Jeremy Stoddard

The Ideological Implications of Using “Educational” Film to Teach Controversial Events

Abstract Use of media in today’s classrooms, from feature and documentary film to news clips streamed via the Web, has grown exponentially. Film can be a powerful medium for teaching and learning, but is often viewed as a neutral source of information. This collective case study focuses on two teachers who use documentary film to teach about controversial events, with the goal of better understanding teacher selection and use of film as part of pedagogy and the experiences of students who are engaged in deliberative activities with film. In this case, teachers utilized film to help students examine two controversial events in U.S. history, the use of atomic weapons against Japan at the end of World War II and the role of the United States in Vietnam. These cases illustrate a tension that many teachers, who want to engage students in deliberative activities but who also want students to adopt particular moral or political stances, face in today’s classrooms. The teachers in these cases utilize film as a neutral source for students to use as evidence for taking a position, despite the value-laden perspectives included in the films, perspectives that aligned with the teachers’ own political beliefs. Other findings include student inability to recognize the perspectives in documentary films, the epistemic stances of teachers and students that documentaries are accurate and neutral, and the characteristics of students who are better equipped to recognize ideological perspectives. Implications for teachers, teacher educators, and especially democratic and social studies education researchers are explored.

More Than "Showing What Happened": Exploring the Potential of Teaching History with Film

In a world where students and the general public are likely to access historical information from a television program, film, or even video game, it is important to equip students with the ability to view historical representation critically. In this essay we present arguments for using film to engage students in rigorous and authentic social studies pedagogy and support these arguments with data and examples from our research over the past ten years. Our goal is not to promote film as the ultimate classroom source or as a replacement for a teacher, but to highlight how effective the use of film can be in engaging students in authentic intellectual work with important content and issues. If we have learned anything from our research on using film to teach about the past, it is that it is important to have a clear purpose for selecting a film, both justifying the use of time and presenting the perspective that the teacher wants to portray.

The roles of epistemology and ideology in teachers’ pedagogy with historical ‘media’

Within the field of social studies education, disciplinary models of teaching, such as approximating a historian in asking students to ‘think historically,’ have been the emphasis of countless professional development and teacher education programs. This movement, however, has focused largely on the use of traditional primary documents and generally does not include training for teachers or students on how other forms of media construct history. This collective case study examines how two US history teachers’ epistemological beliefs about historical media and ideology and overall goals for students as citizens impacts their pedagogy with different historical media, particularly film. Data were collected on a daily basis over the course of six months, and included observations, teacher interviews, and the media used as historical sources. Findings show that teachers’ beliefs about how sources represent history affect their pedagogy with the particular media, and that epistemic development and current notions of historical thinking may be limited when it comes to media that commonly serve as historical sources for the public at large (e.g., film, television, WWW, videogames). This limitation is caused in large part by the teachers’ larger goals for students that are informed by their ideology, and difficulty in identifying bias in media that aligned with their own beliefs. Therefore, a shift in teachers’ epistemic beliefs about how different forms of media serve as sources of history, essentially a form of critical media literacy, and coinciding recognition of ideological goals needs to occur in order to better instill students with skills in historical and media literacy for the twenty‐first century.

From a Roar to a Murmur: Virginia's History & Social Science Standards, 1995-2009

The authors trace the development and implementation of Virginias History and Social Science standards-based accountability system from 1995 to 2009. They frame the study within an examination of the political ideologies that influence policy realization and unpack the relationship between ideological and epistemological beliefs about the nature of disciplinary knowledge and arguments regarding what knowledge is of most worth and whose voices should be included. While initial policy implementation created vociferous reactions, subsequent revisions have been met with silence. Such acquiescence, the authors suggest, reflects the ways in which high stakes testing as a vehicle for assessing learning has become normalized in Virginia. This shift in beliefs about education foreshadows the potential impact of the nationwide accountability movement and raises a concern that if Virginia ceased to test history and social science, its place within the school schedule would be lost to content areas that impact Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).

9/11 in the Curriculum: A Retrospective

This article uses a curricular analysis study to examine how the events of 9/11 and their aftermath are presented to secondary students in supplemental curriculum and social studies textbooks published from 2002–2010. Shortly after 9/11, many political leaders and social studies educators advocated teaching about 9/11 and its aftermath because these events provided a unique “teachable moment,” even though there was often bitter disagreement about what ideological messages related to 9/11 should be promoted in the schools. Within one year, many non-profit organizations and even the United States Department of State developed materials on 9/11 that were disseminated to secondary schools. As the first editions of post-9/11 textbooks came out, it was also evident that content about 9/11 and what happened in its wake would be given special attention. To investigate what was being communicated to young people about 9/11 and its aftermath to students, we analyzed nine curricula from the non-profits and the government in the first few years after 9/11, a sample of nine of history and government textbooks published between 2004–06, and then a subsample of three of the 2009–10 editions of these same texts. Major findings include the multiple purposes for which 9/11-related content is directed, the lack of sufficient detail to help students understand 9/11, the lack of attention to many of the controversies that post 9/11 policies generated, and conceptual confusion about the definition of terrorism.

Young People’s Response to The Response: The Impact of Political Diversity and Media Framing on Discussions of Combatant Tribunals

This article presents results of a study of the impact of political dynamics on group deliberations of issues presented in the short film The Response. We selected four groups of 18-22 year-old participants based on political views, engagement, and efficacy (liberal, conservative, and two mixed groups), and asked them to view and discuss issues presented in The Response related to the combatant status review tribunals held at Guantanamo Bay. We found the groups with mixed political views had higher quality discussions of the issues and a better understanding of the issues post-discussion – in particular the tension between national security versus individual rights and of the nature of the tribunals. We also found a significant number of conservative group members became more conservative in their views as a result of their discussion. We discuss implications for secondary and post-secondary education as well as for political polarization overall in society.

The impact of political identity, grouping, and discussion on young people's views of political documentaries

ABSTRACT This study focuses on how young people read and discuss two political documentary films, Labor Day and Hillary: The Movie. We were specifically interested in the impact of the film viewing and discussion on participants’ beliefs about the issues in the films, how they view evidence and expertise in the films, and how the session impacted their views of documentaries as a source. Groups were designed according to composite political scores and individuals (n = 30) were selected to form liberal, conservative, and two mixed groups (strong and moderate) for the viewing and discussion. Our analysis illustrates the power of political ideology in shaping how expertise is viewed and how evidence is warranted in film – and the role of social context and peer discussion in this process. Implications for media and democratic education in times of political polarization are discussed.

Authentic pedagogy: examining intellectual challenge in social studies classrooms

ABSTRACT This paper reports results from a six-state study of 62 USA social studies classrooms. We examined the extent to which intellectually challenging authentic pedagogy was present in study classrooms, the characteristics of classroom practice at different levels of authentic pedagogy, and how those characteristics may promote or inhibit high levels of authentic intellectual work (AIW). Like earlier AIW studies, we found generally low levels of AIW in observed classes. However, we did find several cases of classrooms scoring in the highest AIW range. We examined characteristics of practice that typified teaching of exemplar lessons at four different levels of authentic pedagogy and identified noteworthy differences in teacher purpose, the ways teachers structured and enacted lessons to accomplish their purposes, and the ways that the structures of the lessons encouraged different lesson narratives that communicated different epistemological assumptions about the complexity of social reality and the process of sense-making. Teachers at the higher levels of the AIW scale sought to promote autonomy and civic competence. We conclude that to maintain democratic societies, educators must expand the number of classrooms offering students this essential preparation for civic life and provide suggestions for how this might be accomplished.

Project CIVIS Curriculum Development and Assessment of Underserved and Underachieving Middle School Populations

This article presents findings from a large-scale curriculum development, quasi-experimental study. Participating teachers implemented four U.S. history units in their diverse middle-grade classes; these units were developed to engage underachieving students in challenging history and democratic citizenship curriculum and instruction featuring discussion and inquiry. Initial results show that students in the treatment classrooms had significantly higher mean scores on a National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)–based pre–post assessment than their peers in comparison classrooms.

The role of ideology and habitus in educational media production

The notion that embedded meanings exist within media, and are informed by particular ideologies, is far from new. Analyses of curriculum, however, rarely examine empirically the role of these ideologies or the context of production. Instead, the ideologies are attributed to a “producer” representing particular power relationships or societal hegemony. In this case study, data collected as part of a study of an educational media organization are used to examine the role of ideologies in the production of complex multimedia curriculum, and their influences on the decision-making of the production staff and organization. Using activity theory and the concept of habitus in practice, the analysis identifies the complex internal and external role of ideological influences and contradictions that occur during the production of a virtual historical field trip program. The findings provide a nuanced and complicated view of the producer and the role of ideology in the production of educational media. It also provides evidence related to how external influences, such as academic standards, economic needs of the producer, and the desire to appear cutting edge in the use of technology, are mediated as part of the production process. Methodologically, this study makes contributions through the use of activity theory as a lens for examining the role of ideology within the organization, the role of actors and external tools on the organizational community, and the prominent role of the organizations habitus as a mediating tool and how it impacts the educational media they produce and the messages these media construct.