As the number of displaced people increases, providing refugee-background students with critically engaging classrooms is essential. Supporting diverse learners, while focusing on issues of social justice and equity, critical literacy facilitates a perspective where texts are analyzed for underlying messages of power and sociopolitical issues.…

Discussion about political and social issues in school matter for a wide array of democratic skills and competences such as political engagement, participation, and knowledge. However, little research has been done on what impact characteristics of the discussion climate in classrooms can have on young people's engagement with political…

Children may not yet understand political issues or be engaged in politics, but identification with social groups emerges early; indeed, nearly a third of first-graders report identification with a political party. As a result, it is likely that ingroup favoritism (or preference for members of one's own political group) and outgroup derogation (or…

Being challenged by opposing views in a controversial discussion can stimulate the production of more elaborate and sophisticated argumentations. According to the model of argument reappraisal (Leitão, 2000), such processes require transactivity, meaning that students do not only give reasons to support their own position (e.g., pro/contra…

Purpose: This article explores the classical relationship between socioeconomic status and political domains, and the need to include different variables (contextual and individual) to measure the effect of economic and cultural capitals on youth participation and knowledge. Method: A multivariate analysis of covariance was performed on a sample…

Is it actually certain that our students are changing during our social studies classes? This paper aims to reveal structural development and evaluation in social studies education which is related to national curriculum requirements and focused on particular students in order to test the effectiveness of the lesson. In order to increase students'…

Four classes of ninth-grade students in an international school in East Asia used a set of web-based technology tools to evaluate two competing webpages about the Taiwan Straits. The findings highlight the ways these students developed disciplinary literacy in social studies by drawing upon cultural resources and contextual knowledge as they…

Aspects of Aboriginal cultural knowledge/perspectives were integrated into the Grade 9 social studies curriculum of a high school in a western Canadian city to appraise the impact on academic achievement, class attendance, and school retention among specific groups of Aboriginal students. The results suggest cautious optimism about increasing…