What kind of global citizen? A framework for best practices in world history civic education

2021 ◽  
pp. 174619792110385
Author(s):  
Carly C Muetterties
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Civic Education ◽  
Global Citizenship ◽  
World History ◽  
History Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
Public Schooling ◽  
World History Education ◽  
The Relationship

Scholars have long identified fostering democratic citizenship as a primary purpose of public schooling in the United States, as schools should intentionally prepare students with the knowledge and skills needed for active, informed democratic citizenship. In addition, global interconnectedness has reshaped needed civic competencies to participate in civic life. This conceptual article considers the intersections between civic and world history education, assessing the relationship between the two disciplines in order to create a framework of best practices in world history civic education. Global citizenship discourse is analyzed using this framework, considering how different forms may reinforce or undermine world history’s purpose of preparing students with pluralist understandings for global democratic living. Drawing on components of history education, world history, and global citizenship education scholarship, this article seeks to establish epistemological clarity as to how world history can contribute to meaningful civic education and vice versa.

Digital Government and Citizen Participation in the United States

2011 ◽  
pp. 306-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Holzer ◽  
Lung-Teng Hu ◽  
Seok-Hwi Song
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Digital Citizenship ◽  
Government Accountability ◽  
Digital Government ◽  
Potential Problems ◽  
Customer Satisfaction Survey ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter addresses the topic of citizen participation via digital government in several sections: first, we discuss the relationship between digital government and citizen participation from the academic literature. Second, we introduce some best practices of citizen participations through digital government in the United States; third, we offer some principles and implications from these best practices; and fourth, we discuss several potential problems of digitized citizen participation in terms of further research. The best practices described in this chapter include Minnesota’s Department Results and Online Citizen Participation Opportunities, Santa Monica’s Budget Suggestions, California’s California Scorecard, Virginia Beach’s EMS Customer Satisfaction Survey and others. We extract some common features from these best practices, such as citizen as customer, recognizing a citizen’s capacity, and direct participation. Further, we recommend principles for designing digitized citizen participation: operationalize direct policy involvement, enable the citizen to influence policy priorities, enhance government accountability, encourage participatory deliberation and shape digital citizenship.

scholarly journals Dual Screening, Public Service Broadcasting, and Political Participation in Eight Western Democracies

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristian Vaccari ◽  
Augusto Valeriani
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
Positive Contribution ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Media Systems ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Western Democracies

We investigate the relationship between political dual screening—that is, watching political contents on television while reading and commenting on them on social media—and political participation across eight Western democracies: Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Based on custom built online surveys conducted between 2015 and 2016 on samples representative of the adult population with internet access in each country, we test hypotheses on both intra-country and cross-country direct and differential effects of political dual screening on various forms of offline and online political participation. We find a positive correlation between the frequency with which citizens dual screen political content and their overall levels of participation. Such correlation is stronger among respondents with lower levels of interest in politics, suggesting that dual screening has the potential to bridge participatory gaps between citizens who are more and less politically involved. The relationship between dual screening and participation is also significantly stronger in countries whose media systems feature the strongest Public Service Broadcasters. Our findings suggest that dual screening makes a positive contribution to democratic citizenship and political equality, and that it can also help public service media fulfill some of their key functions.

EDUCATION, EXPEDIENCY, AND DEMOCRATIC DILEMMAS IN WAR TIME: INSIDE THE DEWEY-BOURNE DEBATE

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 438-455
Author(s):  
Christopher McKnight Nichols
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
Liberal Politics ◽  
Progressive Reform ◽  
Randolph Bourne ◽  
Democracy And Education ◽  
The Relationship

In one of the most significant debates in U.S. intellectual history, John Dewey and Randolph Bourne attempted to redefine the relationship between democracy and war in the midst of World War I. This essay argues that the Dewey-Bourne debate is not just a vital dispute over the United States’ role in the war and the world, but that it also must be seen as a crucial moment for understanding fractures in progressive politics and debates over projects that presume to cultivate an educated citizenry. Focusing on Dewey and Bourne's developing ideas from 1914 through 1918, with an emphasis on concepts evolving in and from Dewey's Democracy and Education and Bourne's cultural criticism, the essay explores their core disagreements about the relationship between education and progressive reform, the role of intellectuals in the state, the consequences of intervention in the war and the use of force, and democratic citizenship in national and international contexts. This essay provides insights into the boundaries and pitfalls of liberal politics in the early twentieth century; it argues that this debate reveals a central ambiguity in Dewey's thought, and shows how wartime expediency and potential for progressive influence derailed aspects of the Deweyan project of democratic education.

Public Schooling and Democracy in the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah M. Stitzlein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Political System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Schooling ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Relationship

Public schools are intricately connected to the stability and vitality of our democracy in the United States. The important relationship between public schooling and democracy began as a foundational idea in our fledgling republic, and it grew slowly over the course of our country’s history. Along the way, the relationship has been tested and challenged, encountering significant problems and limitations over time, including some that continue today. Despite these struggles and the many ways in which we’ve failed to fully fulfill the relationship, it has become a key one for maintaining the strength of our society and our political system. Unlike a monarchy and other forms of government, it is difficult to maintain a democracy. Democracies take work; they rely upon the ongoing effort of elected officials and citizens, because they cannot run themselves or rely on just one person to lead. While democracy may be a highly desirable political system, its benefits are not always self-evident to children, and the pursuant skills and work it requires do not come naturally to most people. This is the rather precarious position of democracy; in order to maintain it, we have to educate children about its benefits and rationale while also equipping them with the skills and dispositions they need in order to for them to perpetuate it well. This is why we must link education and democracy. Democracy requires informed and active voters who seek information to make wise decisions on behalf of themselves and the common good. Such voters must understand their own rights and freedoms, as well as those of others, as they deliberate together to reach mutually agreeable policies and practices. They must be equipped to engage in free and critical inquiry about the world and the problems surrounding them. And, they need the imagination and creativity to construct, revise, add to, and share the story of democracy with others, including the next generation. The relationship between public schooling and democracy is best understood and fulfilled when it is not just a unidirectional one, where public schools support democracy, but rather when it moves in both directions, with the formal and cultural elements of democracy shaping the governance, content, and practices of schools. In this way, democracy is not just the end of public schooling, but also the means by which we achieve it.

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