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.…

The 2016 presidential campaign and its aftermath have underscored the extreme polarization of the electorate, the dismissal of people with opposing views, and the widespread acceptance and circulation of one-sided and factually erroneous information. In addition, only a small proportion of those who are eligible actually vote, and a declining…

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…

The authors recently studied how well schools were teaching a a range of complex, higher-order skills. Their findings were grim. Out of 25 skills that researchers have found to be critical to success in life and work, just three were the focus of most instruction: recall, application, and (occasionally) analysis. Even when teachers explicitly made…

Recent scholarship on civic education has introduced some useful ways to engage students in learning about controversial topics, debating them, and participating in democratic life. However, while those are valuable tools for active citizenship, they're not sufficient. Democratic education should focus on issues that matter intensely to students'…

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…

In a challenging critique of moral education in public schools, James Davison Hunter argues that the unspoken imperative of all moral education is to teach only those virtues, principles, and other moral teachings about which there is essentially no disagreement in American society. Hunter claims that almost every major form of moral education in…

If the goal of teaching ethics is to affect behavior and ultimately produce thoughtful, ethical people, then the best process to do this is by embedding ethical practices in student discussions. One teacher demonstrates how she has done this in her classrooms.

Through experiences training teachers across the country, the author gains insight into the necessity to accommodate diverse Native American learners. Sensitivity to Native American learning styles and values enables the author to better meet individual needs and learn valuable lessons in diversity. The author tells the story of her experiences…

Suggests a logically consistent method of teaching values education in a teacher education program. The method focuses on the development and understanding of a model of the value concept combined with the continuous treatment of reality-based controversial issues. (Author/IRT)

Character education often uses exhortations and extrinsic inducements to make children behave and work harder. Extrinsic rewards and awards erode intrinsically motivated behavior. Programs should answer five basic questions, avoid indoctrination, and provide students with opportunities to construct meaning around moral concepts and to change…

The author offers an argument for organized inculcation of moral values into students. (IRT)

The fostering and nurturing of caring values and attitudes among our youth should be one of the primary objectives of the schools. (Author/IRT)

A teacher integrates character education into content lessons by lacing a "character cocktail" with community, manners, and ethical decision-making. (MLF)