Civics Education in Contentious Times: Working with Teachers to Create Locally-Specific Curricula in a Post-Truth World is a longitudinal research study that focuses on the collaboration between a researcher and elementary teachers to design and implement locally-specific civics curriculum in a predominately Latinx-serving Title I school. William Toledo details how the design team wrote and taught this curricular unit in the midst of contentious socio-political contexts and how themes from these greater contexts entered classrooms, along with proposing conceptual frameworks for teaching civic perspective-taking in these instances.
William Toledo is assistant professor of elementary social studies education in the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Reno.
List of Figures and Tables Chapter 1: Shifting Contexts Chapter 2: Conceptualizing Civic-Perspective Taking Chapter 3: "If Donald Trump Doesn't Like Our School, is He Going to Knock it Down?": Students' Triumphs and Challenges in Learning Civics Chapter 4: Contextually-Specific Knowledge: How Teachers Designed and Taught this Unit Chapter 5: Where Do We Go From Here?: Implications for Future Teaching and Research Afterword References About the Author
This is a timely and much needed book for K-12 classroom educators, educational administrators, and university-based teacher educators. Fostering civic participation, competence, and responsibility are vital are addressed in the fundamental strategies and research addressed. The focus on civics education and ways in which to engage young learners in participatory civics as a means towards educating for democracy and equity is a key take-away from this book--Cheryl A. Torrez, The University of New Mexico As political perspectives become increasingly polarized, we need research examining civic education in our schools. Civic education does not merely mean content, but includes a deeper understanding of how educators can teach students to communicate with one another across forms of identity difference. In a society, we do not all need to agree on issues. For democracy's sake, however, we must be able to listen to others with compassion and take on other civic perspectives, if only to better understand one another. This is why Dr. Toledo's scholarship is critical; this book advances these goals, contributing in essential ways to social studies research and practice.--Esther Enright, Boise State University Teaching civics is critical for developing informed citizens who can think for themselves and contribute to the betterment of society. In Dr. Toledo's book, a comprehensive research-based perspective on how teachers and teacher educators can create and teach civics lessons while taking into account the socio-political contexts is provided. This title is must read for teachers and teacher educators seeking to bring civics into our public schools in effective ways.--Teruni Lamberg, University of Nevada, Reno
