We explored the impact of participating in a Virtual Internship (VI) computer-supported collaborative learning simulation, on high school students' (n = 43) development of knowledge and skills for critiquing the political media with which they engage. Second, we evaluated the effect of this intervention on students' self-efficacy for using…

Background/Context: Researchers, policy makers, and practitioners are paying increasing attention to the educational opportunities afforded by the maker movement--a growing public interested in do-it-yourself designing, remixing, and tinkering using physical and digital tools. While education research on "making" has often focused on…

Concerns regarding political knowledge and participation among young people continue to spur research into effective civic instruction. Through a quasi-experiment involving 361 students in four high schools as well as the parents of 152 of these students, we measured the effects of incorporating news magazines and discussion into social studies…

Traditionally political knowledge was regarded as an important potential outcome for civic education efforts. Most of the currently available research, however, tends to focus on non-cognitive goals, despite the fact that studies repeatedly have shown that political knowledge is an important resource for enlightened and engaged citizenship. In…

In a series of reforms started in 1998 and formalized with the 2000 introduction of the Blueprint for Student Success, the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) implemented a wide-ranging series of reforms designed to boost the literacy skills of students. This article provides an overview of the reforms, assesses the contributions made by the…

The primary purpose of this study is to develop composite variables for several sets of items included in the Second and Third Follow-Up Questionnaires of the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS). The need for this study is derived from the following considerations: (1) reduction of data dimensions, and (2) provision…

This bulletin has been prepared in response to many hundreds of requests for information about public affairs forums. It is impossible in such limited space to give a comprehensive description of the forum method of adult civic education or its application in various parts of the country. However, the authors have tried to include in the bulletin…