Jason A. Laker

What Should We Be Doing to Reduce or End Campus Violence

Over the last several years, there have been a number of high-profile incidents of violence on college and university campuses. These have precipitated discussions and new initiatives on campuses and within our professional organizations intended to prevent and respond to violence.

Introduction — Civic Pedagogies in Higher Education: Teaching for Democracy in Europe, Canada and the USA

There has been a substantial and growing discussion in educational literature about the skills necessary to be taught to students in order to prepare them to be engaged and agential citizens within democracies. Unfortunately, there has been a much smaller body of literature on effective pedagogical practices that foster the requisite knowledge, skills and dispositions in students to achieve this. This text is intended to engage the latter subject in two complementary ways. First, the chapters herein offer scholarly discussions about pedagogical and philosophical aspects of the project of fostering Citizenship, Democratic and Human Rights commitments among students. Second, the colleagues who provided chapters offered narratives about their experiences, dilemmas and choices as teachers navigating the complexities of this extraordinarily complex and consequential endeavor. In some cases, they were courageously honest about the difficulties, personal and professional risks associated with this work. Arguably, for those among us who see the practice of teaching as a linchpin to achieving the ideal of a democratic community, it is a false dichotomy to speak of personal and professional as if they are different things.