Thomas Misco

Beyond personally responsible: A study of teacher conceptualizations of citizenship education:

This mixed methods study explores secondary teacher conceptualizations of citizenship education in one Midwestern state in the USA. First, the authors situate the study within the teacher belief and citizenship education literature. They then analyze statewide survey responses and interview transcripts that describe teacher beliefs and classroom goals and the degree to which teachers believe these goals are met. The authors advance the typology of personally responsible, participatory and justice-oriented citizenship aims by thickly describing the profiles of teachers within these paradigms. Finally, the authors address the implications of this typology for problematizing citizenship education within preservice and in-service professional development.

A Study of Pre-Service Teachers' Conceptualizations of Academic Freedom and Controversial Issues

Abstract This study examines teacher perceptions of academic freedom and how these perceptions relate to the teaching of controversial issues. By drawing on the literature of the field and recent research, we describe threats, challenges, and variables at work that have led to the decline of academic freedom. We then explore the imperative of academic freedom broadly, its necessary connection to teaching controversial issues, and current barriers to this kind of instruction. Finally, we provide the results of a regional survey of pre-service teachers that sought to understand their conceptualizations of academic freedom and the degree to which they are comfortable addressing controversial issues in their classrooms.

Seeing the Forest Through the Trees: Some Renewed Thinking on Dispositions Specific to Social Studies Education

Too often, social studies educators are asked to focus their design and enactment of learning experiences on the mastery of content knowledge, often at the expense of other aims and goals. In response to this problem, the authors of this article explore the reclamation of dispositions in social studies curriculum planning and teaching. First, he authors clarify what is meant by dispositions in the social studies. Then, by drawing on seminal works in the field, they ofter a taxonomy of social studies dispositions in order to assist pre-service and in-service teachers to consciously plan for dispositional development. Finally, the authors detail how these dispositions can be operationlized within a series of practical examples.

“We did also save people”: A Study of Holocaust Education in Romania After Decades of Historical Silence

This research study seeks to understand the current state of Holocaust education in Romanian classrooms and the variety of forces that influence its treatment. By identifying obstacles, challenges, and successes, this study provides a generative knowledge base for curriculum proposals, symposia, and other initiatives that seek to disrupt reticence on this topic. Given the wide range of possible influences on Holocaust instruction, this study employs ethnographic methods to seek out constructed meanings among students, teachers, subject matter, and numerous forces within the milieu. The findings reveal some promises for addressing this history in schools, including teacher autonomy, institutional support, and teacher trainings. Yet Romania faces a number of challenges, such as the legacy of communism, the role of Antonescu in the curriculum, few opportunities to address controversies, limited instructional time, and other institutional and community forces. Holocaust education is a relatively new phenomenon in Romania and understanding its evolution can inform other societies and cultures that are working to introduce Holocaust studies or controversial issues into their curricula. As more post-Soviet and post-communist states attempt to build pluralistic, tolerant, and open-minded societies, their treatment of historical silences and the renegotiation of their past becomes a critical feature for the development of democratic citizens.

“But How Do I Know About Their Attitudes and Beliefs?”: A Four-Step Process for Integrating and Assessing Dispositions in Teacher Education

Abstract Recently, schools of education throughout the country have struggled with how to infuse, teach, and assess dispositions in systematic ways within their teacher education programs. This necessary and important work has proved to be time-consuming challenging. The following article describes the four-step process that the authors are currently engaged in, which includes clearly defining dispositions; determining how this definition is best operationalized; determining the types of assessments needed to evaluate the desired degree of competence; and analyzing the data on these assessments for the purpose of program revision. Throughout each of these steps, the critical process of communication and support is discussed.

Teaching the Holocaust through Case Study

This article responds to the curricular challenges teachers face with Holocaust education, including cursory treatments and a lack of focus on individual experiences. First, the author argues for a case-study approach to help students reengage concrete and complex features of the Holocaust as a point of departure for subsequent inquiry. In addition to providing a rationale and recommended content for teaching about the Holocaust, the author provides a case-study example in the form of a detailed historical explication of the Holocaust in Latvia. Last, the author situates this case study within social studies pedagogy and offers generative possibilities for practice.

Was That a Result of My Teaching? A Brief Exploration of Value-Added Assessment

In this article, the author explores the challenges and promises of value-added assessment. As NCLB approaches the end of statistically possible achievement gains in schools, value-added assessment is being employed to longitudinally measure student learning to determine a schools effect. Yet, value-added assessment is limited in its explanatory powers because it focuses only on certain types of knowledge and needs to be used in conjunction with other estimates. As such, the author provides a variety of perspectives to help educational stakeholders explore the assessment not just as a new test but rather as a promising and potentially damaging lever of change in school cultures.

Did I Forget about the Dispositions?: Preparing High School Graduates for Moral Life

In this article, the author addresses the problem of content knowledge dominating the school curriculum and the resultant marginalization of sociocivic and moral dispositions. Given the problems associated with teaching dispositions directly, the author offers four curricular aims that collectively develop the attitudes required of democratic citizens through deliberate employment in daily curriculum planning.

Holocaust Curriculum Development for Latvian Schools: Arriving at Purposes, Aims, and Goals through Curriculum Deliberation

Abstract Teaching about the Holocaust is a deeply sensitive and controversial topic in the Republic of Latvia. Due to a Soviet-imposed silence on the topic and the developing nature of democratic education in Latvia, many schools cover this history superficially, if it is covered at all. This study examines a cross-cultural curriculum development project that sought to break the historical silence surrounding the Holocaust in Latvia and provide Latvian teachers with an inviting, defensible, and efficacious curriculum that is both sensitive to societal reluctance to discuss the Holocaust and responsive to the needs of students living in a pluralistic democracy. This ethnographic and descriptive case study draws on multiple interviews with curriculum writers and project personnel, as well as field notes from the 18 month project, and examines how writers arrived at the curricular purposes, aims, goals, and content that would open this closed area. Significant findings include new understandings of the challenges and promises of cross-cultural curriculum deliberation, as well as an analysis of the choices involved in creating a new Holocaust curriculum. These findings suggest numerous implications and considerations for other former Soviet republics and more established democracies grappling with how to develop curricula through just processes while producing materials that foster democratic citizenship.

Deontological Reconceptualization: A Study of Moral Education in Beijing.

This study explores the enactment and evolution of moral education in Beijing, China. In particular, the author examines the extent to which moral education teachers develop reflective thinking and broach controversial issues within their classrooms. Drawing on interview data from secondary moral education (deyu) teachers, professors who prepare moral education teachers, and individuals involved in directing curricular efforts in conjunction with the Ministry of Education, the author suggests that reflective thinking is slowly becoming a reality within some Beijing moral education classrooms and that this evolutionary curriculum change has the potential to transform Chinese society. Yet, respondents suggested a paucity of controversial issues confronted in classrooms and an uncritical stance toward government policy and action.