons, and students’ online political communication were also significantly associated with students’ per-ceptions of citizenship preparation in social studies. Research limitations/implications: Some limitations exist in the instrument and in internal and external validity. Future research could add more content to improve the model’s explanatory adequacy. More nuanced explanatory factors from outside school are needed to study factors indirectly influencing students’ perceptions of citizenship pre-paration. Practical implications: These results indicate that focusing on students’ interests and quality instruction have positive implications for students’ perceived value of the subject when it comes to preparing them for civic and political engagement

Higher order thinking in social science education: An empirical study with classroom observations from Denmark and Norway

The aim of this article is to discuss what kinds of higher order thinking are encouraged in social science lessons in lower secondary school. The study used a research design employed by Klette et al. (2017) with video-taped lessons from social science education in Denmark and Norway. We identified teaching segments that included activities promoting higher order thinking and analysed them to produce an overview of the characteristics of cognitively demanding teaching. We found several examples of teaching that encouraged students’ higher order thinking, either by facilitating student’s interaction with complex knowledge or engaging them in demanding cognitive processes. By analysing selected examples, we found that the relationship between knowledge and processes was not linear: it seems possible to have a cognitively demanding task with little knowledge, and simple tasks performed oncomplex knowledge. We argue for using a two-dimensional model that captures cognitive processes as well as different types of knowledge required

PhD revisited: Students’ Perceptions of Democracy, Politics, and Citizenship Preparation and Implications for Social Studies Education

While several studies have investigated young people’s attitudes towards and participation in democracy and politics, as well as the influence of citizenship education on young people’s political participation, few studies have explored students’ perceptions of the concepts of democracy and politics and their own perceptions of citizenship education. The purpose of this study is to investigate the theme of democracy and politics in social studies in upper secondary school. Methodologically, this study relied on multiple methods of data collection and analysis to investigate students’ perceptions: Qualitative focus groups and interviews and a quantitative survey. To analyse students’ perceptions, I drew on citizenship education literature, focusing on the role and teaching of school subjects such as social studies, as well as political theory, focusing on theoretical perspectives on the concepts of democracy and politics. The findings show that the students perceived ‘democracy’ and ‘politics’ both in terms of top-down notions of government and other political institutions and bottom-up perspectives focused on discussions and other non-institutional aspects of democratic politics. Moreover, the findings indicate that students perceived social studies as valuable in terms of preparing them for current and future citizenship and that their enjoyment and aspects of instruction were most strongly associated with these perceptions

Students’ Understanding of the Concept of Democracy and Implications for Teacher Education in Social Studies

Tidligere studier viser at norske skoleelever er kunnskapsrike om og viser sterk støtte til demokrati, og gir uttrykk for sentrale demokratiske holdninger. Vi vet at det må arbeides aktivt for å opprettholde disse kvalitetene, selv i stabile demokratier. Vi vet imidlertid lite om hvordan elever forstår og forklarer demokrati som fagbegrep. Dette er kunnskap som kan være verdifull for lærere og lærerutdannere i arbeidet for å oppfylle læreplanens formål i samfunnsfaget. I samfunnskunnskap er ikke demokratibegrepet bare sentralt for forståelse og deltakelse i faget, men også for elevers demokratiske deltakelse utenfor skolen. Denne artikkelen undersøker norske 16-åringers forståelse av demokratibegrepet, og bygger på semi-strukturerte gruppeintervjuer med til sammen 23 elever fra tre videregående skoler. Et sentralt funn er at elevene først og fremst uttrykker en liberal forståelse av demokrati med fokus på stemmegivning i valg som den viktigste formen for politisk deltakelse. I tilknytning til dette kan elevene sies å vise mer eller mindre begrenset eller utvidet forståelse av begrepet. I tillegg til å presentere og diskutere elevers forståelse av begrepet demokrati, ser denne artikkelen på mulige implikasjoner for lærerutdanning i samfunnskunnskap. Én implikasjon er at lærerutdannere aktivt bør involvere lærerstudentene i å diskutere og definere sentrale begreper. Dette kan være med på å støtte lærerstudentenes profesjonelle utvikling, og, gjennom dette, utvikle ungdommers muligheter for demokratisk deltakelse. Et slikt dobbelt fokus kan bidra med en kunnskapsbase som hjelper lærerstudenter i deres første år som praktiserende lærere.Nøkkelord: demokrati, begreper, forståelse, lærerutdanning, samfunns-kunnskap, samfunnsfagAbstractAccording to recent studies, Norwegian students are knowledgeable about and show strong support for democracy, as well as demonstrate democratic attitudes. These qualities must be actively encouraged and maintained also in successful democracies. Little is known, however, about how students understand and explain democracy as a subject-specific concept. Such knowledge may be valuable for social studies teachers and teacher educators to fulfil the purpose of the social studies curriculum. The present article investigates 16-year-old students’ understanding of the concept of democracy. In social studies, the concept of democracy is essential not only for disciplinary understanding and discourse, but also for students’ out-of-school democratic participation. To investigate students’ understanding of this concept, semi-structured group interviews were conducted with a total of 23 students at three different Norwegian upper secondary schools. A central finding is that students primarily expressed a liberal understanding of democracy focusing on voting in elections as the main political activity. Students also demonstrated more or less limited or elaborate understanding. In addition to presenting and discussing students’ understandings of the concept of democracy, this article considers implications for teacher education in social studies. One implication is that teacher educators need to engage actively in discussing and defining core concepts with their students. This is related to supporting student teachers’ professional development and in turn developing adolescents’ opportunities for democratic participation. Such a dual focus can provide a knowledge base to help student teachers in their professional development in their first years as practicing teachers.Keywords: democracy, concepts, understanding, teacher education, social studies, democratic theor

Elevers vurdering av politikeres bruk av sosiale medier i et postfakta-samfunn og implikasjoner for samfunnsfaget

In the age of political confrontation the public is at times presented with statements in the media that are less than truthful. At the same time, social media create new arenas for political communication. These trends implicate that today’s students need to develop critical awareness, but also experience with factual argumentation about political issues to develop political understanding and their own viewpoints. The purpose of this article is to explore how Norwegian 16-17-year-old students perceive and evaluate some examples of politicians’ communication in social media, and to discuss the need for social studies to provide students with sufficient prerequisites for meeting an ever-changing future. We make use of theory on rational behaviour as well as theory on deliberative and radical democracy to shed light on the student data. The analysis shows that the students are critical of politicians’ use of social media. Further, they judge their own information evaluation abilities too positively. Implications for social studies are discussed: Students should practice political discussion and argumentation and the focus on critical analysis of political communication should be further strengthened