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…

Project-based learning (PBL) is well known for engaging students enthusiastically and for supporting strong experiential learning. Less well known is that rigorous PBL also excels at fostering rich civic engagement--of key importance now, at a time of heightened concern about civics education. In this article, the authors will illuminate how…

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,…

Online learning continues to be implemented in secondary schools throughout the United States. Online schools, which enroll fully online students, have demonstrated lower performance and persistence than face-to-face schools nationwide. Researchers have claimed self-regulated learning (SRL) is essential for academic achievement as SRL is used to…

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…

Critical civic engagement is a pedagogical framework that suggests a return of civic education to American schooling is not simply about providing civics for all students, but that civic education, particularly among marginalized urban high school students, must engage lived experiences, develop critical thought, and facilitate informed civic…

Authentic pedagogy is a complex enterprise for students and teachers. Planning and developing the instructional procedures and scaffolds for student success is daunting. In addition, the teacher implementing the lesson makes dozens of quick decisions as they attend to student thinking and decide how to respond. These spontaneous decisions can have…

This brief examines the findings of a study conducted by researchers at the University of Southern California examining a project-based approach to Advanced Placement courses. The randomized study found the proportion of students earning a credit-qualifying score on the AP test was 8 percentage points higher in the project-based version of the…

American politics today is the culmination of historical, political, social, geographic, and economic events that have significantly impacted this country. Over the last year, America and the world have been tested to political, social, and economic extremes not seen in over a century because of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Both the 2020…

The aim of this qualitative case study was to investigate the process of the enactment of a project-based learning method in an Advanced Placement American Government and Politics course and the effects of contextual factors, the beliefs of the teacher, and environmental factors had on the planning and implementation of PBL-aligned tasks. This…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of Knowledge in Action (KIA) project-based learning (PBL) approach to Advanced Placement (AP) on students' AP examination performance. This study used a randomized controlled trial, with school-level randomization within five large and predominantly urban U.S. school districts, to compare the AP…

We conducted a two-year study with four teachers (two mentors and two mentees), one university researcher, and a political science professor focused on improving discussion facilitation. This article examines the facilitation of a collaboratively developed seminar/deliberation discussion by four teachers and the relationship between their…

This one-page fact sheet presents findings from a quasi-experimental study to examine the effects of the We the People program on high school students' political knowledge, civic skills, and civic attitudes. The study included 822 program participants who were compared to 735 students in high school government classes with similar demographics. In…

Many American high school government and history teachers aim to convey curriculum content without bringing in their own personal political beliefs or biases. However, in the hyperpolarized political climate of the past decade, teachers have grappled with teaching their courses when potentially controversial political or cultural issues come up in…