Christopher Clark

As civic educators become increasingly concerned about polarized political environments, researchers have begun explore the ramifications of contentious political discourse on young people. Through a quantitative analysis of data gathered from two rural, Midwestern schools, this study provides evidence that the degree to which a student socially identifies with a political party is influential over the course of an online discussion. Strength of identification was associated with students’ relative amount of knowledge for and against their position on a controversial issue and with the types of contributions students made to the online forum. Submit a response to this article Submit online at democracyeducationjournal .org/ home Read responses to this article online http:// democracyeducationjournal .org/ home/ vol26/ iss2/ 1 Discussions of political and social issues in the classroom often emphasize informed participation, civility, common ground, and, where possible, consensus or ...

Integrating current events and news media in the curriculum is essential to social studies teachers’ efforts to promote critical citizenship skills. In this mixed-methods study, Christopher H. Clark, Mardi Schmeichel, and H. James Garrett draw from a survey of more than one thousand social studies teachers to examine factors that influence the frequency of teachers’ current events instruction and their choices of news resources for use in their classes. They found that respondents’ ideologies influenced the number and type of sources they preferred and that teachers listed student-focused reasons like reading accessibility more than news-focused criteria like in-depth reporting as reasons for their choices. These findings have significant consequences for researchers and teacher educators who must find ways to help teachers discard assumptions that news sources are neutral or without perspective. The authors maintain that if teachers are to help students develop the ability to inter...

Politically tumultuous times have created a problematic space for teachers who include the news in their classrooms. Few studies have explored perceptions of news credibility among secondary social studies teachers, the educators most likely to regularly incorporate news media into their classrooms. We investigated teachers’ operational definitions of credibility and the relationships between political ideology and assessments of news source credibility. Most teachers in this study used either static or dynamic definitions to describe news media sources’ credibility. Further, teachers’ conceptualizations of credibility and perceived ideological differences with news sources were associated with how credible teachers found each source. These results indicate potential inconsistencies in how news credibility is defined and possible political bias in which sources social studies teachers use as exemplars of credibility.

Politically tumultuous times have created a problematic space for teachers who include the news in their classrooms. Few studies have explored perceptions of news credibility among secondary social studies teachers, the educators most likely to regularly incorporate news media into their classrooms. We investigated teachers’ operational definitions of credibility and the relationships between political ideology and assessments of news source credibility. Most teachers in this study used either static or dynamic definitions to describe news media sources’ credibility. Further, teachers’ conceptualizations of credibility and perceived ideological differences with news sources were associated with how credible teachers found each source. These results indicate potential inconsistencies in how news credibility is defined and possible political bias in which sources social studies teachers use as exemplars of credibility.

As civic educators become increasingly concerned about polarized political environments, researchers have begun explore the ramifications of contentious political discourse on young people. Through a quantitative analysis of data gathered from two rural, Midwestern schools, this study provides evidence that the degree to which a student socially identifies with a political party is influential over the course of an online discussion. Strength of identification was associated with students’ relative amount of knowledge for and against their position on a controversial issue and with the types of contributions students made to the online forum.

As American politics becomes more polarized, it is increasingly necessary for teachers to understand the relationship between education and partisan behavior. Using data from a 2012 CIRCLE survey of 18–24-year-olds, I examine the relationship between students’ educational experiences (focusing on exposure to high-quality civics instruction and high school democratic climate) and their propensity to exhibit align- ment between party identification, ideology, issue opinions, and candidate choices as young adults. I find that participants who report both a high number of quality civic education experiences and a highly democratic school climate show a reduced likelihood of extreme political alignment. I discuss the implications of this finding and highlight directions for further investigation.

Online deliberations in social studies classrooms are increasingly feasible as more schools incorporate online learning environments into their programs. The present study investigates student participation in online deliberations with particular attention to (1) the differences between opinion expression and participation in anonymous versus named conditions, (2) whether the magnitude of any such differences varies by gender, (3) whether males and females express a preference for deliberation in named or anonymous online environments, and (4) the impact of named and anonymous environments on developing students’ deliberative skills. When opinion expression and participation results are analyzed by gender, we find that differences between females and males that manifest in named conditions disappear when discussing anonymously. We find that female students are significantly more likely to prefer discussing in anonymous environments. Finally, we find that students deliberating anonymously express more opinions in a subsequent deliberation than those in the named condition.