Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: The Internet has revolutionized the way we live, the way we learn, and the way we discern public issues.Put simply, a new public square has developed online.Social studies teachers, as social educators, should be well suited to fuse technology and classroom discussions about civic issues.Many argue the social studies classroom remains the most appropriate place to teach citizenship via discussion and deliberative practices.Teaching discussion skills is foundational to an issues-centered curriculum and advocated by social studies educators because an effective democracy depends on the practice of publicly deliberating issues that are important to society.Yet, facilitating classroom discussion of controversial issues has never been easy, and moving these discussions to online spaces presents a new set of challenges altogether.The purpose of this research study was to understand, explain, and forge new theoretical concepts for online deliberative practices.Data from 4 issues-centered blogs used in the high school social studies classroom were gathered and analyzed.Three findings emerged revealing these new deliberative spaces (a) leaned toward conversation, (b) attempted to balance authentic engagement with needed procedures, and (c) tended to shortcut reason.The findings were interrelated and provided grounding for a Model of Online Deliberation, a conceptualization of such hybrid deliberative activities.iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I want to thank my colleagues at Kent State University.Special thanks go to Dr. Alicia Crowe, who directed this dissertation.Over the past six years, she has motivated me to dig deeper into the meaning and purpose of social studies in a technologically deployed classroom.She encouraged me to attend and present my work at national conferences and meet other scholars who are doing work in the social studies.Many thanks to my other committee members, Drs.William Kist, Susan Iverson, and Mark Kretovics for their time and input.Their feedback was invaluable.And to my cohort at Kent State I owe sincere appreciation for their support, conversation, and encouragement that helped make this a rich experience.Next, I am grateful to the blogging teachers, who
Author: Jeffrey P. Drake
Institution: Kent State University
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1601397992