Educating for Civic Reasoning and Discourse: Preparing Young People to Wrestle With Complex Truths in the Public Domain

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

One goal of public education in a democracy is to support students in learning to grapple with the complexities of our efforts as humans to live together, forming social contracts that embody our mutual expectations of support. In the context of the United States, this social contract is complex and deeply contested (as indeed it is in other countries). As we engage with one another in the civic domain, we wrestle with questions of truth – truth of facts, truth of judgements we make about historical and contemporary actions in the civic domain. The presentations in this symposium capture recommendations from the recent report by the National Academy of Education, Educating for Civic Reasoning and Discourse. The report recommends that preparation for civic reasoning and discourse should be taught across all the content areas and across the full K-12 grade spectrum. The demands of learning to engage in civic reasoning and discourse are complex conceptually and developmentally and cannot be learned in a single civics or U.S. history course. The report argues that civic reasoning and discourse entail knowledge (conceptual and procedural), epistemology (a disposition to value complexity), ethics (including empathy for others), democratic principles, and dispositions to listen to others, value multiple points of view, and weigh competing evidence. A major contribution of the report is warranting arguments about the conditions that need to be in play in order for students at different points in their development to engage this complex problem space in what we know from the Science of Human Learning and Development.

Sub Unit

• AERA Presidential Session

Chair

• Gregory A. White, National Academy of Education

Papers

• Rethinking Preparing Students for Civic Reasoning and Discourse: Learning to Wrestle With Complexity of Perceptions of Truth in the Public Domain - Carol D. Lee, Northwestern University

• Civic Discourse and Mathematics - Alan H. Schoenfeld, University of California - Berkeley

• Civics and Science - Marcia Linn, University of California - Berkeley; Korah Wiley, Digital Promise

• Civic Discourse in Social Studies Classrooms - Abby Reisman, University of Pennsylvania

Discussant

• Carl Cohn, Claremont Graduate University