Fostering political understanding using The West Wing: Analyzing the pedagogical benefits of film in high school civics classrooms

Abstract: This study describes one high school civics teacher's use of film as a way to improve his students' understanding of politics. Using episodes of The West Wing, an award-winning political drama, over the course of a semester, the teacher was able to create an authentic context for political instruction that allowed his students to practice thinking politically, better understand real-life political events, and make connections across the formal curriculum. The findings from this study offer several implications for both the teaching of politics in secondary education as well as the use of film in secondary social studies courses

Using Videoconferences to Diversify Classrooms Journal of Education and Training ISSN

Abstract: In this article the authors make a case for videoconferencing as a way to diversify middle and secondary classrooms. Through a description of the setup of a videoconference between American pre-service teachers and Moroccan undergraduates, the authors attempt to demystify the use of videoconferencing in middle and secondary education. The authors conclude with suggestions for middle and secondary educators who wish to use videoconferencing as a way to incorporate greater diversity and multicultural education in their classrooms. This exchange between American and Moroccan students is significant for a couple of reasons. First, it highlights the general indifference many Americans often feel toward globalization and non-Western cultures, particularly when compared to the Moroccans, all of whom spoke multiple languages, including English, in addition to their native tongue. Second, it occurred face-to-face and in real time even though the two groups were more than 4,000 miles apart and separated by an ocean

Field Ecology: A Practical but Imaginable Contestation of Neoliberalism

Science education has become a valuable market tool, serving the knowledge economy and technocratic workforce that celebrates individualism, meritocracy, entrepreneurship, rational thought, and abstract knowledge. Field ecology, however, could be a modest, but imaginable contestation of market-driven neoliberal ideology. We explored diverse high school youths’ meaning making of a summer field ecology research experience. Youths’ narratives, elicited with a modified card sort and qualitative interviews, highlight the cognitive, social, emotional, and physical aspects of learning demonstrating considerably broader views of knowledge, meanings of the natural world and their place within it, and access to scientific practices than implied by neoliberalism

Rage against the Machine? Symbolic Violence in E-learning Supported Tertiary Education

The move toward online course facilitation in tertiary education has the intent of providing education at any time in any place to any person. However, the advent of blended learning and e-learning innovations has ostracised, marginalised or ignored those who cannot afford or who are unable to access the latest hardware and software to take advantage of these opportunities. The Web 2.0 age is an era of assumptions: assumptions of participation, literacy and democracy. Yet such inferences are based on the need for high-speed Internet connections, and the latest computers are standard requirements. Those without the ability to access these necessities are being indirectly marginalised by the universities, which is particularly ironic in an era of ‘widening participation’. This article reveals a few tears in the fabric of wiki-enabled democratic education. The authors argue that there is a community of students that are subjected to what Bourdieu termed symbolic violence. Digitisation in tertiary education is reinforcing what it has always been through its history – a haven of the wealthy and the advantaged