Objectives: In this Paper, I examine how high school social studies content standards in the United States address fundamental concepts of American governance, particularly the concept of democracy. Methods: I conducted a qualitative textual analysis of government/civics content standards from all 50 states, Washington DC, and the Advanced…

The use of digital devices in K-12 classrooms has become increasingly contested with their ubiquity. This study examines policies governing cell phone use in elementary and secondary school civics, social studies, American government, and history classes in the United States. Cell phone policies implemented by teachers differ vastly across and…

High school students need support learning to evaluate online information. Scholarship in the last several years has explored how to provide this support via lessons that explicitly teach evaluation strategies. In this study, we analyzed classroom conversations in two high school government classrooms during lessons that taught "lateral…

This study explores social studies teachers' self-reported instruction about teaching the 2020 election in U.S. secondary schools. We analyzed survey responses from 1,723 secondary social studies teachers from 12 states (3 left-leaning, 3 right-leaning, 6 battleground) collected in the weeks after the election, examining self-reported pedagogies,…

White teachers often use language that continues to position racialized students and their languages as inferior, thus perpetuating racial and linguistic inequality in society. The purpose of this study was an interrogation of racial literacies within my teaching discourse as a white English Language Learner teacher. Using racial literacies as…

In the modern American politics classroom, ideological and partisan conflict have the capacity to interfere with a healthy classroom environment. This problem is increasingly apparent when students engage questions at the heart of U.S. Constitutional design. By asking students to inhabit fictional roles with preferences and attitudes that may…

How can information literacy (IL) skills be improved during one semester? The proliferation of information disorders - fabricated stories, misleading content, clickbait - requires skills beyond using a fake-news checklist. Students in an introductory political science course were asked to analyze a news story every week as a course objective to…

Public administration has a long tradition of close connections to the field of political science. As the field of public administration evolved from a basic politics administration dichotomy, it became evident that the distinction between politics and administration was nebulous at best. As such, public affairs students need exposure to, and…