Civic Education in Secondary Social Studies

Institutions: University of Illinois at Chicago (Peters), DePaul University (Conklin), and Loyola University Chicago (Tocci)

Description:

We would like to participate as Faculty Fellows in order to expand and strengthen our abilities to fully incorporate civics education in to our teacher education programs. While we have different specific situations, we have several common threads: a need to prepare future teachers to fulfill Illinois’ new civics mandate; a desire to work closely with the CPS Department of Social Science and Civic Engagement to prepare candidates to teach the Participate curriculum; and a goal to produce new teachers that can serve as service-learning leaders in their schools. In short, we seek to prepare future teachers who can incorporate civics into all the courses they teach. At UIC, the goal is to enhance an existing but nascent course entitled Teaching Civic Literacy. At Loyola and DePaul, the goal is to integrate controversial discussion teaching strategies into the social studies methods course and, when possible, to assess candidates abilities to implement these practices in field placements.

---