Digital competence (DC) is a broad set of skills, attitudes, and knowledge for confident, critical, and responsible use of digital technologies in every aspect of life. DC proves essential in the contemporary digital landscape, yet its diffusion is hindered by biases, misunderstandings, and limited awareness. Teaching Informatics in the…

Civic leadership programming can be found across the United States and allows individuals the opportunity to gain skills focused on engaging their local community, creating space for change and impact to occur, and developing civic agency, a practice of working together across differences. This work describes civic leadership understanding, an…

This article provides an overview of the Survivors: Local Stories of Domestic Violence (hereafter, Survivors) civic engagement project. Survivors' learning objectives were to increase the understanding of the complexity of intimate partner abuse and foster empathy in outsiders' responses, something at the cornerstone of the #MeToo social movement…

Research literature suggests students need to engage in "actual" civic experiences; however, in most cases, teachers feel unwilling or unable to facilitate experiences beyond the formal classroom setting. In this project, we sought to understand the relationship between social studies teachers' civic ideology, pedagogical approaches, and…

During 1931-1933 several BBC radio broadcasts invited listeners to participate in what would now be termed 'citizen science' experiments. Scientists broadcast on a research topic, and asked for relevant data and observations from listeners. Most of these broadcasts were part of the "Science in the Making" series. Topics investigated…

In this study, we reflected on the process of designing and implementing a civics curriculum model focused on increasing upper-grade secondary students' involvement in local civic activity. We prioritized examining the challenges and possibilities of institutionalizing partnerships between teachers, students, community leaders, and local…

Project-based learning (PBL) is an instructional approach that provides civics, social studies, and American government students with the opportunity to actively and cooperatively engage with real-world issues and situations. Students typically identify a problem in their community or school, research the problem and policy-based solutions,…

The authors describe how a community museum created and curated by adult education students acted as an innovative and student-centered model to support learners in developing and demonstrating their literacy skills and knowledges. Using a case study approach to document and analyze students' counterstories (i.e., stories that disrupt dominant…

Citizen science can provide insightful data to inform decisions, while also serving to enhance ecological awareness and foster environmental stewardship among participants. In this article, high school student citizen scientists investigate how trees respond to changing mountain climate during a field trip to Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) to…

This paper examines how community-based civic action research can cultivate civic engagement, civic belonging, and shifts in civic stakeholders' perceptions of racially and economically minoritized youth's civic agency. Specifically, this paper examines the implementation of Youth, Research and Plan (YRP) -- a community-based research methodology…

This article focuses on designing and conducting action research in diverse settings. Action research is a collaborative approach to problem solving. It involves consultative problem identification, reflects context, encourages reflexive examination, and ultimately encourages and empowers beneficiaries for desirable change. In that regard, it puts…

In 2017, Longwood University launched the LIFE STEM Program, a holistic program girded by best practices in STEM teaching: cohorts of students, summer bridge program, genuine community building, intentional faculty-student mentoring, focused academic support and professional development, early research experiences, engagement with challenging…

The presidential and vice-presidential debates organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates have been among the most-viewed television programs in history. But much has changed since the debates were first televised in 1960. Information channels that were once the domain of traditional media (i.e., television and print journalism) are being…

This article presents three Bengali-English digital stories as vignettes and analyses young people's intercultural encounters as a moving story between Dhaka and London. The research case study is part of an international project, Critical Connections: Multilingual Digital Storytelling (2012-present), which links language and intercultural…

In this essay, Nicole Mirra and Antero Garcia explore how young people from six demographically distinct communities across the United States understand the social and political issues affecting their lives, engage in storytelling and dialogue across differences, and collaboratively imagine humanizing and hopeful civic futures. Drawing from…