Students' valuing of academic content impacts their engagement in learning and plays a pivotal role in shaping their future academic and career choices. Fortunately, practicing educators can integrate many readily applicable strategies into teaching to enhance students' valuing of academic content. Drawing from expectancy-value theory, Eric M.…

This article describes one secondary social studies teacher's attempts to build a pedagogically democratic classroom. The teacher designs curriculum around large essential questions, connects content to the present lives of students, and creates space for students to make their own decisions and choices. The teacher is convinced that she has…

Building democracies in K-8 schools is a promising approach to increasing young people and educators' civic knowledge, skills and dispositions. The Rendell Center for Civics and Civics Engagement leveraged strategies and concepts from the fields of civic education, student voice, and distributed leadership to build a youth-adult school governance…

Curiosity is vital quality of the creative work. However, in the classroom, educators seem to view curiosity as alternately amoral, virtuous, or dangerous. Education's stance towards curiosity is, in a word, curious. Conversely, the author says, curiosity is inherently amoral--neither good nor bad--and the subject is ripe for an exploration of the…

Emphasizes curricular planning that considers social problems as seen by youth, helping young people to examine their basic assumptions about society in relationship to human values and social policies. (JK)

In this article, the authors take a systematic look at high school seniors' views on patriotism and its relationship to democracy. Drawing on the work of the Harwood Institute and on studies by Robert Schatz, Ervin Staub, and Howard Lavine, they discuss a set of criteria that can help them determine the degree to which students' patriotic…

Research shows that the lessons learned at the typical high school as now operated are bored acquiescence or bold defiance, and that considerable reform is necessary if schools are to model democratic society. (Author)

When 128 students were queried regarding the values, beliefs, or moral imperatives underlying their teacher education program, most were speechless at first. Students either indicated their unawareness of any underlying philosophy or responded in generalities akin to moral relativism. Includes 19 references. (MLH)

A comparison of two major studies on high school seniors' views of themselves and their schools reveals how their attitudes changed during the 1970s. The article discusses academic issues, future expectations, values, the schools, and major trends. (WD)

Replicating a survey of high school students of the class of 1952, the author's survey of the class of 1984 shows greater agreement with the "Founding Fathers" on many issues, with a larger percentage of students willing to allow police searches without warrants and deny legal counsel to criminals. (JBM)

Examination of school-improvement efforts at small-town New England high school shows limits of effective leadership, site-based management, and curricular innovations as improvement agents. Efforts are doomed without community consensus about reform goals and best ways to measure progress. Communities must synthesize information about academic,…