Books and Citizenship

This article takes up the question of world history teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge by reporting on two separate but related projects. In the first, we briefly discuss an empirical investigation one of the authors conducted into the ways that pre- and in-service world history teachers think about, organize, and make meaning of separate and discrete world historical events, first for themselves and then for their students. It demonstrates the value of world history teachers making multiple connections among world historical events from the biggest to the smallest ones to construct dynamic and coherent pictures of the past for themselves and their students. In the second project, we discuss our innovative history lab, a course designed to help undergraduates enrolled in a world history course “see” the pedagogical moves their world history instructors make. We designed this pedagogical history lab to foster future teachers’ understandings of the content knowledge needed to teach world history while they are learning world history as students.     

Unrolling the Map in American History

Cinematic feature films are a big part of youth popular culture. When blockbuster movies are about historical topics, it is reasonable for teachers to be drawn to using them in the classroom to motivate students interest. This article overviews research on film in the history classroom and describes three learning functions that history movies can have fact and ficion; constructing the past and the people in it; and reacting to the past.     

The reflective diary: an experiential tool for enhancing social work students’ research learning

There has been substantial discussion internationally about the need for social work students to integrate research into practice. Little has been written, however, about teaching methods that address the cognitive and emotional challenges students experience in their efforts to develop research competencies. Many students believe that research does not apply to the ‘real’ world of practice and are anxious and fearful when they begin a research course. Using a retrospective review of students’ assignments, this article describes the use of reflective diaries in teaching MSW students from a university in the USA skills for practice-based social work research. Reflective diaries provide a safe forum for students to actively engage with the challenges they experience while taking a research course and take ownership of their learning needs. The diary entries provide instructors with windows into their students’ learning processes that enable them to create scaffolding opportunities that support students in developing confidence in their research skills. This article describes the pedagogical philosophy behind reflective diaries, details of the diaries assignment, and benefits of this learning tool for students and instructors. The authors offer recommendations for incorporating reflective diaries into social work research courses and implications for evidence-based practice.     

Learning About Poverty Through Simulation: A Pilot Evaluation

ABSTRACT

Previous research suggests many health care professionals and students, including those in social work, have limited understanding of the causes and implications of poverty. Effective and relevant education is needed to train health care professionals to relate to those living in poverty. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of team-based simulations on student perceptions and critical thinking about poverty. Data were collected from three poverty simulations, which took place at a university in the spring of 2015. Evaluations were completed by 230 students, and results showed promising improvements in students’ ability to think critically about poverty and increases in their ability to understand others’ perspectives regarding living in poverty.     

Developing intercultural understanding for study abroad: students’ and teachers’ perspectives on pre-departure intercultural learning

This study reports on students’ and teachers’ perspectives on a programme designed to develop Erasmus students’ intercultural understanding prior to going abroad. We aimed to understand how students and their teachers perceived pre-departure materials in promoting their awareness of key concepts related to interculturality (e.g., essentialism, stereotyping, otherising) during an intercultural education course for mobile students. Twenty pre-departure Erasmus undergraduate students from an Italian university, four teachers and one observer participated in the study. Seven hours of audio/video recordings of classroom discussions and teachers’ retrospective narratives were analysed thematically. Although students initially subverted the goals of one of the tasks, they demonstrated foundations of intercultural thinking; followed by movement from self-interest to intercultural awareness of the other; and finally, developing intercultural awareness, supported through opportunities to express emotions/feelings and discussion and application of key concepts of interculturality. Teachers’/observer’s perspectives confirmed the quality and flexibility of the materials in developing students’ intercultural awareness. The findings suggest that pre-departure materials can help students to recognise variety and complexity in self and others in intercultural encounters. But students’ primary needs for practical information should first be satisfied; interactive spaces for expressing emotion and feelings are important for understanding self and others; and scaffolding activities help students to understand intercultural concepts.     

Applying a Critical and Peace Education Lens to the American Revolution in the Social Studies Classroom

Abstract

The American Revolution is central to the identity of citizens of the United States. It is, therefore, rarely critiqued in the U.S. social studies classroom. This article examines how teachers can discuss the American Revolution using both a critical historical approach and the ideas of peace education, particularly the strand that focuses on the problematization of war. Specific examples are given for how teachers can critique some of the national myths surrounding the American Revolution. Furthermore, the rationale for this critique of the American Revolution is presented, particularly as it relates to the problematic history of minorities in the aftermath of the Revolution and the relationship between students’ views of the American Revolution and the ties to modern-day violence and military engagements. The goal for this more nuanced understanding of the American Revolution is not only to make students more critical thinkers in regard to their history but hopefully to also help them gain a healthier societal outlook in regard to the issues of peace and conflict.     

News and Comment

Using personal narratives and research on teacher “communities of practice,” the authors outline a proactive response to high-stakes testing policies that places teacher learning at its center. Although research on the effects of these policies is mixed, the authors are troubled by the ways in which the policies have been used to strip teachers of their autonomy and the erosion of the value placed on their professional knowledge. The authors—who have both taught in urban schools where students had to pass high-stakes social studies tests to graduate—argue that teachers must work together to reclaim their role as leaders in response to the policies. They provide key questions that social studies teachers can use to guide an inquiry into the tests themselves and suggest ways to use the knowledge gained to better serve their students’ learning and raise test scores.     

Lifting the Lid: Perspectives on and Activity within Student Supervision

Practice teaching is central to social work education. Significant changes have occurred in the past 10 years affecting social work education in Scotland. This article reports on the findings of a small-scale study involving the audio recording of supervision sessions and the interviewing of students and practice teachers engaged in a 65-day assessed placement. The research reveals a high level of congruence between students and practice teachers in perspectives on the supervisory relationship, confirms the findings of other studies concerning effective supervision and provides some vivid evidence of practice teacher and student activity within supervision perceived to be conducive to student learning. A specific finding was the association between the use of ‘exploring’ by practice teachers and students engaging in practice analysis. It is concluded that the changes affecting social work education over the past 10 years, on the evidence of this small sample, overall have had a positive impact on the supervisory relationship within practice learning. One area suggested for further study is the potential link between ‘expressing opinion’ by practice teachers and students within supervision and the development of evidence-based practice.     

COVID‐19 as a breakdown in the texture of social practices

‘A lot of things need to be repaired and a lot of relationships are in need of a knowledgeable mending. Can we start to talk/write about them?’ This invitation — sent by one of the authors to the others — led us, as feminist women in academia, to join together in an experimental writing about the effects of COVID‐19 on daily social practices and on potential (and innovative) ways for repairing work in different fields of social organization. By diffractively intertwining our embodied experiences of becoming together‐with Others, we foreground a multiplicity of repair (care) practices COVID‐19 is making visible. Echoing one another, we take a stand and say that we need to prevent the future from becoming the past. We are not going back to the past; our society has already changed and there is a need to cope with innovation and repairing practices that do not reproduce the past.     

The Significance of the Wealth of Nations for Economic Education

Students' understanding of history may be shaped less by their social studies teachers than by the powerfully ubiquitous, historically themed media images they passively consume outside of school. In this article, the author describes two strategies conducted during a classroom-based action research study designed to explore how historically themed film can be used to scaffold activities that encourage middle school students to conduct inquiries of the past and critically evaluate feature films and documentaries. Data collected from student surveys, focus group discussions, assignments, and classroom observations suggested that students benefit from well-structured activities that encourage them to compare historical accounts with cinematic portrayals of the past. In particular, the Know-Wonder-Learn and anticipation guide strategies can encourage critical critical viewing and thinking about how film accounts are created.     

Teaching research methods to social work students in India and Australia: reflections and recommendations

This paper draws on the reflections of two social work educators who have, for many years taught research methods to undergraduate and postgraduate social work students in India and Australia. The intent is to suggest measures for enhancing the quality of social work research education. The reflections are embedded in a social justice and human rights framework, privileging the educators’ unique social and cultural contexts and their commitment to engage with indigenous knowledge. The authors recommend effective social work research education requires the educator to draw on a deep understanding of their own context, as well as globally accepted research traditions. Particularly, we encourage research teachers to adopt student-centred approaches that emphasise a broad ‘research mindedness’ (in their students and themselves), building students’ practical capacities and confidence to become effective, research informed practitioners; capable of contributing to their own communities and to the social work profession more broadly.     

Interculturalism in Italian primary schools with a high concentration of immigrant students

The present article focuses on quantitative research carried out on a statistically representative sample of Italian primary schools with a high concentration of immigrant students. Research data show that schools with a higher number of immigrant students offer a greater number and a wider variety of intercultural initiatives. The presence of immigrant students serves as an effective stimulus in enhancing intercultural approaches. Furthermore, the opinions of head teachers about the proposal of ‘separate classes’ for immigrant students and the proposed ‘limit of 30% on the presence’ of immigrant students are negative. These judgements do not change in a statistically significant manner in relation to concentration of immigrant students: in particular, higher rates of immigrant students are not related to more positive opinions. Continuing education on intercultural issues is widely adopted, mainly on behalf of teachers and less often on behalf of head teachers and other school personnel. Finally, activities by ‘linguistic facilitators’ and ‘linguistic and cultural mediators’ are not significantly related to a decrease in perceived concern regarding problematic situations.     

The intercultural sensitivity of secondary teachers in Hong Kong: a comparative study with implications for professional development

Teacher education programs and teachers’ own lives in the relatively homogeneous communities of the past have hardly equipped them to assist their students to become interculturally sensitive, global citizens. This study compares the levels of intercultural sensitivity of secondary school teachers in four Hong Kong schools using the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). Findings indicate unique IDI profiles at each of the four schools in the study and a wide range of IDI scores at each school. Implications of the findings provide the basis for recommendations for the professional development of teachers in these schools.     

Inaugural: A necessary disenchantment: myth,agency and injustice in a digital world

This lecture reviews the history of how the status and authority of media institutions over the past century have been entangled with wider claims about social knowledge and the order of societies. It analyses those relations in terms of three successive and now overlapping myths: ‘the myth of the mediated centre’ which claims that media (traditional mass media institutions) are privileged access points to our centre of social values and social reality; the ‘myth of us’ which is now emerging around the supposedly natural collectivities that ‘we’ form on commercial social media platforms; and, from outside the media industries, the ‘myth of big data’ which proclaims big data techniques are generating an entirely new and better form of social knowledge. All these myths require deconstruction by a particular hermeneutic, but the case of the myth of big data is the most paradoxical, since its claims amount to an anti‐hermeneutic, a refusal to interpret the social anymore as the resultant of processes of meaning‐making. This third myth, it is argued, requires a hermeneutic of the anti‐hermeneutic if it is to be deconstructed and previous conceptions of social knowledge (from Weber onwards), and the claims to possible justice and politics based upon them, are to be preserved.     

Progressivism in Social Studies Teaching

Contemporary global events of the War on Terror, the War on ISIS, and the United States contentious relationship with Muslim societies make it crucial to teach about Islam and Muslims in school. However, negative representations of Islam and Muslims often impede this process. Overcoming these challenges is critical for the development of compassionate and informed students who are capable of thinking critically in a complex and globalized world. This article shows the importance of addressing Muslim representation in the media, debunks myths about Islam and Muslims, and provides concrete classroom recommendations for teachers.     

Attraktivität, Reziprozität und Lehrveranstaltungsevaluation

In this article we investigate the relationship between academic teachers’ attractiveness and their students’ evaluations of teaching. Furthermore it is examined, whether teachers’ grading influences students’ evaluations of teaching. Using data from an experimental design, hypotheses about attractiveness effects, frog-pond-effects, moderating gender effects and influences of grading are empirically tested. Controlling for confounding factors we find a very weak attractiveness effect, which can partly, but not only be ascribed to beauty’s productivity enhancing influence. Thereby, independently from the raters’ sex, female teachers profit from their looks. In contrast to that attractive male teachers are even sanctioned more strongly by their students for difficult tests than unattractive teachers. The frog-pond-hypothesis cannot empirically be supported: the attractiveness of teachers’ colleagues has no influence on the attractiveness effect. However, reciprocal evaluation behavior can consistently be found in the theoretical expected manner. It is substantially more relevant for students’ evaluations of teaching than attractiveness effects are. Alternative explanations for this grading effect can be excluded.     

The Effect of Cooperative Concept Mapping on Misconceptions,Knowledge Achievement,and Transfer of Learning in Peace Education

Abstract

This study tested the effect of cooperative concept mapping on knowledge achievement and transfer in peace education on 159 social studies students using a quasi-experimental research design. Four intact classes—two each in rural and urban areas—were randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions, and two instruments—Peace Education Achievement Test and Peace Education Transferability Test—were used for data collection. Findings showed that cooperative concept mapping unveiled students’ misconceptions in peace education and their perceptions about violent behaviors, raised students’ consciousness about asymmetric structures undermining peace, empowered them with ability to establish connections between intrinsic and extrinsic causes of conflict, and encouraged practical suggestions on how to resolve conflict and promote peace through enactment of peace virtues. Bivariate associations showed that students’ achievement in one context correlated with their transfer of learning in another context, with stronger correlation exhibited among experimental students. We attributed the stronger correlation recorded among experimental students to the “concepts connection” and visual effect occasioned by concept maps and overt effort of experimental teachers to create cooperative, experiential, and learner-centered lessons. Also, our assumption that female students will do better than male students in peace education was met. Implications of findings for curriculum review, instructional delivery and teacher education were discussed.     

Internationalising colleges of education through the dialectic of the global and the local? A perspective and possible pathways from the American South

Most schooling disproportionately emphasises national affairs at the expense of more global and local phenomena. Students’ resulting nation bias can be resituated both internationally and more locally by integrating internationalisation policies with place-based education approaches, which help to illuminate these different levels and, particularly, the extensive and complex interconnections between them. This task is particularly critical for colleges of education, where higher education internationalisation policies have the greatest potential to expand the perspectives of public school students. This article uses three cases drawn from the authors’ teaching and local service initiatives to illustrate the educational potential for future teachers and school administrators of working to broaden students’ perspectives through a ‘dialectic of the global and the local’.     

Research‐based teacher education for multicultural contexts

Graduate programs in education face the challenge of preparing teachers and specialists in education to work with English Language Learners (ELLs). Programs must be culturally responsive, while at the same time respecting state and federal standards for scientifically based practice according to best evidence. The focus of the present study is a graduate program in education that sought to prepare graduate students to address the needs of ELL students. Among the articulated goals of the program grant were that teachers enrolled would be able to: (1) use effective English for Speakers of Other Languages and bilingual educational strategies and methods; (2) use findings from testing, assessment and research functionally; and (3) promote multilingualism, and, in a broader sense, respect and equitable treatment of the heritages of home languages. The extent to which graduates of the master’s program who were working as teachers and administrators at the time of the study were able to make culturally competent connections with ELL students and to establish a repertoire of scientific evidence, based on research findings that they could then use to support their teaching theory and practice, is discussed. Findings reflecting the responses of 57 graduates of the program were as follows: (a) the training provided by the master’s program was rated as more useful than the in‐service provided by the state because its emphasis on research allowed graduates to judge the merits of proposed educational reforms and to clarify their own pedagogy; (b) the ability to cite research reports enabled graduates to be heard by colleagues and to depoliticize discussions regarding curricular reforms; (c) in developing their ‘communities of practice’, graduates made connections with others who had been trained in the use of scientific research in education. The study illustrates how a graduate education program focused on transformation and the encouragement of home language use can prepare teachers to work effectively in a political context of ‘evidence‐based practice’.     

Do what (you think) the rich will do: Inequality and belief heterogeneity in public good provision

Beliefs about others’ cooperativeness are among the strongest determinants of cooperative behaviours. Beliefs about different others, however, are not necessarily uniform, nor necessarily related to past behaviours: Different expectations about different others might solely originate from differences in observed individual characteristics. Finally, not all such beliefs need drive conditional behaviour alike.In a public good game with heterogeneous endowments, I find that rich subjects are expected to cooperate more by both rich and poor individuals, and that behaviours of both the rich and poor correlate only with beliefs about the rich. An intervention aimed at increasing perceived group cohesion has no impact on beliefs and mixed impacts on cooperation. I conclude with implications for information dissemination about uncooperative behaviour in the mass media and avenues for further research.