Carol D.

Lee, Gregory White, and Dian Dong, Editors

National Academy of Education

Washington, DC
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF EDUCATION   500 Fifth Street, NW   Washington, DC 20001

NOTICE: This project and research reported here were supported by the William and Flora Hewlett
­Foundation through Grant #2018-8363 to the National Academy of Education. The opinions expressed
are those of the editors and authors and do not represent the views of the William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation.

Digital Object Identifier: 10.31094/2021/2

Copyright 2021 by the National Academy of Education. All rights reserved.

Suggested citation: Lee, C. D., White, G., & Dong, D. (Eds.). (2021). Educating for Civic Reasoning and ­Discourse.
Washington, DC: National Academy of Education.

The National Academy of Education (NAEd) advances high-quality research to

improve education policy and practice. Founded in 1965, the NAEd consists of U.S.
members and international associates who are elected on the basis of scholarship
related to education. The Academy undertakes research studies to address pressing
educational issues and administers professional development fellowship programs to
enhance the preparation of the next generation of education scholars.
 COMMITTEE ON CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

Carol D. Lee (Chair), Northwestern University

James A. Banks, University of Washington
Sarah Warshauer Freedman, University of California, Berkeley
Kris D. Gutiérrez, University of California, Berkeley
Diana E. Hess, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Joseph Kahne, University of California, Riverside
Peter Levine, Tufts University
Na’ilah Suad Nasir, Spencer Foundation
Walter C. Parker, University of Washington
Judith Torney-Purta, University of Maryland

Staff
Gregory White, Executive Director
Dian Dong, Senior Program Officer

iii
 Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii

INTRODUCTION 1

1 DEFINING AND IMPLEMENTING CIVIC REASONING AND

DISCOURSE: PHILOSOPHICAL AND MORAL FOUNDATIONS
FOR RESEARCH AND PRACTICE 23
Sarah M. Stitzlein

2 CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE: PERSPECTIVES FROM

LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 53
Carol D. Lee, Na’ilah Suad Nasir, and Natalia Smirnov

3 FROM THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE TO THE CULTIVATION

OF AGENCY: A SHORT HISTORY OF CIVIC EDUCATION POLICY
AND PRACTICE IN THE UNITED STATES 109
Nancy Beadie and Zoë Burkholder

4 AGENCY AND RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF CHALLENGE AS

CIVIC ACTION: LESSONS LEARNED FROM ACROSS ETHNIC
COMMUNITIES 157
James D. Anderson, Megan Bang, Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy,
Cati V. de los Ríos, Kris D. Gutiérrez, Deborah Hicks, Li-Ching Ho,
Carol D. Lee, Stacey J. Lee, Maribel Santiago, Vanessa Siddle Walker,
and Joy Ann Williamson-Lott

v
vi CONTENTS

5 CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE AMID STRUCTURAL

INEQUALITY, MIGRATION, AND CONFLICT 245
Beth C. Rubin, Thea Renda Abu El-Haj, and Michelle J. Bellino

6 LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS AND SCHOOL/CLASSROOM

CLIMATE AS SUPPORTS FOR CIVIC REASONING, DISCOURSE,
AND ENGAGEMENT 273
Carolyn Barber, Christopher H. Clark, and Judith Torney-Purta

7 RETHINKING DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP: LEARNING ABOUT MEDIA,

LITERACY, AND RACE IN TURBULENT TIMES 319
Antero Godina Garcia, Sarah McGrew, Nicole Mirra, Brendesha Tynes,
and Joseph Kahne

8 PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES AND HOW TEACHERS LEARN 353

Hilary G. Conklin, Jane C. Lo, Paula McAvoy, Chauncey B. Monte-Sano,
Tyrone Howard, and Diana E. Hess

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTICE, POLICY, AND RESEARCH 397

Carol D. Lee, Gregory White, and Dian Dong

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF STEERING COMMITTEE MEMBERS

AND AUTHORS 415

APPENDIX A: STEERING COMMITTEE, CHAPTER AUTHORS, AND

PANEL MEMBERS 433

APPENDIX B: WORKSHOP AGENDAS AND PARTICIPANTS 437

 Acknowledgments

At the time of writing this report, the United States was grappling with four over-
lapping challenges—a public health crisis, an economic recession, continuing racial
injustice, and a climate crisis. Addressing these public issues as a country is essentially
asking every member of society the question of “What should we do?” To wrestle with
these complex issues, one needs to develop knowledge, skills, values, and dispositions
as an active and responsible civic agent, both individually and in collaboration with
others. Especially in the age of social media and political polarization, the need to navi-
gate through information overload and misinformation along with the sheer complex-
ity of the issues highlight the importance of interdisciplinary knowledge, inquiry and
critical thinking skills, empathy for others, willingness to consider multiple points of
view, and the ability to weigh evidence and reject simplistic answers to complex ques-
tions. In both the short and long term, the education of young people in both formal
and informal settings plays deeply consequential roles.
As we share this report with you, I am greatly indebted to many individuals whose
contributions and insights made this report possible.
First and foremost, I thank the support and generosity of our funder, the William
and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Dr. Kent McGuire and Ms. Dara Bevington were espe-
cially helpful throughout the process of development, review, and dissemination. The
Foundation’s vision for education made this partnership particularly productive.
At the beginning of the project, the National Academy of Education (NAEd) con-
vened an expert steering committee of interdisciplinary researchers and leaders in the
civic space to lead the review and synthesis of research across disciplines to better
understand the complexity of civic reasoning and discourse as well as the identification
of learning principles and recommendations based on research to better prepare young
people to engage in democratic decision-making processes. We were fortunate to have
the following scholars and leaders to help guide this project: James A. Banks, Univer-
sity of Washington; Sarah Warshauer Freedman, University of ­California, Berkeley;

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Kris D. Gutiérrez, University of California, Berkeley; Diana E. Hess, University of

­Wisconsin–Madison; Joseph Kahne, University of California, ­Riverside; Peter Levine,
Tufts University; Na’ilah Suad Nasir, Spencer Foundation; Walter C. Parker, University
of Washington; and Judith Torney-Purta, University of Maryland. Steering committee
members chaired panels of experts who articulated the goals for each chapter and the
research base that would inform each chapter in the report. The steering committee
met for many calls and a 2-day hybrid workshop. They also provided reviews for and
contributed to core chapters.
Based on the recommendations of each panel, writers were recruited to translate the
ideas generated within the panels into the chapters in this report. I thank the dedicated
panelists and writers who met to vet the core ideas taken up in these chapters and that
have contributed greatly to this project.

Chapters Chairs, Authors, and Panelists

Defining and Peter Levine, Tufts University (Chair)
Implementing Anthony Laden, University of Illinois at Chicago
Civic Reasoning Jennifer Morton, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
and Discourse: Sarah M. Stitzlein, University of Cincinnati*
Philosophical and
Moral Foundations
for Research and
Practice
Civic Reasoning Carol D. Lee, Northwestern University (Co-Chair)*
and Discourse: Na’ilah Suad Nasir, Spencer Foundation (Co-Chair)*
Perspectives from Megan Bang, Spencer Foundation/Northwestern University
Learning and Human Hyman Bass, University of Michigan
Development Adria Carrington, Chicago Public Schools (retired)*
Research Andrea A. diSessa, University of California, Berkeley
Abby Reisman, University of Pennsylvania
Leoandra Onnie Rogers, Northwestern University
Alan H. Schoenfeld, University of California, Berkeley
Natalia Smirnov, Independent Researcher*
Margaret Beale Spencer, University of Chicago
William F. Tate IV, University of South Carolina
Elliot Turiel, University of California, Berkeley
From the Diffusion Walter C. Parker, University of Washington (Chair)
of Knowledge to James D. Anderson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
the Cultivation of Nancy Beadie, University of Washington*
Agency: A Short Zoë Burkholder, Montclair State University*
History of Civic Andrew Hartman, Illinois State University
Education Policy and Rowan Steineker, Florida Gulf Coast University
Practice in the United
States
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix

Chapters Chairs, Authors, and Panelists

Agency and Indigenous Peoples and Civics Education in the 21st Century
Resilience in the • Megan Bang, Spencer Foundation/Northwestern
Face of Challenge as University*
Civic Action: Lessons • Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, Arizona State
Learned from Across University*
Ethnic Communities
African American Education as Preparation for Civic
(This chapter includes Engagement, Reasoning, and Discourse
five sections, which • James D. Anderson, University of Illinois at
were authored by five Urbana-Champaign*
groups of authors.) • Carol D. Lee, Northwestern University*
• Vanessa Siddle Walker, Emory University*
• Joy Ann Williamson-Lott, University of Washington*

Historicizing Latinx Civic Agency and Contemporary Lived

Civics
• Kris D. Gutiérrez, University of California, Berkeley
(Chair)*
• Cati V. de los Ríos, University of California, Berkeley*
• Maribel Santiago, University of Washington*

Asian American Exclusion and the Fight for Inclusion

• Li-Ching Ho, University of Wisconsin–Madison*
• Stacey J. Lee, University of Wisconsin–Madison*

An Appalachian Spring: Hope and Resilience Among Youth in the

Rural South
• Deborah Hicks, Partnership for Appalachian Girls’
Education*
Civic Reasoning and James A. Banks, University of Washington (Co-Chair)
Discourse Amid Sarah Warshauer Freedman, University of California,
Structural Inequality, Berkeley (Co-Chair)
Migration, and Thea Renda Abu El-Haj, Barnard College, Columbia University*
Conflict Michelle J. Bellino, University of Michigan*
Sarah Dryden-Peterson, Harvard University
Roberto G. Gonzales, Harvard University
Beth C. Rubin, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey*
Learning Judith Torney-Purta, University of Maryland (Chair)*
Environments and Carolyn Barber, University of Missouri-Kansas City*
School/Classroom David Campbell, University of Notre Dame
Climate as Supports Christopher H. Clark, University of North Dakota*
for Civic Reasoning, Carole L. Hahn, Emory University
Discourse, and Deanna Kuhn, Teachers College, Columbia University
Engagement
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Chapters Chairs, Authors, and Panelists

Rethinking Digital Joseph Kahne, University of California, Riverside (Chair)*
Citizenship: Learning Antero Godina Garcia, Stanford University*
About Media, Sarah McGrew, University of Maryland*
Literacy, and Race in Nicole Mirra, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey*
Turbulent Times Brendesha Tynes, University of Southern California*
Pedagogical Practices Diana E. Hess, University of Wisconsin–Madison (Chair)*
and How Teachers Hilary G. Conklin, DePaul University*
Learn Tyrone Howard, University of California, Los Angeles*
Jane C. Lo, Michigan State University*
Paula McAvoy, North Carolina State University*
Chauncey B. Monte-Sano, University of Michigan*
* Denotes chapter author.

All of the chapters were sent out for review by invited external reviewers whose feed-
back was most helpful in revising the chapters. I thank external reviewers who provided
feedback for specific chapters. Additionally, I want to thank four NAEd members who
were involved in an internal review of the synthesis on behalf of the Academy: Judith
Warren Little (University of California, Berkeley), who chairs the Standing Review Com-
mittee, recruited Michael J. Feuer (The George Washington University); Elizabeth Birr
Moje (University of Michigan); and Glynda A. Hull (University of ­California, Berkeley) to
review the introduction and the final chapter with recommendations on behalf of NAEd.

Chapters Reviewers
Executive Summary, Michael J. Feuer, The George Washington University
Introduction, and Glynda A. Hull, University of California, Berkeley
Recommendations Elizabeth Birr Moje, University of Michigan
for Practice, Policy,
and Research
From the Diffusion K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Arizona State University
of Knowledge to
the Cultivation of
Agency: A Short
History of Civic
Education Policy and
Practice in the United
States
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi

Chapters Reviewers
Agency and Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Resilience in the
Face of Challenge as Indigenous Peoples and Civics Education in the 21st Century
Civic Action: Lessons • Teresa McCarty, University of California, Los Angeles
Learned from Across
Ethnic Communities African American Education as Preparation for Civic
Engagement, Reasoning, and Discourse
(This chapter includes • Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, Emory University
five sections. In
addition to a full review Historicizing Latinx Civic Agency and Contemporary Lived Civics
by Gloria Ladson- • Sonia Nieto, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Billings, each section
was reviewed by an Asian American Exclusion and the Fight for Inclusion
individual scholar in • Hirokazu Yoshikawa, New York University
detail.)
An Appalachian Spring: Hope and Resilience Among Youth in the
Rural South
• Shirley Brice Heath, Stanford University
Learning Judith Green, University of California, Santa Barbara
Environments and
School/Classroom
Climate
as Supports for Civic
Reasoning, Discourse,
and Engagement
Pedagogical Practices Judith Green, University of California, Santa Barbara
and How Teachers
Learn

In the development of this report, we were also fortunate to have the much valued
input of the following key stakeholders, who participated in workshops and pro-
vided insights that helped shape the chapters (in alphabetical order): Jan Brennan,
Education Commission of the States; Leo Casey, Albert Shanker Institute; Matthew
Diemer, University of Michigan; William A. Galston, The Brookings Institution;
Frank London Gettridge, National Public Education Support Fund; Cristina Groeger,
Lake Forest College; Michael Hansen, The Brookings Institution; Tina L. Heafner,
University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Justine Hipsky, Mikva Challenge; Emma
Humphries, i­Civics; Robyn Lingo, Mikva Challenge; Ted McConnell, Campaign for
the Civic Mission of Schools; Voncia Monchais, Mikva Challenge; Lena Morreale
Scott, University of Maryland; Lawrence M. Paska, National Council for the Social
Studies; Donna Phillips, District of Columbia Public Schools; Tom Rudin, National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Cathy Ruffing, Street Law, Inc.;
Heidi Schweingruber, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine;
Kathryn Wentzel, University of Maryland; and Jennifer Wheeler, Street Law, Inc.
xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Finally, I want to acknowledge the work of the NAEd staff: Abigail Bell, Amy
Berman, Tess Bonnette, Dian Dong, and Gregory White. The staff worked tirelessly
from the very conception of the project to bring it into fruition and to coordinate the
many moving parts of this process. Their efforts represented the glue that held this
diverse group together.
This process began in 2016. I appreciate the supports of the Research Advisory
Committee of NAEd, headed at that time by Robert Floden (Michigan State University)
and now by David Kaplan (University of Wisconsin–Madison), in approving the Acad-
emy’s effort to develop this project, including advising the early steering committee
members to share this idea at the NAEd November 2017 annual meeting. Even before
formal funding was received, members of what would become the steering committee
and other members of NAEd worked tirelessly to flush out the direction and scope of
this project, largely because of our joint recognition of how timely and important it is
to prepare our youth to engage in civic reasoning and discourse. We could not have
anticipated back in 2016 how much more contentious and complex our civic dilemmas
would be in 2020 and 2021. This has indeed been a collaborative effort with so many
contributors from across a diverse array of scholarly expertise. It is our hope that the
report will spark needed and innovative attention to how we can prepare our young
people to take up this mantle of democracy.

Carol D. Lee, Ph.D.

Chair, Committee on Civic Reasoning and Discourse
Professor Emeritus, Northwestern University
President-Elect, National Academy of Education
 Introduction
Carol D. Lee, Northwestern University (Committee Chair)
Gregory White, National Academy of Education
Dian Dong, National Academy of Education

At the time of this report’s publication in 2021, multiple crises have made the need
and urgency for skills in civic reasoning and discourse starkly evident. Increasing polar-
ization and unprecedented strain on our democratic institutions coincided with social
protests of persistent racial injustices. At the same time, a health pandemic, economic
shock, and a continuing climate crisis challenged the world to take action. In the short
term, there is a question of how we can, at multiple levels of society, strive to work
together to address our collective needs. There is an equally important longer-term
need to prepare a new generation of young people to take up the mantle of democratic
participation and decision making.
It is most common for us to think about this preparation as the job of civics, social
studies, and history courses in our schools. There are a number of recent reports that
offer powerful insights and recommendations for teaching in these courses.1 There are

BOX I-1
Defining Civic Reasoning and Discourse

Early in its work, the National Academy of Education Committee on Civic Reason­ing and Dis­
course agreed on a shared definition of civic reasoning and discourse to guide the development
of this report. The central question guiding the formulation of this definition concerns “What should
we do?” and the “we” includes anyone in a group or community, regardless of their citizenship
status. To engage in civic reasoning, one needs to think through a public issue using rigorous
inquiry skills and methods to weigh different points of view and examine available evidence. Civic
discourse concerns how to communicate with one another around the challenges of public issues
in order to enhance both individual and group understanding. It also involves enabling effective
decision making aimed at finding consensus, compromise, or in some cases, confronting social
injustices through dissent, Finally, engaging in civic discourse should be guided by respect for
fundamental human rights.

1  Examples of recent reports include Educating for American Democracy (https://­

educatingforamericandemocracy.org); College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies
State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K–12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History
(https://www.socialstudies.org/standards/c3); and Equity in Civic Education White Paper (https://
www.icivics.org).

1
2 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

also many projects, recent and long standing, taking place in school as well as com-
munity settings that engage young people in civic action.
This project, however, seeks to fill a void in conceptualizing the demands of prepar-
ing young people to engage in civic reasoning and discourse. The authors think this
work serves as a useful and necessary corollary to the work currently under way in
what is traditionally viewed as civic education. The fundamental questions examined
in this report are:

• What are the cognitive, social, emotional, ethical, and identity dimensions entailed
in civic reasoning and discourse, and how do these dimensions evolve? In par-
ticular, how do students develop an understanding of implicit bias and learn to
weigh multiple points of view? How do educators understand the demands of
conceptual change?
• What can we discover from research on learning and human development to cul-
tivate competencies in civic reasoning and discourse and prepare young people
as civic actors?
• What are the broader ecological contexts that influence the ability of our learn-
ing systems to support the development of these competencies? How do we
create classroom climates and inquiry-oriented curricula that are meaningful to
students’ civic learning?
• In the context of schooling, what is the role of learning across content areas—­
social studies, geography, history, literacy/language arts, mathematics, and
­science—in developing multiple competencies required for effective civic reason-
ing and discourse? What are the pedagogical implications in these content areas?
• What supports are needed in terms of policy as well as in the preparation
and professional development of teachers and school administrators to design
instruction for effective civic reasoning and discourse that encourages democratic
values and democratic decision making?

This report also acknowledges the important work carried out across the country to
engage young people in the civics issues relevant to their particular communities, the
larger nation, and indeed the world. This includes efforts initiated and led by young
people themselves in developing public service projects with their families, peers, and
neighbors, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is no question that fami-
lies, social networks in communities, and a variety of institutional configurations play
essential roles in preparing young people for civic engagement. It is a particular feature
of our democracy that the range of and variation in how these family- and community-
based efforts play out is richly diverse.
However, to the extent that there are foundational dispositions and competencies
that young people need to engage with complex civic dilemmas, it is only through
public schooling that a society can require a baseline preparation as public schooling
is required for all children. The authors agree with Amy Gutmann (1999), who argues
in Democratic Education that public schooling is a unique venue in a democracy that can
require preparation for democratic participation. Gutmann notes:
INTRODUCTION 3

Deliberative decision making and accountability presuppose a citizenry whose educa-

tion prepares them to deliberate, and to evaluate the results of the deliberations of their
representatives. A primary aim of publicly mandated schooling is therefore to culti-
vate the skills and virtues of deliberation.… Deliberation is not a single skill or virtue.
It calls upon skills of literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking, as well as contextual
knowledge understanding, and appreciation of other people’s perspectives. The virtues
that ­deliberation encompasses include veracity, nonviolence, practical judgment, civic
integrity and magnanimity. But cultivating these and other deliberative skills and vir-
tues, a democratic society helps secure both the basic opportunity of individuals and
its collective capacity to pursue justice. (p. xiii)

The process of developing such a collective capacity in the United States is particu-
larly challenging due to the federal system, where the primary responsibility for public
education lies with the states. At the same time, the populace has evolved complex
processes of negotiating relationships between federal authorities and the states, includ-
ing local school districts. One hope of this project is to spur conversations and critical
deliberations among multiple stakeholders around the propositions put forward in this
report. The authors hope that the material in the ensuing chapters will be useful to the
diverse audiences engaged in this work, including (1) those who study these issues in
the academic community, including education researchers and research/practitioner
organizations in the academic disciplines, as well as those engaged in teacher preparation;
(2) policy leaders, including legislative bodies, federal agencies, state and local school
districts, private foundations, and civics advocacy organizations; importantly, (3) those
engaged on the front lines of education practice and youth development, including social
studies, literacy, and media educators, as well as educators working within other aca-
demic disciplines; and (4) parent groups and community-based organizations.
In addition to developing our collective capacity to address the multiple crises
facing the nation, this report seeks to address other social problems that challenge the
functioning of our democracy. Increasing polarization and division in society, as well
as the ubiquitous availability of questionable digital information, has also made the
acquisition of civic reasoning and discourse skills progressively more important for
students to develop. These skills are essential to cultivate as students prepare for their
future roles as adults, citizens, and being full members of their varied communities.
Increasingly polarized, racialized, and politicized climates have made it more difficult
to dialogue across differences, which is compounded by eroding public trust in demo-
cratic institutions and processes (Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning
and Engagement, 2019; Hess & McAvoy, 2015; McCoy & Somer, 2019; Pew Research
Center, 2019, 2020; Rainie et al., 2019). At the same time, there is a growing threat from
organizations that espouse racist, xenophobic, anti-religious, and homophobic ideas as
well as a Federal Bureau of Investigation–recorded rise in hate crimes in recent years
(Balsamo, 2020; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016). Advances in technology have also
made it harder to trust information about the surrounding social world, as documented
in the learning challenges that students have in distinguishing fact from fiction in online
digital sources (McGrew et al., 2018).
As vital public institutions, schools have not been unaffected by these develop-
ments. Schools have seen an increase in political awareness and activity (Hansen et al.,
2018), and research has shown that rates of bullying, aggressive behavior, bigotry, and
4 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

harassment have risen in recent years (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016). Increasing
polarization is also being further exacerbated by growing inequality and the deleterious
effects that this has on the learning and civic development opportunities for vulnerable
and alienated students (Duncan & Murnane, 2011; Kahne & Middaugh, 2008; Levinson,
2012; Population Reference Bureau, n.d.).
Given the decentralized nature of American education, there is a stark difference
in access to civic education across the country, with students of color and those from
low-income families not given access to as many opportunities in the classroom for
experiential civic development as White students from wealthier families (Equity in
Civic Education Project, 2020; Kahne & Middaugh, 2008). Measures of civic knowledge,
which the authors think are highly relevant to civic reasoning and discourse, also show
a pattern that is highly concerning (see Box I-2 for a summary of the National Assess-
ment of Educational Progress [NAEP] Civics Assessment Framework). The only assess-
ment in the broad area of civics is the NAEP Civics Assessment given every 4 years at
grades 4, 8, and 12 (with the most recent being the 2018 assessment for 8th graders).
Similar to what we see in terms of access to high quality civic education, the NAEP
Civics Assessment shows gaps based on race and income level (National Assessment
Governing Board, 2018b). At the same time, knowledge in the civic domain as measured
by NAEP is low for all students (see Figure I-1). Across two decades of NAEP civics per-
formance results, less than one-quarter of 8th graders perform at or above proficiency.
If one considers the additional scope of knowledge necessary for effective civic
reasoning and discourse, as discussed in this introduction and fleshed out in some
detail across the chapters in this report, the challenge is all the more daunting. The
issues with which we wrestle in the civic domain inevitably entail knowledge reflect-
ing all of the content areas students study in school (content, concepts, processes) and
epistemological and ethical knowledge, as well as the dispositions to empathize with
others and to listen to and consider contrasting points of view.
After years of neglect, the areas of civic education, reasoning, and student discourse
are experiencing a renewed emphasis. An opportunity has manifested itself in the cur-
rent polarized landscape. This began with an increased interest among researchers,
policy leaders, and other stakeholders to improve the civic preparation of students
and to promote civil discourse. According to a nationwide survey of policy priorities
conducted by the CivXNow Coalition (2020), having better civic education for stu-
dents in K–12 is the one policy item that both political parties reached consensus on,
and teachers are the most trusted to advocate for a strong civics education. In a core

BOX I-2
NAEP Civics Assessment Framework

“The framework for the National Assessment of Educational Progress in civics has three inter­
related components: knowledge, intellectual and participatory skills, and civic dispositions. Taken
together, these components should form the essential elements of civic education in the United
States” (National Assessment Governing Board, 2018a).
INTRODUCTION 5

FIGURE I-1  Eighth-graders NAEP civics achievement-level results (1998, 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018).
SOURCES: Lutkus & Weiss, 2007; Lutkus et al., 1999; National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2010,
2018; National Center for Education Statistics, 2011.

sense, this is a return to an original purpose of education, such as Dewey’s belief in the
need for “the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and
persuasion. That [he sees as] the problem of the public” (Dewey, 1927, p. 208). W. E. B.
Du Bois also believed that a foundational role of education was to enable citizens to
wrestle with the tensions and contradictions of history, particularly with regard to how
we navigate persistent tensions around race, ethnicity, and class (Rabaka, 2003). Such
wrestling is complex and nuanced. It requires a depth of knowledge in many domains,
but equally important for democratic decision making, it requires a disposition to hear
and weigh alternative points of view that differ from one’s own.
Schools and community-based organizations serve as central sites within which
youth have opportunities to practice skills of democratic participation and to learn
about issues affecting their communities (Flanagan, 2013). However, these environ-
ments need to foster deeper and more collaborative learning. New approaches will
need to be employed to ensure that the use of new technologies, curricula, and assess-
ments in the contexts of schooling are distributed across the curriculum (Levine &
Kawashima-Ginsberg, 2015).
As it currently exists, research in civic reasoning and discourse is underdeveloped
and fragmented, with missed opportunities to learn from research across disciplines.
Although there have been some exceptions, civic education research has been siloed
with “roots in different disciplines that place priority on different topics and prefer dif-
ferent methods of analysis” (Torney-Purta et al., 2010, p. 498). In addition, assessments
of how students interact and communicate with one another and how they apply skills
learned in a classroom to daily life is an emerging area for further development (Levine
6 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

& Kawashima-Ginsberg, 2015). Existing lines of research on how students learn skills
of argument (Kuhn et al., 2016) also need further exploration for application across
contexts and situations.
Moreover, much of the current attention to civic education is broadly focused on
state policy initiatives to expand and evaluate current civic knowledge, with some
attention to service learning, positive youth development, and projects that fall into the
category of action civics. Those working in these areas tend to be from the practitioner
and policy communities, and the number of researchers is relatively small despite the
relevance of several areas of education research. The evidence-based guidance that does
exist has been generated by a relatively small number of researchers, practitioners, and
other stakeholders focused on promoting increased attention to currently understood
best practices in civic education at conferences. While these are valued and important
efforts, these convenings have given almost no attention to building a future research
agenda, nor have they synthesized multi-disciplinary research findings in a peer-
reviewed, consensus-style study.
There is a pressing need to evaluate and synthesize research literature from diverse
disciplinary fields to draw insights to improve understanding of how knowledge, skills,
and dispositions in civic reasoning and discourse develop and how they can be taught
in various contexts. In particular, an underutilized opportunity exists to incorporate
knowledge and practices from the broad knowledge base on how people learn. This
includes work in the learning sciences, cognition, social psychology—particularly
understandings of the social and cultural nature of learning, human development, and
the neurosciences (Nasir et al., 2020; National Research Council, 2000, 2012) as well as
research addressing learning in specific academic disciplines. The integration of what
we know about human learning and development from across these domains is a nec-
essary move to understand the complexity of learning to engage in civic reasoning and
discourse. The aim is to engage students with diverse backgrounds in learning activities
that will advance their disciplinary knowledge and understanding relevant to issues in
the public domain, their ability to interrogate the complexities of such issues informed
by democratic values, and their ability to engage in civil and reasoned discussion of
civic issues (e.g., Barab et al., 2004; Gutiérrez et al., 1999; Lee, 2008; Levinson, 2012;
Nasir et al., 2006, 2020; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine,
2018; Reisman, 2012).
Thus, this report seeks to expand the scope of what the authors consider important
to know to inform systematic opportunities for students, particularly in the K–12 sector,
to learn to engage in civic reasoning and discourse.

BACKGROUND TO THE REPORT

The National Academy of Education (NAEd) initiative on Civic Reasoning and Dis-
course aims to advance high-quality research for use in educational policy and practice.
The goal of the project is to improve students’ learning in civic reasoning and discourse
by ensuring that the pedagogy, curriculum, and learning environments that they expe-
rience are informed by the best available evidence. This initiative was chaired by NAEd
member and president-elect Carol D. Lee, who worked with NAEd staff in advancing
this initiative from initial project conception to the completion of this report. Noting the
INTRODUCTION 7

concerning trends of polarization and politicization discussed earlier in this introduc-

tion, Lee charged her fellow NAEd members to consider how the NAEd could address
the challenges of preparing young people to engage in civic reasoning and discourse.
The NAEd approached the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, who agreed to sup-
port a project that includes the following key propositions: (1) that learning to engage
in effective civic reasoning and discourse is sufficiently complex that it needs to be
addressed across the K–12 sector and across the curriculum;2 (2) that there is a need to
synthesize what the science of human learning and development can tell us about the
cognitive, social, emotional, ethical, and developmental demands of such learning; and
(3) that there is a need to situate the challenges of such teaching and learning in their
­historical and ecological contexts, including understanding the philosophical under­
pinnings about why attention to such issues matters.
To oversee and advance this project, the NAEd assembled an expert steering com-
mittee of researchers from across subject-matter disciplines and other leaders in civic
learning and student engagement. The steering committee is comprised of Carol D. Lee
(Chair), James A. Banks, Sarah Warshauer Freedman, Kris D. Gutiérrez, Diana E. Hess,
Joseph Kahne, Peter Levine, Na’ilah Suad Nasir, Walter C. Parker, and Judith Torney-
Purta. Under the interdisciplinary guidance of this committee, this report provides a
review and synthesis of research across disciplines and subfields to better understand
the complexity of civic reasoning and discourse. One major contribution of this report
is the recommendations of learning principles and practices that can be used to support
the development of course curricula and pedagogy as well as in standards, assessments,
informal learning opportunities, and teacher preparation. Lastly, this report further
identifies research areas for further development.
Based on the current state of research in the field and potential for new inter­
disciplinary linkages, this multi-chaptered report includes an expansive collection of
research and recommendations on eight specific themes: (1) philosophical foundations
of and moral reasoning in civics; (2) learning sciences and human development (cover-
ing cognition and its relationship to identity, development across the life course, and
implicit bias); (3) history of education for democratic citizenship; (4) agency and resil-
ience in the face of challenge in education for civic action across ethnic communities;
(5) ecological contexts; (6) learning environment, school climate, and other supports
for civic engagement; (7) digital literacy and the health of democratic practice; and (8)
pedagogical practices and how teachers learn.
Each chapter was developed by panels that were overseen by members of the steer-
ing committee and that consisted of experts in each topical area. Panels also identified
and vetted the major ideas to be addressed in their respective chapters. These sub-
stantive chapters include recommendations developed by chapter authors and panel
members. The report also includes a final chapter that synthesizes recommendations
for practice, policy, and research based on materials in the preceding chapters along
with feedback from external stakeholders as well as further deliberation and vetting
by the steering committee (see Appendix A for steering committee, chapter authors,
and panel members).

2  While this report specifically focuses on the K–12 sector, the authors also recognize there are foun-

dational implications for early childhood education, particularly around the development of empathy.
8 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

As part of the development of this report, the NAEd hosted a workshop in March
2020 and an online forum in November 2020, during which chapter authors presented
findings and gathered feedback from researchers and external stakeholders in atten-
dance (see Appendix B for workshop agendas and participant lists). The NAEd also
reached out to external reviewers to provide additional feedback on select material.
Upon completion, each chapter has gone through several rounds of review. In addi-
tion to review by committee members, staff, panel members, and external reviewers,
the entire report was then subject to a final peer review by the NAEd Standing Review
Committee prior to publication.

Evolving Issues of Identity and Commitment in the U.S. Experiment in Democracy

In an early case study of democratic life in the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville
(1835/2001) set out to learn if the young nation’s experiment in transitioning from
­aristocracy to democracy could be sustained over time. In addition to having self-­
government and a robust civic sphere, Tocqueville noted the necessity of education to
cultivate the knowledge and skills necessary for democratic citizenship. However, at the
time of Tocqueville’s observations in the early 19th century, full enfranchisement and
citizenship were severely limited. The freedoms and ideals enshrined in the ­Declaration
of Independence were diametrically at odds with the founding Constitution that failed
to incorporate equality as its core principle (Allen, 2014; Morgan, 1956), especially given
that it was written against the backdrop of the entrenched system of slavery, as well as
the ongoing domination and erasure of Native peoples. Tocqueville’s writings also took
place before the onset of the industrial revolution, and the effects it would later have on
both growing inequality (Goldberg, 2001) and setting in motion a future climate crisis.
The boundaries of citizenship in the United States are complex. From its very ori-
gins, the United States was a nation of immigrants (forced and by choice), who inter-
faced with the Indigenous nations residing here before the nation’s founding. As the
country grew in size and complexity, waves of immigration over two centuries created
both celebrated diversity but also social, cultural, and economic strife as the branches of
the U.S. government, the states, U.S. relations with Indigenous nations, and organized
interests of the country’s inhabitants wrestled with questions of citizenship and other
rights, as well as cultural assimilation.
Throughout this history, people living in the United States have navigated a national
identity as well as identification (through social networks and familial cultural prac-
tices) with their countries of origin. It is important to note that while ethnic diversity
within the United States as well as within individual states, regions, territories, and
Indigenous communities is higher than ever before, ethnic diversity is not new to the
nation (Drazanova, 2019; Fry & Parker, 2018; Hobbs & Stoops, 2002). How the nation
addresses, accommodates, or works against such ethnic diversity is one of the persis-
tent civic issues with which we continue to wrestle (e.g., from maintaining German
in public schools in Wisconsin in the 19th century to judicial decisions around how
language teaching impacts opportunity to learn to the role of bilingualism in schools
today as just a set of examples).
Civic reasoning and discourse inevitably involve how members of a society see
themselves, and are also inevitably related to understanding our history as a nation,
INTRODUCTION 9

and what that history reveals about the who and what of the United States. In the con-
text of public education, this meta-narrative is communicated particularly in how our
history is taught. This is a curricular space that has been highly and hotly contested
over the history of public education. On the one hand, the United States represents one
of the most powerful experiments in democratic decision making in human history,
one in which disenfranchised groups have utilized its founding ideals, its democratic
institutions, and at times, the ability to mobilize effective social movement campaigns
to achieve greater liberty and equality over time. On the other hand, it is also a nation
borne on the backs of two evils of history—the violent takeover of Indigenous territory
and near decimation of Indigenous peoples as the nation’s borders advanced, and what
many refer to as the holocaust of African enslavement (Karenga, 2001; Spitzer, 2002).3
These massive historic actions evolved in the midst of the evolution of the new nation
state. When the founding documents were written, there is no question that the call for
inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness did not apply to White
men without property, did not apply to women, and did not apply to those populations
who were not designated as White (Indigenous peoples, peoples of African descent,
Southwest peoples living in land that was originally Mexico before the U.S. annexation,
and peoples who immigrated in these early years from parts of Asia).
Anderson (2007) offers a detailed analysis of the debates in the Reconstruction
Congress, after the terrible price in human life paid during the Civil War, over coming
to a political compromise on how to articulate who has citizenship. He documents
with precise examples from congressional records how contestations over whether
those who are Indigenous, of African descent, Latinx, and of Asian descent would
have birthright citizenship. We can also look at the evolution of immigration policies
from the 19th century forward to see how through law, non-Anglo communities were
limited in access to migrate to the United States and how even ethnic groups now
understood to be “White” did not have the status of Whiteness in earlier generations
(Cherry, 2020; Gerber, 1999). It is a fact that the United States has a longer history of
legal apartheid—known as the Jim Crow Era—than South Africa. Additionally, the
fact that we continue to see the impacts of discrimination associated with race, class,
gender, religion, and sexual orientation, among other ascribed statuses, highlights that
the nation’s wrestling with its history remains a civic challenge.
It is important to note, however, that recognizing the conundrums of our history—
the historic disconnects between our stated ideals and our institutionalized practices—
does not dictate how we resolve these conundrums, and does not dictate whether we
will pursue our civic reasoning through a progressive or conservative political lens.
The point is that through civic reasoning and discourse, and indeed civic action, we
have the opportunity to engage our differences, and ideally, find compromises rooted
in democratic ideals. The question is how we, as a society, systematically prepare
young people to engage in the complex work of democratic decision making, as well

3  Karenga (2001) defines holocaust as “a morally monstrous act of genocide that is not only against

the people themselves, but also a crime against humanity” (p. 2). For more information, see United
­Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect. (n.d.a). Genocide. https://www.
un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml; United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the
­Responsibility to Protect. (n.d.b). Crimes against humanity. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/
crimes-against-humanity.shtml.
10 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

as ensuring that all students have a voice in that endeavor, including at times confront-
ing social justice issues through dissent, or as the late Congressman John Lewis called
it, “good trouble.”
In the ensuing centuries since the founding of the United States, and with the global
advancement of democracy in the modern era, social theorist T. H. Marshall viewed
the attainment of full democratic citizenship by various groups within nations as a
progressive realization of civil, political, and social rights and responsibilities over time.
Although boundaries of citizenship may change from one society to the next, he ulti-
mately characterizes citizenship as a “status bestowed on those who are full members
of a community” (Marshall, 1950/1992, p. 18). This report is guided by this broader
definition of citizenship, and the authors acknowledge the unfinished struggle that
many groups and individuals experience in becoming and living as fully e­ mpowered
members within the communities and societies in which they find themselves. This
report also takes a broader view of citizenship education as encompassing “all the
ways in which young people come to think of themselves as citizens in local and cul-
tural communities, the nation, and global society” (Hahn, 2008, p. 263). Ultimately, a
civic discourse challenge for the United States is to balance national unity and embrace
diversity in ways that are mutually reinforcing (Banks, 2004; Kymlicka, 2004), especially
in a globalized, interconnected world with an increasing ability to maintain diasporic
and transnational connections and identities.

Complexities and Interdisciplinary Nature of Civic Reasoning and Discourse

Civic reasoning entails how people in a society think through problems that arise
in the public domain. In a democracy such as the United States, citizens are able to
engage as active agents in such problems through an array of pathways. These include
the reasoning and decision-making processes involved in voting, collective action to
make points of view public, and organizing institutional structures and social networks
through which to carry out practices that address issues that arise in the public domain.
In the United States, there is a social contract between the state and individuals reflected
at a macro level in the U.S. Constitution, including its amendments. The underlying
warrant of that social contract, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence, is
rooted in the proposition that all people have the inalienable right to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness. The intense debates in the articulation of the Declaration of
Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and particularly its amendments reflect the com-
plexities and tensions of that social contract.
This report does not advocate any particular position with regard to how students
think through questions that arise in the public domain. However, the authors believe
it is important that youth are prepared to engage in civic reasoning and discourse in
ways that value complexity and avoid simplistic answers to complex social issues.
Examples of such complexities include:

• How do we navigate tensions between the powers and limits of federal, state,
local, and tribal governments to protect collective well-being, as well as the rights
of people to assert individual rights around issues such as wearing a mask during
a pandemic or requiring that children be vaccinated?
INTRODUCTION 11

• What should be the relations among levels of government and collective actions
to fight a public health crisis or defend a national border?
• How do we navigate tensions between the rights of groups of people with oppos-
ing political and social views, including those who may hold racist, homophobic,
and other deeply biased points of view, to publicly protest?
• How do we think about tensions among persistent examples of police violence
against people (especially Black and Brown peoples), the needs for protection of
the public and by whom, the rights of police as public employees, the funding
of police departments, and the training of police?
• What disciplinary knowledge, skills, and dispositions are needed to critically
examine information and evidence to inform civic reasoning and discourse?
Examples include:
o Interpretation and understanding of mathematical modeling produced for public
consumption around trends in the spread of a pandemic or climate change;
o Ability to examine arguments related to economic trends that should be con-
sidered in public policy;
o Understanding of what to many are invisible algorithmic structures that
govern what information is selected, curated, and highlighted; and
o Knowledge of potential cause–effect relations among prior conditions, inter-
ventions, processes, and outcomes.

In this report, the authors have combined a focus on civic reasoning with engage-
ment in civic discourse, which concerns how to communicate with one another around
the challenges of public issues in order to enhance both individual and group under-
standing. This entails communication between citizens, including persons residing
in the country who may not hold legal citizenship. Equally important is the ability
to critically analyze communication in the broader milieu from persons in positions
of power such as politicians or advocates, as well as media outlets and social media
platforms. An example of this is the understanding of how power, ideology, and tech-
nology (e.g., algorithms) can lead to biased narratives and filtered communication. In
addition, there is a need for the public to discern highly specialized language employed
in media communications and political forums. For example, public reports around
public health emergencies or deliberations regarding the appointment of judges to the
Supreme Court highlight the need for familiarity with specialized language in order
to understand these important societal issues.
Learning to critically engage such issues is complex, and it involves knowledge
along multiple dimensions: epistemological dispositions to value complexity, ethical
dimensions around moral considerations in decision making, and equally important,
conceptions of what is entailed in democratic values. Ideally in a democracy such as
the United States, it also requires that people are able to consider multiple points of
view, to be disposed to listen and consider positions and points of view different from
one’s own, and to show empathy for others, especially for those who, for whatever
reason, “we” designate as “the other.” The knowledge base across all of these examples
includes deep knowledge of history, of how government decision making operates in
the United States, of economic and political systems, of scientific knowledge of how the
natural world operates, of how mathematical knowledge can be recruited as possible
12 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

sources of explanation of phenomenon that can be quantified, and, equally important,

of the diversity of cultural practices, of ways of being in the world that constitute the
human experience. Such knowledge needs to be employed along with critical analysis,
or regularly questioning the sources from which one receives information.
George Herbert Mead, a pioneer in social psychology, viewed social interaction with
others as key to the development of both personal identity as well as learning empathy
for others. Mead believed that reflecting on the social conditions surrounding oneself
is also important for understanding perspectives different from one’s own. However,
it is key to recognize the role that emotions play in this process. Current research in
cognitive science (along with cognitive and social neurosciences) documents that how
people process and interpret interactions with others is filtered by an intertwining of
thinking and emotions, which happens both in the moment and in later reflection (Dai
& Sternberg, 2004; Leong et al., 2020; Moore-Berg et al., 2020; Zajonc & Marcus, 1985).
These theoretical and empirical insights illustrate the importance of teaching youth
strategies for recognizing how their thoughts and emotions influence their interpreta-
tion of social experiences and the views they form. Lastly, it is important to note that
development of such strategies is a neutral process firmly rooted in reasoning, and does
not necessarily lead to the formation of either progressive or conservative orientations.
To truly understand the challenge of division and alienation in society, civic learn-
ing and discourse needs to be informed by a broader research literature that helps us
to understand issues of implicit bias, identity orientations, and the intersection between
identity, perceptions, and thinking. There exists a need to synthesize a foundational
knowledge base that is complex, multidisciplinary, and integrated. It also needs to take
a comprehensive view of human learning and development in various social contexts.
This includes research in learning and development and how students cultivate exper-
tise in civic reasoning and discourse, but also how students enact these explicitly social
learning processes within communities of practice that take into consideration culture,
context, interests, and students’ sense of belonging (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Nasir et
al., 2020; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018; National
Research Council, 2012). This also involves improving students’ capacity to “talk across
political and ideological differences … by teaching [them] to weigh evidence, consider
competing views, form an opinion, articulate that opinion, and respond to those who
disagree” (Hess & McAvoy, 2015, p. 5). Central attention needs to be given to areas of
affect, identity, and culture, including the understanding of group context differences
as well as the creation of learning spaces that facilitate respectful dialogue and an open
climate for discussion for all students (Banks, 2004, 2008; Barber et al., 2015; Knowles
et al., 2018; Ladson-Billings, 2004; Reichert et al., 2018).
Developing knowledge, skills, and dispositions for civic reasoning and discourse
remains essential to the future functioning of our democracy. However, inter­disciplinary
integration has not been the focus of most of the research carried out in the field of
civic education, and practice reforms have not had the widespread impacts that were
hoped for. The authors believe that critical engagement in civic reasoning and discourse
has several dimensions. It is rooted in responsive discourse practices (e.g., maximiz-
ing participation, respectful response to differences), entails understanding how inter­
disciplinary knowledge can ground civic action, recognizes the influence of identity
(including perceptions of the self, others, and contexts), and considers the central role
INTRODUCTION 13

of affect as well as knowledge. In short, these are dynamic systems. Understanding

such dynamic systems is a necessary pre-requisite to designing learning environments
that can foster the kind of civic reasoning and discourse required to meet the complex
demands of civic decision making and engagement in the future. This also means that
learning approaches such as teaching content knowledge in civics and developing
knowledge and reasoning skills in other subject-matter areas are seen as complementary
endeavors (Feuer, 2021).
In addition, among the most important goals of public education is to prepare young
people to engage in informed civic action predicated on a disposition to grapple with
the complexities of social issues and policy responses in a diverse society. The political,
economic, and moral dilemmas that are central to accusations of “fake news” actually
entail complex issues along with competing interests and warrants. As a consequence,
weighing alternatives in order to decide a policy question (i.e., deliberation) is not only
a matter of weighing evidence and judging the credibility of sources. While the belief
is widespread that accurate information is the keystone of democratic decision making,
accurate information is itself now a contested construct. It is well known that directional
motivation influenced by emotions or “hot cognition” biases information processing
(Adam, 2012; Lodge & Taber, 2005; Nasir et al., 2020; National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine, 2018). This is especially the case when that information is
about controversial policy issues where biased information processing tends to further
polarize one’s political attitudes (Leong et al., 2020; Moore-Berg et al., 2020). Further-
more, in today’s oversaturated information environment resulting from the prolifera-
tion of mass media (social, print, cable, etc.), even sincere persons are likely to believe
“alternative facts.” To navigate through the information overload, one prominent study
centered media literacy education as an effective way to improve youth’s judgment
about accuracy of information and pointed out that political knowledge alone is insuf-
ficient when dealing with controversial public issues (Kahne & Bowyer, 2017). Does
this suggest that opportunities to acquire media literacy (knowing how to judge truth
claims and their sources) should be as important as other educational interventions,
such as courses in history, government, science, and literature? Or are there proposi-
tions about human learning and development that can substantially increase the ability
of educators to prepare young people to actually wrestle with complexities? The task
requires that people understand civic and political issues as framed within a dynamic
system with multiple entry points. This is one reason why the committee conducted an
interdisciplinary project.

CHAPTERS WITHIN THIS REPORT

This report provides insights from multiple disciplinary fields to foster a better
understanding of how civic reasoning and discourse skills develop and how they can
be taught in different contexts.
The Defining and Implementing Civic Reasoning and Discourse: Philosophical and
Moral Foundations for Research and Practice chapter begins by grounding the readers
in the key question of “What should we do?”, a question that arises well beyond the
political domains and often concerns one’s relationship with others. The author defines
civic reasoning as “the sort of reasoning citizens do as they answer this question” and
14 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

civic discourse as “a means or method by which groups of people engage in civic reason­
ing.” The chapter also addresses this central question by probing the philosophical and
moral underpinnings in ideal situations to hopefully inform practices and understand-
ing of civic life in real contexts. This entails examining the knowledge and skills that
enable, support, and enhance civic reasoning and discourse, including inquiry, fact-
finding, logic, rationality, critical thinking, discussion, and deliberation. It also highlights
empathy, consensus, compromise, collaboration, and civility as central values, virtues,
and dispositions to engage in civic reasoning and discourse. The chapter finally draws
on the current impediments to civic life and provides paths for future research.
One of the important contributions of this report is connecting research on how
people learn and subject-matter disciplinary understanding to education in civic reason-
ing and discourse. The Civic Reasoning and Discourse: Perspectives from Learning and
Human Development Research chapter argues that addressing the challenges of engag-
ing students in civic reasoning and discourse requires multiple resources. Attending to
the robust teaching and learning of disciplinary knowledge, including history, literature,
mathematics, and science, equips students with the core skill sets they need to reason
with complex civic issues. Other resources include dispositions such as moral reasoning,
ethical concern for both the self and others, and epistemological commitments to engage
in complex civic problem solving, as well as commitments to consider­ing multiple points
of view and interrogating one’s own assumptions. The chapter argues that these disposi-
tions can and should be part of teaching in all content areas. The chapter calls attention to
the challenges of conceptual change and implicit bias and emphasizes the critical role of
schools in recruiting multi-dimensional resources in preparing students as civic agents.
While civic education nowadays is often reduced to one course in high school, it has
been a central purpose of schooling in the United States since the American Revolution.
A critical analysis of the history of democratic education in the United States provides
a holistic lens with which to examine the legacies, challenges, and progress made as the
nation strives for a multi-racial, multi-ethnic society. Drawing on historical examples,
the chapter From the Diffusion of Knowledge to the Cultivation of Agency: A Short
History of Civic Education Policy and Practice in the United States sheds light on
the importance of historical knowledge as a basic category of civic reasoning. Through
detailed analysis of seven historical examples, the chapter illustrates how people in
the past confronted history and demonstrated resilience and agency by challenging the
common narratives about who should be included in American history. The authors
also emphasize the importance of positioning ourselves within historical trends as
active civic agents and utilizing civic education to advance racial justice.
An important dimension of historical understanding is how communities that
have faced persistent challenges with regard to equality in opportunity have orga-
nized themselves in preparing generations of young people to tackle the demands of
citizenship and full democratic participation. The chapter Agency and Resilience in the
Face of Challenge as Civic Action: Lessons Learned from Across Ethnic Communities
offers examples of civic agency in diverse ethnic communities that have historically
been negatively positioned through structural practices: Indigenous peoples, African
Americans, Latinxs, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and residents of rural
Appalachian communities. These histories highlight agency in how these communities
over the decades, indeed centuries, have organized to prepare young people for civic
INTRODUCTION 15

engagement. These efforts have included the work of educators, community organiza-
tions, and families. These histories examine the complexities of citizenship and cultural
membership in this multi-cultural democracy in light of the political complexities of
the meaning of citizenship in the United States.
The ecological contexts in which young people grow up influence their knowledge
of their civic responsibilities and motivation to participate in public life. The Civic
Reasoning and Discourse Amid Structural Inequality, Migration, and Conflict chapter
explores the varied social and political contexts that shape the civic identities and expe-
riences of youth as well as discussing the disjuncture between current civic education
and the diverse range of students’ lived experiences. Specifically, the authors highlight
three underexplored areas of structural inequality, migration, and inter/intranational
conflict that frame young people’s civic learning opportunities and their connections to
and participation in public life. The chapter further sheds light on the possibilities for
new expressions of civic engagement that are attentive to the differentiated pathways
of young people’s civic development. The authors encourage diverse forms of civic par-
ticipation, including activism, critical curricular approaches, youth participatory action
research, and arts-based approaches, that help students from different backgrounds to
cultivate their civic voices.
Focusing on the social and contextualized nature of the civic learning process, the
Learning Environments and School/Classroom Climate as Supports for Civic Reason-
ing, Discourse, and Engagement chapter argues that the success of civic education also
depends on the environments in which such learning takes place. Through examining
the conducive and inhibitory elements in formal learning environments, this chapter
provides the research base to define the characteristics of supportive learning environ-
ments at both the classroom and school levels. Special attention is paid to how youth
with varying experiences might perceive and respond to a particular environment
differently. High-quality civic learning environments entail a sense of belonging that
welcomes individual and group participation and respects varied views and back-
grounds. The chapter further identifies the need for research beyond traditional classes
and school environments. It is important for teachers and administrators to be cogni-
zant of the larger societal context as they promote student agency and voice in school.
The expansion of digital space drastically changed the way people interact with
each other. To address civic reasoning and discourse in the digital age, the Rethinking
Digital Citizenship: Learning About Media, Literacy, and Race in Turbulent Times
chapter focuses on youth civic engagement in the fast-changing digital space that mir-
rors the social, cultural, and political context in the larger society. As youth increas-
ingly participate in interactive and peer-based online activities that are generally not
guided by formal institutions, this chapter examines the opportunities and challenges
presented by this shift in the digital space and analyzes efforts that help youth to
engage in online civic actions safely, responsibly, and intelligently. The authors call for
the need to redesign civic education to prepare youth for a digital democracy beyond
the current emphasis on safety and civility with regard to others. The chapter high-
lights critical digital literacy as a lens for youth to acquire the necessary knowledge,
skill, and awareness to thoughtfully and effectively engage with race-related media
content, understand how technologies impact social positioning of different groups,
and challenge structural inequities. Current civic education will need to broaden its
16 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

focus to consider the diverse forms of youth civic participation and provide effective
curricula equitably so as to prepare students for digital citizenship.
Educators play a key role in preparing all students to participate effectively in civic
deliberation and engagement, and their pedagogical practices will need to be guided
by the best evidence available. The Pedagogical Practices and How Teachers Learn
chapter examines the curricular and pedagogical scaffolds that are effective for civic
learning, investigates the role of students’ identities on civic engagement, and provides
evidence for pedagogical practices that support students’ civic learning. The authors
challenge the persistent focus on content knowledge. Instead they argue that inquiry-
oriented curricula and pedagogical approaches leverage all students’ lived experiences
and knowledge to engage them in authentic investigation of political issues while also
fostering deeper learning and the development of civic skills and dispositions. Consis-
tent with learning theory that shows high-quality learning must be built on students’
existing experiences, knowledge, and identities, the chapter addresses the importance
of embracing students’ out-of-school experiences and ensuring that their voices are rep-
resented in classrooms. Teachers also require adequate support to develop knowledge
and understanding of the social context, their own identities, and pedagogy to engage
students in meaningful discussions.
This report ends with a final chapter on recommendations for practice, policy, and
research. Utilizing the interdisciplinary research base in the above eight chapters, the
final chapter provides a summary of key findings as well as identifies cross-cutting
recommendations to advance the quality of learning in civic reasoning and discourse.
As the chapters in this report show, the sources of knowledge and dispositions
that young people need to develop to engage in civic life are indeed complex. To break
down this complexity, each chapter is an attempt to provide analysis from different
disciplinary perspectives to disentangle the problem space and offer recommendations
on how young people can work through differences in democratic decision making.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS
The political and ideological divisions within the United States are deep and long-
standing. At the time of the production and publication of this report (2021), the country
was grappling with the confluence of several major crises: a worldwide pandemic and
the resulting shock to the economy, social unrest arising from the continuing impacts
of systemic racism, and a continuing climate crisis. The authors argue that as a society,
we have the responsibility to prepare young people with the civic reasoning and dis-
course skills necessary to meet these types of challenges in addition to the unknown
crises that they as adults have yet to encounter.
The killing of George Floyd—at the time a recent pernicious example of Black and
Brown people dying at the hands of police officers under deeply questionable circum-
stances—sparked mass protests across the country and indeed the world. What has
been most interesting in these protests is the makeup of those protesting (multi-racial,
inter-generational, in large cities and small towns, and in cities and nations around
the world ranging among Hong Kong, Karachi, Kyoto, London, Nairobi, and Paris).
At the same time, there have been counter-protests, and in some cases, eruptions of
violence. There have also been complex issues around targets of violent attacks (e.g.,
INTRODUCTION 17

public buildings, small and large businesses). These responses have led to debates
that require civic reasoning and discourse regarding how to think about issues around
public social protests. Examples of topics include how to think about the functioning
of police departments; what, if any, limitations are legal and appropriate; what levers
of government should be at play in challenges that arise from such protests; how to
safeguard the rights of competing protest groups; and what laws and practices need
to be in place to address why these cases of police–civilian violence not only remain
but disproportionately affect Black and Brown populations.
At the same time, we were living through a worldwide pandemic. Living with this
pandemic raised multiple challenges in the civic domain: what does it mean for the
public to understand the scientific bases for the spread of COVID-19 (e.g., the math-
ematical and scientific modeling of the spread of the virus); how does the public dis­
entangle mixed messaging coming from across levers of government and from scientific
organizations and sites; how does the public wrestle with the tensions between public
safety and the economic challenges of the public not having face to face access to busi-
nesses and schools; how to understand our inter-dependence with other parts of the
world in terms of health, economics, and institutional alliances (e.g., our relationship
with the World Health Organization and travel regulations between nations); how to
navigate rights of individuals (e.g., whether to wear masks) versus the public health
needs of the majority; and how to safely organize (in-person or remotely) the continu-
ation of vital institutions such as the education of children.
These current challenges highlight the complexity of the demands of civic reasoning
and discourse. We can also think about the impacts of the climate crisis—the wildfires
in California and the unprecedented hurricane seasons—including the contestations
over whether these natural or unnatural phenomena are the result of climate change
and what role human activity plays in their unfolding. Our current generation of school
children will be on the front lines of dealing with the social and economic impacts of
the increasing frequency of these ecological disasters, as well as the dislocation caused
by the acceleration of sea level rise in this century.
The nature of heated public debates over these current challenges and the seem-
ing difficulty of political leadership to work collaboratively to address these issues all
attest to how essential it is to our democracy to prepare our young people to engage
in such civic reasoning and discourse. Although the vast majority of school children
under the age of 18 are not eligible to vote, they are developmentally able to, and indeed
do, engage in civic activities, examine social issues, and express their points of view
(Sullivan et al., 2020). The public organizing of young people across the nation after
the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida,
attests to this civic potential, as does the youth-led global movement to confront climate
change. While the authors focus much attention on the role of public schooling, it is
equally important to recognize the important civic work that takes place in community
organizations, especially community organizations that are either run by young people
or that focus on youth development and engagement.
Ultimately, we must ask ourselves how it is that adults can come through the
K–12 public education system and still be prone to hate, or how a seemingly educated
populace rejects scientific findings that scientists across the world have reached near-
universal agreement on. These concerns are particularly salient in light of the attack on
18 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in attempts to interfere with the lawful counting
of state electoral votes to certify the election and proceed with the peaceful transition
between presidential administrations.
While the authors have sought to focus attention on civic challenges, it is equally
important to highlight sources of hope. As Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “the arc of the
moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” The state of racial inequality in
2021 is not the same as it was in 1775 or 1865. The evolution of Supreme Court decisions
around issues of individual and group rights has evolved toward greater pathways for
justice across the centuries. While evolving in deeply contested arguments, the amend-
ments to the constitution have each articulated expanded rights. Social movements over
the course of history have led to monumental shifts in rights, including the abolition-
ist movement, the movement for women’s right to vote, movements for civil rights,
social activism around health access and environmental safety, and the current social
movements around racial justice and climate change. The range of political leadership
at every level of government is more diverse than ever. Our students need to under-
stand both the persistent challenges and the ways that U.S. structures of governance
and activism have changed trajectories toward greater equality.
The authors conclude with an inspirational example reflected in a letter to President
Barack Obama from a 6-year-old boy named Alex who saw on the news the horrors of
the Syrian civil war (see Box I-3).
In the letter, Alex reflects what we already know: that young children are naturally
and inherently ethically conscious of right and wrong. His compassion and empathy
for the Syrian boy he saw in the ambulance reflects the moral foundations that are
required of democratic values, both within the nation and across an interconnected
and interdependent world. In this report, the authors seek to understand how to build
on Alex’s goodness, on his empathy, and on his attention to and interest in what is
happening in the world around him.

BOX I-3
A 6-Year-Old Boy’s Letter to President Obama

Remember the boy who was picked up by the ambulance in Syria? Can you please go get
him and bring him to [my home]? Park in the driveway or on the street and we will be waiting for
you guys with flags, flowers, and balloons. We will give him a family and he will be our brother.
Catherine, my little sister, will be collecting butterflies and fireflies for him. In my school, I have a
friend from Syria, Omar, and I will introduce him to Omar. We can all play together. We can invite
him to birthday parties and he will teach us another language. We can teach him English too, just
like my friend Aoto from Japan.
Please tell him that his brother will be Alex who is a very kind boy, just like him. Since he won’t
bring toys and doesn’t have toys Catherine will share her big blue stripy white bunny. And I will
share my bike and I will teach him how to ride it. I will teach him additions and subtractions in math.
And he [can] smell Catherine’s lip gloss penguin which is green. She doesn’t let anyone touch it.
Thank you very much! I can’t wait for you to come!

Alex
6 years old
INTRODUCTION 19

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 1

Defining and Implementing Civic Reasoning

and Discourse: Philosophical and Moral
Foundations for Research and Practice
Sarah M. Stitzlein, University of Cincinnati

With the Assistance of:

Peter Levine, Tufts University
Anthony Laden, University of Illinois at Chicago
Jennifer Morton, University of North Carolina

CONTENTS

THE CIVIC QUESTION AND CITIZENS WHO ASK IT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

CIVIC AND DEMOCRATIC ELEMENTS OF CIVIC REASONING AND
DISCOURSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
COMPONENTS OF CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Knowledge and Skills, 28
Values, Virtues, and Dispositions, 36
OBSTACLES AND FUTURE RESEARCH. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Understanding Changes in Truth, Facts, and News, 42
Attending to Changing Psychology of Citizens, 43
Building Capacity for Civic Reasoning and Discourse Online, 44
Supporting Diverse and Open Environments, 45
Alleviating School-Based Problems, 46
Allowing for Differences Among Citizens, 47
MOVING FORWARD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
REFERENCES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

At the heart of civic reasoning and discourse is the key civic question: “What should
we do?” (Dishon & Ben-Porath, 2018; Levine, 2016). It is a question that arises when
groups of people face a problem or must reach a decision. It is a question that arises
well beyond political or governmental domains and surfaces in our communities and
in our interactions with others. While often oriented toward action and outcomes, this
question also arises when groups of people are primarily concerned about their rela-
tionships with each other and how to live together as a group.

23
24 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

In this chapter, the author discusses the philosophical and moral underpinnings
of civic reasoning and discourse. The author begins by defining civic reasoning and
discourse when it works at its best, recognizing that we have a long history of fall-
ing short of that idealized conception and many examples of civic reasoning and
discourse being used in ways that intentionally excluded or harmed some people.
The author defines civic reasoning as the sort of reasoning we do as we answer the
question “What should we do?” In other words, civic reasoning is the reasoning we
do about what we should do. The chapter uses the term civic discourse to refer to a
means or method by which groups of people engage in civic reasoning, and describes
the knowledge and skills that support good or democratically healthy civic reasoning
and discourse, including inquiry, fact-finding, logic, rationality, critical thinking, discus-
sion, and deliberation. The author also details the values, virtues, and dispositions that
support good civic reasoning and discourse, including empathy, an orientation toward
consensus, a willingness to compromise, a collaborative spirit, and civility.
The author uses this model of good civic reasoning and discourse to reveal some
current problems in our common practices of discourse and as a guide for how we
might educate in ways that move citizen behavior closer to ideal practices. Throughout
the chapter, there are suggestions for improved citizenship education, curricula, and
pedagogy. Additionally, the author notes some current impediments to teaching civic
reasoning and discourse in our non-ideal settings that arise from changing notions of
truth, psychology of citizens, use of digital media, limited classroom focus, and envi-
ronments that are increasingly segregated. The chapter closes with a call for further
research in key areas related to understanding and educating for civic reasoning and
discourse, hoping that the theoretical grounding for those practices described here
might inform future research.

THE CIVIC QUESTION AND CITIZENS WHO ASK IT

Following the work of Peter Levine, the citizens’ question “What should we do?”
can be broken up, with each word revealing the people, content, and values at stake
and the physical, social, and emotional effort involved.

• What—the tangible or meaningful products and results of our discussions and

actions. These could be objects we produce together, decisions we reach, norms
we construct to shape our interactions together, and more. In many cases, they
are empirical matters, dependent on facts and evidence.
• Should—a normative claim about how to better a situation, improve our relations
together, or solve a problem. Each of these pushes us beyond what we merely
can or want to do into making a claim about what it is right for us to do or what
we may have an ethical responsibility to do.
• We—an emphasis on our shared fate in a community, collaboration in addressing
issues, and our responsibilities to each other, especially as part of publics that form
around mutual concerns. The individual’s question—“What should I do?”—also
matters, but it becomes civic when it is about impact on or action with a “we.”
• Do—actions taken together, in parallel or individually, but may also entail engag-
ing in discussion, building communities, and figuring out how to live together
DEFINING AND IMPLEMENTING CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE 25

well. The emphasis is on what we can achieve, rather than what we might expect
others to do.

Importantly, legacies of injustice and patterns of marginalization reveal that the

“we” in this question cannot be assumed. The history of civic struggle shows us that
defining the “we” is a source of deep disagreement. One consequence of defining it
narrowly can be to exclude people from the conversations that matter and essentially
silence them. However, people have agency. When excluded from one “we,” they may
create another, demand and gain a place in the group that excluded them, or both. Part
of taking up the civic question is working through past exclusions to create new and
more inclusive understandings of the “we” in the United States today.
Citizens compose the groups that take up this question. The word citizen is widely
used to mean a person recognized by a given government as a member holding a full
set of rights, especially in liberal democracies, like that of the United States. In the terms
of political philosopher James Tully, this is a civil notion of citizenship that emphasizes
legal status (Tully, 2008). An alternative understanding, which the author operates
with here, defines citizens in terms of what they do: a citizen is someone who engages
in diverse practices of citizenship that vary across groups and contexts, but crucially
include forms of civic reasoning and discourse. In Tully’s terminology, this is a civic
notion of citizenship. From this view, a citizen is someone who can and does seriously
ask “What should we—the members of this group—do?”
Citizens, then, can be people who engage in activities of citizenship, yet are not
granted citizenship in terms of formal legal or informal membership status. For exam-
ple, undocumented immigrants have taken to the streets to make demands of the
nation–state and Indigenous peoples have refused the jurisdiction of the U.S. govern-
ment over their land as a way to require recognition of their sovereign status. In this
way, citizens belong to and act within many groups that are not formally democratic
yet are still civic. The author works with a broad understanding here of what counts
as civic space and civic engagement, pushing us beyond common boundaries that limit
such endeavors to the government or formal political spheres.
Most of the definitions and arguments offered in this chapter are phrased in uni-
versal terms. Every human being is part of many overlapping and nested communities
that may employ or fail to honor civic reasoning and discourse. The characteristics of
good reasoning and the threats that it faces seem widely shared. Nation–states have
diverse political systems and political cultures, but a nation–state is just one venue of
civic reasoning among many. Some important venues, from world faiths to Facebook,
are transnational.
At the same time, most of the examples and research findings cited come from the
United States; this chapter does not deeply explore whether aspects of civic reasoning
and discourse should vary among regimes or cultures. This chapter might be read as a
theory by and for people in the United States, but one that understands good Ameri-
can citizens as belonging to multiple communities (from the hyper-local to the global)
and that favors relatively general principles instead of ones that are tied closely to the
United States.
26 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

CIVIC AND DEMOCRATIC ELEMENTS OF

CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE
The reasoning we do in order to answer “What should we do?” can be civic in
three senses:

1. Topic—As we consider what we should do, we are focused on issues important

to our shared living. Civic reasoning is reasoning about civic matters.
2. Identity of the reasoners—Figuring out what we should do is a matter of our
collective agency and is therefore concerned with who we are, who composes
our group, and what our capacities are. Civic reasoning is the reasoning we do
as civic actors.
3. Manner in which we relate to each other—Answering what we should do is not
merely instrumental, focused only on actions and decisions, but rather is con-
stitutive: it creates a “we.” This raises norms about how we exchange ideas and
interact together. Civic reasoning is reasoning we engage in civically or civilly.

In this paper, the author starts from a picture of good civic reasoning as civic in these
three senses. So understood, good civic reasoning represents an ideal of democratic
practice. Not every instance of citizens discussing what to do together will satisfy these
criteria, and not every (perhaps not any) encounter among citizens will realize this ideal.
The author nevertheless tries to lay out here the components that go into this ideal of
good civic reasoning in the hopes that it provides a framework for understanding its
value to democracy, how and where we fall short of it, what might go into educating
children in ways that facilitate their democratic engagement, and where the obstacles
lie to doing so effectively.
Good civic reasoning is a plural and ethical endeavor that often entails inquiry,
empirical investigation, and/or engagement with emotions. Civic reasoning is plural
because individuals rarely have the wisdom, power, or resources to undertake tackling
the question alone. Even apparently solitary civic acts, such as casting a secret ballot,
are deeply shaped by those around us, including the opinions of others and media
influences. Civic reasoning is ethical because answering the question pushes us to
assess and determine which means and ends we ought to choose, including how they
might impact those both in and outside of our group. Additionally, civic reasoning is
ethical because it requires that we act with respect in that we treat each other as having
standing in the situation and give each other’s claims consideration.
Let us consider an example of teenagers in a high school social studies class asking
“What should we do?” as they deliberate about the best course of action regarding U.S.
military intervention in the Middle East. Even if those children are not in a position
to determine the outcome, they are role-playing or practicing deliberation in order to
develop civic reasoning skills and to make and refine opinions about the actual deci-
sion makers. Forming opinions and arriving at shared views about state action can be
a significant result of engaging in reasoning that is civic in topic. Ethically, students
should weigh the risks of whether continued or further military intervention might
put additional lives at risk or bring safety to large groups of people abroad or at home.
Civic reasoning often requires empirical investigation or evidence gathering so that
we may better understand a situation and the potential results that might follow from
DEFINING AND IMPLEMENTING CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE 27

our decision or course of action. For instance, the high schoolers may need to find out
about the physical and political risks of U.S. military force in the Middle East, which
may entail investigating political geography, past military intervention, and even
weather in a desert or mountainous fighting environment.
To engage in civic reasoning is not to leave emotions behind or ignore them. Indeed,
emotions figure into good civic reasoning in a number of ways. Emotions can serve
as inputs to the reasoning process, such as when anger at injustice helps us to see the
injustice in the first place. Certainly, women, African Americans, and others have pro-
ductively used anger to help reveal and elevate the injustices behind their calls for civil
rights. Emotions can also help reasoners see more clearly that a point of view should
be taken seriously, such as when they are bound up in the personal experiences of the
reasoners. In the example, some students may bring personal experiences with family
members in the military or living in the Middle East to the classroom discussion. This
may lead those students to feel frightened for their well-being or angry about being
separated by military deployments, emotions that can draw attention to the serious-
ness of the matter. Finally, we may hope to engage or provoke certain emotions in the
course of working out what we should do, aiming to call forth feelings that might help
to motivate action. For instance, a student might share research on the lives of war
refugees in a way that is designed to call forth sympathy from her classmates.
Civic discourse is a means or method by which groups of people engage in civic
reasoning. Given our nature as largely interdependent beings that construct knowl-
edge and solutions together, civic discourse is one key way that we reason together,
through discussion and deliberation, to answer the question of “What should we
do?” Civic discourse is also a social endeavor and is one way in which we relate
to others. Civic discourse offers benefits rarely achievable when engaging in civic
reason­ing alone. For example, discussing with others can help to combat our indi-
vidual cognitive and ethical limitations and biases.
Civic discourse can encounter problems. Civic discourse can go badly when a
group excludes some perspectives, falls prey to groupthink, or succumbs to other
dysfunctions of group discussion. It can also go badly when individuals do not relate
to others well, perhaps by dominating the discussion or belittling the views of others.
Additionally, while civic reasoning and discourse go hand in hand in ideal situations,
sometimes that is not the case. An individual may be engaged in good civic reasoning,
gathering evidence, and thinking critically about what to do, but may be unable to
engage in civic discourse with a group that excludes or denigrates her or others. Alter-
natively, participants in a group may relate well to each other, yet their discourse may
fall short of good civic reasoning because it suffers from epistemic blind spots due to
lack of plurality caused by ideological homogeneity or other reasons. As a result, civic
reasoning and discourse must be considered both individually and together as we seek
to understand and improve them.
Civic reasoning and discourse play important roles in democracy. While the ques-
tion “What should we do?” is most often posed within the civic sphere, we can engage
in civic reasoning and discourse in an array of settings: from inside a religious orga-
nization, with friends on Facebook, among leaders of a private company, or among
scholars in a scientific discipline. None of these are democracies, but democracy, as both
a system of government and a way of life, particularly promotes and relies on good
28 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

civic reasoning and discourse. In a vibrant democracy, citizens not only self-govern and
consent to laws, but also actively work with others to form publics around shared prob-
lems, to pose and evaluate solutions, and to engage in creative imagining of how their
future might be improved. Good civic reasoning and discourse can keep democracy
healthy by welcoming a plurality of perspectives, highlighting shared responsibilities
for sustained and improved living, integrating citizens into decision making about the
future of communities, and building a collective sense of “we.”
Schools are important institutions that can teach good practices of civic reasoning
and discourse. Colleges and universities, many civic associations, and some media
organizations also fulfill this function. Here, however, the focus is on K–12 schools
because of their ubiquity and strong influence on developing youth. Teaching the
cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal aspects of good civic reasoning and dis-
course may lead not only to sustained and improved democracy by virtue of new
generations of citizens that engage well in civic reasoning and discourse, but they
may also enable other forms of learning in our schools as students experience the
world together and construct new knowledge about it. In the next section, the author
describes key components of good civic reasoning and discourse that may be taught
before turning to current obstacles to improved civic reasoning and discourse inside
and outside of schools.

COMPONENTS OF CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

Good civic reasoning and discourse require particular knowledge, skills, values,
and dispositions. Here, the author summarizes some of the most important compo-
nents. The groupings employed should not be understood as firm or clear distinctions;
instead, the boundaries blur as components relate to and build on one another in dif-
ferent contexts. For example, a skill may be used because one has already established
a disposition to act, or a value may rely on knowledge in order for it to be fulfilled.

Knowledge and Skills

Particular knowledge and skills work together to enable, support, and enhance
quality civic reasoning and discourse. They play a role in inquiry, fact-finding, negoti-
ating truth, reasonableness, critical thinking, discussion, and deliberation.

Inquiry
To be civic in topic is for reasoning to inquire into issues important to our lives
with others. Inquiry is often triggered when we find ourselves in what educational
philosopher John Dewey calls “indeterminate situations” (Dewey, 1927, 1938). These are
moments when we are unsure how to proceed—moments that give rise to the question
of “What should we do?” They also give birth to publics because they bring people
together around shared experiences or struggles. For Dewey, inquiry is the process we
use to investigate our world, hypothesize improved ways of understanding or living
within it, and then experiment with them to gauge their usefulness for moving forward
out of the indeterminate situation. Inquiry is cognitive and empirical, and entails deter-
mining the stakeholders that are impacted by a situation. It is experimental in nature
DEFINING AND IMPLEMENTING CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE 29

and invites multiple, and often conflicting, perspectives into communication with each
other to imagine, create, and test potential solutions.
Although the focus of inquiry is more on how we can adapt ourselves and our
current situations, which can require a host of different sorts of information, historical
and political knowledge is often required in order to figure out what to do. K ­ nowledge
of what has been tried and accomplished in the past and historical consciousness
(Clark & Grever, 2018) can help us make wiser judgments for the future. Skills of his-
torical interpretation may be needed to distinguish facts from stories or myths and to
reach conclusions based on evidence from multiple sources (Barton & Levstik, 2015;
­Monte-Sano & Reisman, 2015; Reisman, 2012; VanSledright, 2015; Wineburg, 2002).
These include identifying legitimate sources, attributing the source to an author con-
textualized historically, understanding that author’s perspective, and corroborating the
source to assess its reliability (VanSledright, 2015). In part, this historical knowledge and
content serves to identify the means and ends for answering the civic question, while
also considering the relevant stakeholders and the individual and collective agency of
those involved for taking up and solving “What should we do?”
Within the context of a democracy, citizens need more than just historical knowl-
edge; they also need knowledge about politics and democratic practices and proce-
dures. Citizens need to know what government is, what it does, who composes it, and
how power operates within it. These can be thought of as “the rules of the game, the
substance of politics, and people and parties” (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996, p. 65). This
sort of political knowledge can help us figure out the resources we have to answer
“What should we do?” Importantly, citizens also need to have a working understand-
ing of the law so that they understand potential constraints on what they can do in
a representative constitutional republic (Parker & Lo, 2016) and whether they might
need to work to change policies or leadership in order to achieve the sort of action they
envision (Stitzlein, 2014).
While much of contemporary curriculum theory and research in areas of citizenship
education are rightly concerned with “who” questions about stakeholders and “how”
questions about skills, it is important that we not lose sight of the “what”—the con-
tent—that is needed to do civic reasoning well. However, citizenship education should
not be boiled down to a fixed body of static knowledge to convey to children. Instead,
knowledge should be taught as part of active inquiry into authentic controversies in
our democracy and struggles to live well together within it. Such inquiry does not treat
those controversies and struggles as mere issues to be grasped objectively from afar or
to be dealt with later in life as adults, but rather immerses students into the complicated
arena of real, present political life. Quality citizenship education teaches both for and
with inquiry, where teaching with inquiry leads to learning content and teaching for
inquiry develops the skills of doing inquiry itself (Swan et al., 2018). Together, inquiry-
based learning attends to the real challenges of living in a democracy and brings “who,”
“how,” and “what” questions to bear as we engage in civic reasoning.

Fact-Finding and Truth

Inquiry and knowledge often hinge on finding, analyzing, interpreting, agreeing on,
making judgments from, and reaching conclusions about facts. Both empirical and civic
30 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

facts provide important tools for inquiry. First, empirical facts may form the basis of the
natural or scientific phenomena we need to understand in order to address our situa-
tion. Second, knowledge of and access to facts about civic content increases our politi-
cal knowledge, helps us to feel empowered, and improves our ability to influence the
governing process. Scholars of civic participation Michael Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter
(1996, pp. 6–7) explain:

A well-informed citizen is more likely to be attentive to politics, engaged in various

forms of participation, committed to democratic principles, opinionated, and to feel
­efficacious. No other single characteristic of an individual affords so reliable a predictor
of good citizenship, broadly conceived, as their level of [political] knowledge.

The facts needed for good inquiry as a part of civic reasoning may be more compli-
cated than one might assume. What we take to be facts may not be as straightforward
as they seem; rather, they are influenced by their source and other factors. We typically
come to uphold them because of their source; we accept the testimony or authority
of some person or institution because of their expertise or credentials, or because we
may have a personal relationship with them. Yet, the facts arrived at through empiri-
cal investigation and the social process of inquiry are shaped by an array of influences
other than mere pursuit of truth. Accepting those facts is always a matter of trust.
For example, no one individual has directly examined and assessed all of the evi-
dence that humans are causing the Earth to warm. No one can read all of the relevant
research, check the data reported in the research, collect all of the data, design the
instruments used to collect the data, train the people who design the instruments, or
conduct the prior research that underlies all of these activities. Knowledge creation
is profoundly social, often carried out by institutions—scientific organizations, think
tanks, newsrooms, laboratories, and so forth. To have knowledge, therefore, requires
that we trust others and trust institutions, yet many individuals and institutions are
not trustworthy, nor is automatic trust rational. The hard question is which people and
organizations to trust for the knowledge they produce. Learning how to make such
decisions well is crucial to engaging in quality civic reasoning and discourse.
Facts may exist independently of us, whereas knowledge is something we construct
and is mediated by an array of social institutions and relationships of trust between
reasoners. While some of these facts may exist apart from our social contexts, the
emphasis here is on inquiry as a social process of knowledge discovery—a moderate
position between an extreme form of social construction or relativism and a positivist
correspondence theory of truth. Thus, when people have seemingly irreconcilable dis-
agreements about “what the facts are,” they are typically not suggesting that there are
no facts or that all facts are relative. Instead, they are disagreeing about which sources of
knowledge are trustworthy. Of course, they may be mistaken about this, but this is part
of what citizens seek to sort out by engaging in inquiry and knowledge construction.
Understanding the problems we face and deliberating about what to do is not only
a matter of figuring out facts; it requires thinking about values. This is often exemplified
in cases of civic content, where the public good is at stake and competing normative
frameworks may play a significant role shaping what we should do. The civic question
leads us to have to consider what sort of ends we desire and who benefits from those
DEFINING AND IMPLEMENTING CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE 31

aims. We must consider what makes certain actions worth doing or certain outcomes
worth pursuing. The way we answer “What should we do?” is a realization of our
values. To answer the question well, we need the ability to think and talk about values,
including what they are, how they relate to one another, and how they are best achieved.
Sometimes, we face situations where we must resolve tensions between competing or
conflicting values. Other times, we must recognize the possibility that no option may
fully realize all of our values. So, in choosing among our options, we face tradeoffs in
which values are realized and to what degree. We may have to prioritize one value over
another. These situations require being able to articulate our own values—to describe
them and qualify why they are important to us and to what extent. They also require
being able to detect the values of others and engage in discussion and negotiation
about them (Klein, 2019). In some cases, we may need to question or change our values
because they lead us to biased or problematic behaviors, such as self-interested or unjust
acts. As described later in this chapter, sometimes the values at stake are actually about
how we relate to one another in a democracy, the third sense of reasoning as civic.
Relatedly, what each of us takes to be fact depends on our values, our background
experiences, our sources of information, and who we trust. Indeed, our understand-
ing of what the facts are often hinges on the truthfulness of the utterer, the influence
of their personal beliefs and emotions, and our (potentially biased) interpretation of
them. Importantly, though, different interpretations of facts can be a part of a healthy
deliberation of open controversial issues or thorny public problems.
Which facts and how many we should know poses another complication. State
standards for civics often suggest that developing citizens should mainly learn the
structure of the United States government: the branches of government, federalism,
civil rights, and related topics (Levine, 2013). Indeed, these are relevant, but the design
of the government is only one relevant subject for citizens. It may be equally important
for citizens to understand—and to be able to inquire further about—cultural groups,
faith traditions, economic forces and institutions, biophysical conditions, sociological
phenomena, historical achievements and injustices, other countries, and many other
topics.
For instance, throughout history, marginalized and oppressed peoples have found
ways of acting and effecting change in constrained circumstances, and yet many
of these methods and achievements are not widely known or acknowledged as forms of
engaged civic action. A curriculum that focuses on the formal structure of the U.S. gov-
ernment to the exclusion of social movements and other forms of “contentious politics”
(Tarrow, 2011) increases the likelihood that students will miss learning about the agency
of oppressed peoples. Understanding and appreciating such efforts as contributions to
our civic life can improve the quality of our civic reasoning in part by opening our eyes
to the many different forms it can take, as well as the often-overlooked contributions of
subordinated people to the ongoing project of democratically living together.
One response might be that students would benefit from knowing a vast range
of facts, but the information that would serve them as citizens is practically infinite.
Instead, they should primarily learn skills for inquiry. But that approach seems to evade
any need to identify especially important topics or to equip students with vocabulary
and concepts that they need for inquiry. Wise policy navigates between assuming, on
one hand, that some discrete “core” of knowledge (usually, an overview of the U.S.
32 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

Constitution and a dose of governmental structure) suffices for civic education, or

assuming, on the other hand, that budding citizens should inquire about anything and
everything. A moderate course sets priorities but defines them broadly and encourages
students to pursue their own questions.

Logic, Rationality, and Reasonableness

Good civic reasoning requires that its participants use the skills of logic, rationality,
and reasonableness. Logic concerns the formal relationship between statements, and so
understanding logic can help reasoners think about when their conclusions are neces-
sitated by their premises or to point out fallacies in the reasoning of others. Knowing,
for instance, that the negation of “All swans are white” is not “No swans are white”
but “Some swans are not white” is a matter of understanding the logical structure of
language. Though some reasoning falters in its logical structure, a much more likely
failure is in the substantive relation of reasons toward a conclusion. Here, the skills of
rationality are relevant: understanding what counts as a reason for what.
Though rationality can help us assess whether means are appropriate to ends
(instrumental reasoning) and whether the benefits are worth the costs (prudential
reason­ing or cost–benefit analysis), it can also help us think about what ends are worth
pursuing, and how conflicting reasons relate to one another. It is important to recognize
here that good reasons for adopting an end or a set of means need not be cold and
calculating: a religious commitment or belief, or an emotional connection to a place or
action or object, might be a strong reason for acting one way or another. Furthermore,
working out the relation of reasons is not merely a matter of weighing pros and cons.
Reasons relate to one another in all sorts of complex ways, and we can think of the skills
of rationality as also including understanding how to think well about the relation of
various reasons to one another.
Moreover, being rational involves being responsive to reasons, and this requires
an openness to challenge, criticism, and contestation about the warrants and evidence
cited in support of particular reasons and the conclusions they lead to. Rationality, so
understood, is not a matter of merely accepting scientific or expert consensus on a topic.
When we think of reasoning as a social activity of reciprocal and responsive interac-
tion, as it is in civic reasoning, then we also need the skill or virtue of reasonableness.
Being reasonable in this sense involves not commanding or deferring but inviting and
persuading others to see things as we do, and an openness to be moved by their invita-
tions when they see things differently (Laden, 2012). It displays itself in a willingness to
propose fair terms of cooperation and to abide by those terms even when doing so later
is not to our advantage (Rawls, 1996). It involves the skills of listening and responding
to others, not just working out the internal structures of our own thoughts and goals and
making persuasive arguments. Reasonableness is cultivated through social interaction
as we listen and talk with others about our thoughts, feelings, and reasons. Reasonable-
ness, then, helps to span the divide between reasoning as a way of deciding what we
should do and reasoning as a manner in which we relate to each other.
DEFINING AND IMPLEMENTING CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE 33

Critical Thinking
Quality civic reasoning is also facilitated by critical thinking. Robert Ennis defines
critical thinking as “reflective and reasonable thinking that is focused on deciding what
to believe or do” (Ennis, 2011, p. 1). Part of determining what to believe is not based on
the ability to track down every empirical claim, but rather on understanding how indi-
viduals and institutions work to produce legitimate knowledge and what makes them
trustworthy. Such understanding and related skills help us determine what knowledge
is more solidly justified. It prevents the inquiry process from being a simplistic form of
empiricism, where we naively set out to find the facts and apply them.
Certainly, this definition is well aligned with the account offered here of good civic
reasoning and its guiding question, but it misses an important element that a focus
on critical thinking can add to the picture under construction: a spirit of criticality.
Criticality identifies and interrogates the power that influences and sometimes distorts
knowledge and inquiry, and it reveals the struggles over power at play in group con-
texts. Recognizing the role of power helps groups of people to better understand how
some shared problems may disproportionately impact certain members of a commu-
nity. Critical thinking may also uncover how power operates to support or hinder the
solutions put forward in an inquiry. When supported by democratic values like political
equality, critical thinking leads us to ask important “who” questions: “Is everyone at
the table that needs to be?”, “Who is being heard?”, and “Who stands to gain or lose?”
Asking “who” questions can help students to name power, which is a helpful first step.
However, students also need to be supported in going further to learn how to challenge
and change power inequities, which includes cultivating students’ ability to imagine
more just ways of being and the skills of dissent needed to put forward those alterna-
tives. In this way, critical thinking can help us adjudicate not only what we should do,
but what is feasible, right, or best to do and for whom (Lim, 2011).
Critical thinking in this more specific sense enables thinkers to see and understand
their relationships with others. It also pushes them into the fray of making sense of
and acting in a context of multiple and conflicting perspectives, emotions, and moral
claims. Indeed, critical thinking is a collective practice. Nicholas Burbules and Rupert
Berk (1999, p. 62) explain that it is

a function of collective questioning, criticism, and creativity, it is always social in char-

acter, partly because relations to others influence the individual, and partly because
certain of these activities (particularly thinking in new ways) arise from interaction with
challenging alternative views.

Educational approaches that describe critical thinking in more individualist and instru-
mentalist forms of logic and argument analysis lack the components of criticality and
collective work that are essential to such thinking and render it a valuable tool in civic
reasoning.

Discussion and Deliberation

Civic discourse is perhaps best undertaken through discussion or deliberation.
Diana Hess (2009, p. 14) defines the first of these terms:
34 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

discussion is dialogue between or among people. It involves, at a minimum, the

­exchange of information about a topic (e.g., a controversy, a problem, an event, a
­person, etc.). Second, discussion is a particular approach to constructing knowledge
that is predicated on the belief that the most powerful ideas can be produced when
people are expressing their ideas on a topic and listening to others express theirs.

To construct powerful ideas and piece together solutions, discussion seeks out multiple,
varied perspectives and opens up all contributions to examination. This differs from
debate, which typically begins with proposals formed in advance, operates to name one
proposal as being better than another, and often is carried out in a more combative and
less cooperative spirit. While debate is an approach to considering civic matters that
is widespread in the United States today, this approach often forecloses some of the
possibilities offered within discussion and deliberation and thus is not as aligned with
ideal civic reasoning. In order for debate to play a more constructive role in fostering
good civic reasoning, it needs to be understood not as a competition with winners and
losers but as a means for exploring a topic and effectively bringing out various perspec-
tives and positions in their strongest and most persuasive forms.
Discussion and deliberation require certain skills, values, and dispositions beyond
those already mentioned. This is especially the case given that discussions may further
entrench, rather than expose or challenge, inequities, oppressions, and subjugations
between participants and the larger society. Discussion and deliberation require listen-
ing and leaving space for others, being open to and raising dissent, working through
challenging ideas or competing perspectives in good faith, and vulnerability to being
moved by what others say. To head off further marginalization or harm, they require
active commitments to values of equity, anti-racism, gender equality, and other ele-
ments of justice, especially when situated among participants with differing degrees of
power. Dispositions to authorize more voices and perspectives may help shore up civic
reasoning as a plural and ethical endeavor (Mansbridge, 1991; Parker, 2006). Engaging
in discussion can help develop the sort of democratic culture and political tolerance
needed to more effectively work together to solve complex public problems. Put in
terms of educating citizens, discussion is not just a high-quality strategy for teaching
information, but is itself a means and an end for developing good citizens who can
engage well in civic reasoning (Parker, 2010).
Deliberation is discussion aimed at a particular resolution, action, or outcome
rather than discussion that creates shared understanding or just talk for the sake of
talk—though, importantly, these can play a role in the health of a democracy (Parker,
2003). Deliberation is always an endeavor situated in uncertainty; it is about things that
we do not know for sure and a future that we cannot fully predict. Deliberation is also
one way that publics form, as it calls people together around a shared point of concern
or decision making. Though useful across an array of philosophical understandings
of democracy, deliberation is particularly valued within the framework of deliberative
democracy (Gutmann & Thompson, 2004; Habermas, 1987, 1996). Within that frame-
work, it is employed to make decisions and reach binding agreements, thereby giving
heft and substance to conversations between citizens.
It is not enough to merely acknowledge pluralism or conflicting views on the good
life, though; we must take seriously and be responsive to the dissent that arises from
DEFINING AND IMPLEMENTING CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE 35

them. Such dissent includes critiquing the status quo, challenging accepted views, and
putting forward alternatives. Engaging in dissent is a form of participatory politics
that legitimizes conflict and disagreement as not just facts of life, but sources for better
civic reasoning. An influential critic of deliberative democracy, Chantal Mouffe (1996,
p. 8), adds:

A pluralist democracy needs to make room for the expression of dissent and for con-
flicting interests and values. And those should not be seen as temporary obstacles on
the road to consensus since in their absence democracy would cease to be pluralistic.

Here, she shows how dissent and differing opinions are not just something to work past
during civic discourse, but are themselves an important part of a pluralistic democracy,
goading change, at times, through conflict.
Within a deliberation, dissent can help to overcome groupthink momentum by
pausing to expose contradictory beliefs or differing viewpoints that may highlight the
perspective of minority members within or outside of the group, reveal faulty argu-
ments, or improve the quality, depth, and sincerity of the conversation itself. Dissenters
help to ensure that more voices are being heard and help to better ensure that just deci-
sions are being made. However, rational-proceduralist forms of deliberative democracy,
often attributed to Jürgen Habermas, which restrict legitimate deliberation to a strict
formula of reason-giving, may prevent dissenters from using some of the tools of their
trade, including emotional ploys, radical protest, and passionate disruption (Young,
2002). Civic discourse must not only preserve space for this sort of public work, but
also foreground it for its ability to improve the quality of civic discourse and outcomes
of civic reasoning. Citizenship education requires overtly teaching not only the value
of dissent, but also the skills and dispositions necessary to engage it (Stitzlein, 2014).
Even if an openness to other viewpoints is an essential attitude in civic reasoning,
many worry that this attitude can be taken too far. They argue that there are certainly
some viewpoints that are hostile to the deliberative process itself or that aim to exclude
certain others from full citizenship or personhood, and that good civic reasoning
requires drawing a line that excludes such positions from even entering into or harm-
ing our civic interactions. For teachers, a familiar example occurs when one student
comments on identity characteristics, such as race/ethnicity, religion, or sexuality, in
a way that disparages some of the other students, possibly preventing them from par-
ticipating fully in the discussion or feeling safe and valued in the school. T­ eachers face
the dilemma of whether to block such statements. Freedom of speech is one condition
of deliberation, but including everyone is another condition, and they can be in ten-
sion. The same tensions certainly arise in adult contexts, from social media platforms
to public meetings. One problem with blocking speech is that it is unclear which
principles to adopt to head off potential problems. Moreover, it is unclear on whose
authority those principles would be adopted or how they might be enforced. Finally,
it is unclear who gets to decide which people or views are to be excluded from civic
reasoning and on what grounds.
A different way to approach this worry is to not have rules about who can speak or
what can be said, but to empower participants to reject certain moves within the reason-
ing itself on grounds that they are inconsistent with the shared project or the inclusion
36 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

of all. That is, the shared aims a group of people have in engaging in civic reasoning
(working out “What should we do?”) serve as the basis to argue, in the course of that
reasoning, that certain positions or grounds ought to be rejected in the reasoning itself.
Rather than bar the White supremacist from entering the room, as it were, we respond
to her particular arguments and position by pointing out, among other things, their
incompatibility with our engagement in a shared project. For this to work, however,
citizens need to be equipped to make such arguments and to recognize the force of
and respond to such arguments when they are made by others. In particular, those
who are not specifically targeted or potentially harmed by the public expression of
such positions need to take on an extra responsibility to be mindful of and speak out
against those positions. This then points to another goal of education in civic reasoning:
a sensitivity and responsiveness to such reasons, and attention to the conditions that
make it possible for people to raise such reasons. The idea is that we need to cultivate
certain deliberative virtues rather than work out rules of the game. These include an
ability to face up to and work through complexity and fundamental disagreements
rather than trying to legislate them out of sight.
In sum, civic reasoning is best facilitated through discussion and deliberation that
engages inquiry, facts, knowledge, logic, reasonableness, values, emotion, and critical
thinking. It relies on skills of openness and dissent.

Values, Virtues, and Dispositions

The author uses the term values to refer to ideas and ideals that people hold dear.
Our values guide our actions by helping us determine whether a course of action
or a given social situation is good or desirable. “Virtues” and “dispositions” refer to
particular traits of individuals and their characters. Dispositions are traits of character
that orient individuals to care about and act on certain values. Virtues are excellences
of character. They involve not only being disposed properly to given values, but also
the capacity to clearly see when a value is relevant to a situation and act decisively in
response to that value.
We might talk about the value of tolerance, for example, in terms of an ideal of
accepting other people’s right to act differently than we do or to uphold values we do
not. When we speak of a person as being tolerant, we mean not only that they recognize
that tolerance is a value, but also that they are disposed to act in a tolerant manner
when the opportunity presents itself. Considerations of tolerance have weight in their
determinations of what to do. To talk of tolerance as a virtue or to say that someone has
the virtue of tolerance is to say that they not only have a disposition toward tolerance,
but that they have an acute sense of when tolerance is called for and the strength of
character to act tolerantly in such situations even when it is difficult.
Values, virtues, and dispositions play a role in civic reasoning in at least three
ways: First, the very activity of civic reasoning embodies and relies on certain values
and virtues to be done well. Empathy, a willingness to compromise, a concern to look
for consensus, a collaborative spirit, and civility all can improve the quality of civic
reason­ing. This makes them all what might be called civic virtues. They will be the
main focus of this next section. Before turning to these values and virtues, the author
briefly discusses additional roles that values play in civic reasoning.
DEFINING AND IMPLEMENTING CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE 37

Second, in the course of engaging in civic reasoning, we invoke and contest commit-
ments to various values: both political values like liberty, equality and tolerance, and
more particular values that are tied to other aspects of our identities or the situation at
hand. Good civic reasoning is not a value-neutral or value-free activity. Figuring out
what we should do involves figuring out what values we want to realize or be true to,
which values we share, and how to best understand them. Thus, values can serve as
the input and subject matter of civic reasoning. We might invoke a value like liberty
when arguing against a law that would make it hard for certain religious communities
to live according to their religious commitments. We might employ a value like equality
when advocating for policies, like the recognition of same-sex marriage or civil rights
for transgender people, that may conflict with certain religious teachings and commit-
ments. In these cases, values serve useful roles in our reasoning.
In other cases, our civic reasoning might involve working out the precise nature of a
value or whether it is truly shared. So, we can also reason about how to best understand
the value of freedom or equality, and which conception of these values can serve as a
basis for “our” decisions about what to do. Here, we are not directly asking a practi-
cal question about what to do, but working out something closer to where we stand
vis-à-vis one another. In this sense, reasoning together about our values can be a way
of working out our relationships to one another and to the extent we are interested in
our civic relations, this highlights how civic reasoning is civic insofar as it concerns the
civic identity of the reasoners.
Recognizing that civic reasoning not only invokes values but also can be about
them means that civic reasoning necessarily involves contestation about what “our”
values are. When someone invokes a particular value as “American” or “ours” in the
course of genuine civic reasoning, then others are always open to reject or question that
claim. That is part of what is involved in reasoning about such matters, and not merely
dogmatically insisting on them. Because civic reasoning can invoke and be about ques-
tions of value, learning to engage in this kind of reasoning requires learning how to
think about values. It also entails a disposition to work through moments when values
conflict within ourselves or between us and other citizens. At times, we must navigate
substantial lasting tensions between values.
Third, civic reasoning can generate new understandings of or commitments to vari-
ous values and can be part of a process by which citizens come to develop or shift their
dispositions toward those values and perhaps help them to develop the virtues neces-
sary to pursue those values well. This can happen when citizens come to change their
minds about a topic of civic reasoning: one might enter a discussion about who should
be allowed to use which bathroom in a public school or whether we should change
our immigration policy committed to a particular conception of tolerance but come
away from that discussion with a transformed commitment to the value of inclusion
or respect rather than mere tolerance. In addition, over the course of engaging in civic
reasoning with others, one can come to change their values as a result of the process
of reasoning itself: one might, for instance, develop a new understanding of equality
as a result of being confronted with the positions of others, and learning to give them
equal weight in deliberations.
In the U.S. context of liberal democracy, values like liberty, equality, and justice
are often invoked and contested in the course of civic reasoning. Though these values
38 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

may play a direct role in the quality of civic reasoning by supporting practices that
give everyone a say, they also play an important role in the second and third senses
mentioned previously, and so participants in civic reasoning in an American context
will be well served to understand these values, their various interpretations, and their
role in unfolding debates about particular laws, policies, and decisions. Beyond training
students in the skills needed to engage in civic reasoning, including reasoning about
values generally, civic education designed to improve the quality of civic discourse
needs to familiarize students with values that have played a role in the civic reasoning
of a given country, including the various debates over how to understand them and
their relation to one another. Admittedly, though, many citizens do not share these
values and we must be careful not to assume that they are universally held or that they
function to give us a shared language or aims for civic discourse.
In the rest of this chapter, the author focuses on the values, virtues, and disposi-
tions that are central to engaging well in the activity of civic reasoning. These include
empathy, a willingness to compromise, an eye on the possibility as well as the pitfalls
of consensus, a collaborative spirit, and civility. Notably, this is not an all-inclusive list,
nor should this list always be upheld as a set of ideal goals. For example, sometimes
justified resistance or a resolute response to an injustice may require one to dig in one’s
heels and to hold tight to one’s position, rather than to seek consensus or compromise.
Additionally, not all learners are developmentally capable of enacting these values,
virtues, and dispositions, nor can they do so in all contexts.

Empathy
Ideally, participation in civic reasoning and discourse is not just a one-way street
emanating out from individuals. We must also take in the opinions, perspectives, and
concerns of others as we work together to figure out “What should we do?” Listening
has epistemic benefits. It can help us to see what we are missing or not sufficiently
appreciating about an issue or its impact. Listening also has benefits for the manner
in which we relate to each other. Active listening is ethical and relational in that it is a
way of treating others as political equals, respecting them as individuals, and perhaps
enabling relationships to form. Listening can help us to see that others have reasoned
beliefs, many of which are worthy of our time and consideration, and may even come
to influence our own beliefs. It can help us to see our shared humanity and our shared
fate as well as appreciate our real and enduring differences.
Our capacities to be genuinely open to others can be blocked by attitudes and
prejudices like sexism, homophobia, and other discriminatory practices that serve as
impediments that prevent some citizens from treating others as equals, from forming
relationships with them, and learning from them. While some aspects of listening may
develop naturally, the sort of active listening needed for effective civic reasoning is best
developed through overt curriculum and instruction that cultivates students’ skills
and dispositions to proceed cautiously with humility and reciprocity as they work to
combat the lineages of injustice that they confront in the publics they inhabit and create
(Allen, 2004; Parker, 2006).
Empathy—working to see the world from another person’s perspective—can help
us to overcome some of the impediments to listening and can improve our ability to
DEFINING AND IMPLEMENTING CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE 39

relate to each other civically. There are times when empathy may be rightfully with-
held from those who have repugnant views. Indeed, to empathize with a racist, for
example, might actually demonstrate a civic failing. Nonetheless, empathy generally
offers significant benefits to civic reasoning and discourse. Through empathizing with
others, we come to recognize their personal stake in issues and the emotions they
experience related to those issues. These dispositions can lead us to make better deci-
sions because they push us to attend to the well-being of our fellow citizens. They
require openness to hear and learn from others, understanding of our own proclivities
and limitations, openness to how others might reshape ourselves, and imagination to
cross the boundaries between us. These social practices reveal that civic reasoning and
discourse is not merely problem solving, but is a responsive and social endeavor where
we become mutually attuned to each other (Laden, 2012). Moreover, Nicole Mirra (2018,
p. 4) explains:

If we are able to adopt the perspectives of those unlike ourselves, then perhaps we
are more likely to make decisions and take steps that benefit not only our own selfish
interests, but the interests of those other people as well. Writ large, empathy becomes
the foundation for a democratic society.

Empathy helps us to achieve democratic values of liberty, equality, and justice that are
often upheld in the United States while also helping us to relate to each other as citizens
working together toward shared understanding.
Empathy requires work, especially when employed with those quite different from
ourselves. It may first require learning more about our fellow citizens, their lives, their
experiences, and their worldviews. This is noteworthy when one takes into account that
those who most need to learn empathy are often those from dominant groups, whose
experiences and opinions tend to be reflected in mainstream outlets and who may have
been able to traverse life without having to see or understand the perspectives of others.
Those with less power, however, have often had to detect and navigate the perspectives
of others to get by in life. Such power differentials should not be glossed over, but must
be accounted for as part of what Mirra calls “critical civic empathy” (Mirra, 2018, p. 7).
This notion of empathy acknowledges power inequalities, historicity, and positionality.
It works to foster understanding across differences in ways that builds a new identity
together as citizens, one directed toward equity-oriented action.

Consensus, Compromise, and Collaboration

As empathy helps to bridge between citizens when engaging in civic reasoning and
discourse, so do an eye for the possibility of consensus and a willingness to compro-
mise. Consensus entails coming to unanimously consent to the same desire or conclu-
sion, even though not all differences between individuals’ desires or conclusions may
be resolved. It builds solidarity and can produce a sense of being united with other
citizens. Compromise, however, means being willing to strike a deal between one’s
desire or conclusion and someone else’s desire or conclusion, often by giving up parts
of it in order to reach an agreement with those whose views differ considerably from
one’s own. It can help us to arrive at necessary agreements across warring groups or
individuals, or to create middle or mutually acceptable ground.
40 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

On some occasions, consensus or compromise are aims we hope to achieve through

our reasoning and discourse. In those instances, consensus or compromise may be seen
as an indication of fulfilling the common good or achieving mutually beneficial goals.
On other occasions, looking out for the possible paths to genuine consensus and being
open to compromise can be important for engaging in discourse and reasoning well.
On still others, they help us take up the civic question effectively so that we can move
out of impasses between citizens (Thompson, 2008). Reaching moments of compromise,
for example, may require changing our stances, giving some ground, or building new
shared perspectives between us. Striking this middle ground may require skills of
collaboration, where participants work together to understand their differences and
propose alternatives that might be amenable to all parties. Similarly, compromise as a
means of discourse may require the disposition of moderation, summarized by Robert
Boatright (2019, p. 3) as

a willingness to pursue a pragmatic politics that accepts the humanity of one’s oppo-
nents, that abandons the assumption that there is an ultimate goal for human ­endeavors,
and that seeks to place the goal of fostering an inclusive political community above the
goal of dictating what the community is or should do.

Rather than carving out middle ground, navigating and negotiating some situations
may rely on skills of persuasion, including the ability to make a convincing case for
one’s stance and to persuade others to share it. Persuasion requires some handle on not
only rhetoric, but also of the emotions and motivations that shape how others commit
to a stance. Persuasion must be balanced, however, with appropriate accommodation
and humility toward others. While there are some instances in which individuals are
right and should aim to convince others of that case, we must be careful not to just
assume that we are right or to behave in ways that foreclose our ability to hear and
respond to the alternative stances put forward by others, for such actions shortchange
civic reasoning.
We must also be careful that consensus or compromise do not become avenues to
simply avoid confrontation, downplay significant tensions between values, or to do
the hard work of reaching challenging or controversial conclusions. This is especially
the case when there is a need to disrupt the status quo or work against power imbal-
ances where more resolute stances may be necessary, especially in the face of injustice.
We must be cautious that even a conclusion that seems to favor the common good is
not hiding disparity or injustice. Similarly, we must be leery of a rush to consensus, as
this may curtail or silence some perspectives or not sufficiently engage some points
of concern. We must hold open questions and tensions during a discussion in order
to provide sufficient time and space for inviting and reflecting on the contributions of
participants (Backer, 2019). Sometimes, support networks and identity-based advocacy
groups are needed to empower or champion those hidden or overlooked perspectives,
instead of focusing on a shared conclusion (Mansbridge et al., 2012). In sum, values
that enable good civic reasoning and discourse include willingness to compromise and
appreciating the solidarity-building of consensus, but remaining open to new views
and challenges to conclusions.
DEFINING AND IMPLEMENTING CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE 41

Civility
Civility is sometimes affiliated with a call to compromise, especially between feud-
ing political groups. However, as this chapter will explain, holding firm political views
may be warranted, especially when that view is on the side of justice, promotes equal
participation, and supports relationships between citizens. Many people more quickly
define civility by what it is not than by what it is, pointing to instances of ad hominem
attacks, the demeaning of opponents, and rude, vulgar, or threatening speech. When
citizens do speak affirmatively of civility, it is often invoked merely in terms of ­manners,
as being polite or respectful in civic discussions, especially when it comes to the tone
and content of what we say. However, civility should be understood in a richer way.
Rather than think of civility in terms of politeness, we should think of it primarily in
terms of responsiveness (Laden, 2019).
Civility is a form of engagement with others that relies on skills and dispositions
of being open to and cooperating with diverse participants toward continued mutual
engagement in a just dialogue. It affirms the dignity and humanity of one’s interlocutors,
even as it allows for questioning or critiquing their claims. It is aligned with values of
equal participation and inclusivity. In order to be aligned with liberty, civility must not
overly restrict free speech. It has significant democratic implications for the outcomes
of our reasoning, as well as the manner in which we engage in discourse, because it
foregrounds relationships. Civility requires participation that emphasizes respect for
others and could actually help to build democracy, not only sustain it through discus-
sion or enable it to move smoothly.
Understood this way, civility can actually be compatible with impolite speech or
action, especially when it is necessary to express outrage, forward a political cause
(­Rossini, 2019), or “transform unjust relationships into just ones. Hence, civility can
only be measured within the context of existing and aspired relations, rather than
according to a predetermined code of conduct” (Dishon & Ben-Porath, 2018, p. 439). To
enact civility in civic discourse, then, one must focus on the impact of one’s participa-
tion (in content, form, and tone) on the ability of others to participate and hold oneself
accountable to reacting to and reshaping unjust interactions.
When civility is seen only as politeness, norms of politeness can be used to silence or
marginalize some participants, often by holding them to participation norms that they
did not create or that may favor other participants. This loses sight of whether one’s
participation is responsive to others. Civility supports civic reasoning in the sense of not
only the manner in which we relate to each other, but also civility, as responsiveness,
impacts our identity as reasoners together. Under that understanding, civic reasoning
entails foregrounding how we respond to and work together as members of society
and how our relations with each other may give rise to some responsibilities and may
call for enacting certain virtues.
In sum, knowledge, skills, values, and dispositions related to listening, empathy,
consensus, compromise, collaboration, and civility all work together to help us engage
well in civic reasoning and dialogue. They also help to produce better outcomes in
terms of our civic inquiries as well as our identity and treatment of each other as citi-
zens reasoning together.
42 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

OBSTACLES AND FUTURE RESEARCH

We must prepare students not only for an ideal democracy, but also to live in and
improve the one that currently exists (Dahl, 1999). That is one area where civic reasoning
and discourse are often bogged down or steered off course by hyper-partisanship, fake
news, uncivil behavior, and other problems in our physical and digital communities.
Citizens shout at each other in the streets and attack each other on social media. Some
engage in civic discussions in ways that flout rationality or dodge empathy. Citizens
struggle to reach consensus or agree on foundational understandings or values. Even
when a consensus is reached or a course of action is decided, it is often met by ongo-
ing contestation. Navigating and responding to that contestation is an important part
of continued civic discourse. Finally, even when some citizens wisely and rightfully
engage in political dissent or resistance, our society often structurally withstands or
silences their efforts. We are far from the best forms of civic reasoning and discourse
depicted here, though, with improved education, we may move closer toward them.
There are many constraints on and disincentives to engage in civic reasoning and
discourse. Some of those are institutional, others are cultural, and others are psycho-
logical, while still others are based on peer group norms. In this section, the author
describes some of those obstacles, using them to highlight areas particularly in need of
ongoing or future research, and also offers a few suggestions for improved citizenship
education curricula and pedagogy, beginning with general challenges arising in society
and then moving into particular challenges in schools.

Understanding Changes in Truth, Facts, and News

Inquiry, facts, and the historical and political knowledge related to them inhabit an
especially precarious position in the United States today. Acknowledging the connec-
tion between truth and facts, some argue that we currently live in a “post-truth” world,
where “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to
emotion and personal belief” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2019). Relatedly, “truth decay”
describes the social phenomenon whereby members of a society increasingly struggle to
draw clear and sharp distinctions between fact and opinion, where personal experience
outweighs fact, and where traditionally respected sources of facts, such as newsrooms
and scientific reports, are increasingly distrusted (Hodgin & Kahne, 2019, p. 93).
Engaging in civic reasoning requires some level of trust as we sift through varied
ideas and accounts. Yet, the problematic situation today has been exacerbated by fake
news, which no longer is a term that simply indicates information that is verifiably false,
but now also refers to a host of other problems. Sometimes news outlets circulate only
limited facts or emphasize some stories over others, which provides only a partial or
distorted account to citizens. Sometimes news sites circulate targeted disinformation,
which misleads or tricks citizens. Sometimes media outlets present incorrect infor-
mation as fact to nefariously back particular political positions. Sometimes factually
accurate news that contradicts one’s ideological beliefs is delegitimized by calling it
“fake” (Journell, 2019). Fake news sows confusion, doubt, and mistrust. In this way,
it disrupts civic reasoning that is topical as well as reasoning about our shared identity
and ways of relating to each other. Information derived from fake news can mislead
civic reasoning and concerns over fake news can bring reasoning to a halt or even turn
DEFINING AND IMPLEMENTING CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE 43

us away from our fellow citizens. Given the challenges of fake news and post-truth,
careful research is needed in these areas and investigations of how we might head off
problems related to them through quality citizenship education.
Importantly, fake news is not just about accepting different or competing facts;
problems posed by fake news are matters of trust. Fake news derails quality civic
reasoning because it prevents citizens from appealing to a shared set of accepted facts
or sources of information because they disagree about who is trustworthy and how
much trust to put into our knowledge of facts. Seen this way, educating for improved
civic reasoning would require learning how to assess the trustworthiness of authority
figures or institutions. This is a set of skills that one can learn through social studies
classes on critical media literacy, but also in literature courses that examine character
and motivation and in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses that
focus on good argumentation and data sourcing.

Attending to Changing Psychology of Citizens

The spread of fake news and mistrust of other citizens is also related to several
other recent alarming trends in the psychology and behaviors of citizens (Garrett,
2019). Some of the phenomena are longstanding, but they are increasing in intensity
and impact, and others are being brought under study and classified in new ways.
Recent hyper-partisanship is having a marked impact on the makeup of groups and
the reasoning that occurs within them. Citizens increasingly engage in echo chambers,
surrounding themselves with peers and news sources that confirm their worldview.
In some instances, citizens willfully chose to isolate themselves in these ways, but in
others, socioeconomic and racial segregation exacerbate citizen silos. Sometimes these
communities develop groupthink, which blocks thorough and effective civic reason-
ing and keeps it from being sufficiently pluralistic. In part, citizens may be prone to
motivated reasoning, where their social group or political affiliation may lead them
to advantage their previously held views when they encounter new information (Kraft
et al., 2015). In other words, citizens are resistant to information that would cause them
to change the worldview they already have. These citizens accept what matches with
their current views and dismiss the rest. Hence, this limited form of rationalizing is
only mobilized to support conclusions already reached and it falls far short of the plural
endeavor of civic reasoning.
Similarly, confirmation bias leads citizens to only seek evidence that is partial to
their current beliefs or to interpret evidence in ways aligned with hypotheses that they
already hold. When they encounter evidence that counters their views, they dismiss
that information and double down on their prior beliefs—a phenomenon known as
the backfire effect. Additionally, a process known as magical thinking happens when
what citizens desire to be true comes to feel more true or real than actual reality. It
leads citizens to treat their subjective experiences and desires as facts. Finally, affective
polarization occurs when individuals not only seek out similar peers, but evaluate those
from their own political party positively and those in opposition parties negatively
(Clark & Avery, 2016).
Collectively, these psychological responses suggest that we cannot improve civic
reasoning simply by giving citizens more information. While integrating citizens into
44 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

more diverse communities can have positive benefits, some citizens will continue to
engage in self-confirmatory practices. Indeed, one study revealed the worrisome result
that even when given extensive evidence, citizens disregarded it in favor of their own
previous beliefs and another study showed that motivated reasoning is actually greatest
among those with the most political knowledge (Crocco et al., 2017; Kahne & Bowyer,
2017). Yet, political knowledge is also known to increase positive civil participation and
identity (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996).
Citizens need more skills and motivation to work against or overcome confirma-
tion bias. This is an area especially in need of research in both general public life
and in schools. Such research might include studies of how classroom teachers use
­meta­cognition to attune students to their own biases and experiences of positive or
negative feelings to opinions encountered; studies of how employing critical media
literacy may reduce biased practices; studies of how teachers’ own political partisanship
and political environments influence their teaching of civil reasoning (Curry & Cherner,
2019); studies of how to genuinely engage with competing perspectives when situated
in increasingly ideologically, racially, and socioeconomically homogenous schools; and
studies of how classroom deliberations work through instances of these problems criti-
cally, while still allowing for students to hold strong views (Kahne & Bowyer, 2017;
Lavine et al., 2012; Nyhan & Reifler, 2010).

Building Capacity for Civic Reasoning and Discourse Online

Given the prevalence of using online materials to find facts, problems related to
sources and verification are especially prevalent today. In online spaces, many people
are irresponsible in their employment of facts, so consumers of online information
have to employ a heightened level of scrutiny and care. As indicated by studies of civic
online reasoning by the Stanford History Education Group, citizens need dispositions
and strategies to ask questions, investigate sources, and verify claims online (McGrew
et al., 2017). Such determinations expose the influence of power on facts and knowl-
edge. A 2009 National Council for the Social Studies position statement importantly
highlighted the need for developing critical media literacy skills to detect and analyze
power and ideology at play in media and how they can manipulate our emotions and
our cognitive biases. Additionally, new curricula are needed to help budding citizens
understand the complex ways in which knowledge is produced and credentialed so
that they have principled grounds for trusting some online sources over others.
Another perennial obstacle related to civil reasoning is that public deliberation, and
even classroom deliberation, is often irrational and not driven by facts, justified reasons,
or efforts to remove problematic bias. Indeed, some citizens even seem to prefer those
sorts of exchanges over calls to rationality and order, and some are quite adept at using
persuasive tricks and disinformation (Segall et al., 2019). These sorts of practices may
further drive away citizens who increasingly feel cynical about democratic life and
may exacerbate the distaste of those who already feel dissuaded to participate in civic
discourse because they feel that participation is inauthentic or not likely to actually
influence public policy (Stitzlein, 2020). Researchers might craft curricula that guide
teachers on how to detect these sorts of persuasive tricks and walk students through
understanding how they are manipulative approaches that lead to unwise reasoning
DEFINING AND IMPLEMENTING CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE 45

and discourse that runs counter to longstanding values of democracy, as well as giving
them means to respond to such discourse in ways that steer it toward better civic
reasoning.
The longstanding struggle to achieve broad and inclusive communities of inquiry
faces particular challenges in digital spaces today. Patterns of media usage tend to
reflect distinct demographic groups and citizens seek out like-minded peers online.
Many of the psychological phenomena posing problems in our face-to-face communi-
ties are even more pronounced online. Changes within the media environment have
also exacerbated the problems, including the diminished role of gatekeepers, enabling
wide circulation of inaccurate information and increasingly partisan interpretations of
news (Hodgin & Kahne, 2019).
Relationships that support good civic reasoning and discourse can be especially
challenging to achieve and maintain in online spaces, where we are separated from
our fellow citizens by time and space. Moreover, online settings sometimes produce a
“disinhibition effect,” where people are emboldened to act in more outlandish or dis-
respectful ways behind a screen of anonymity than they typically would in face-to-face
conversation (Suler, 2015). Yet, online spaces also provide important outlets for airing
perspectives that run counter to the mainstream, where the anonymity of the screen
may also provide protective cover. Future research into the skills and dispositions of
civility and dissent in online spaces is needed.
Importantly, today’s digital platforms also present significant tools for finding
alternative views, seeking out minority perspectives, and reaching out to other citizens
otherwise separated by space, time, or other constraints. Additionally, digital platforms
offer opportunities to expand beyond our face-to-face networks and form new relation-
ships. Civic reasoning and discourse would be improved by learning more approaches
to fulfilling diversity, inclusivity, and equality through technology and media. We must
also simultaneously nurture the proclivity of citizens to use media and technology
for civic purposes, rather than narrowly viewing it merely for entertainment or even
education (Levine, 2015).

Supporting Diverse and Open Environments

Open environments, where citizens are invited to discuss meaningful and contro-
versial issues, can help build inclusivity and tolerance, especially when participants
discover that they learn from and improve their overall decision-making processes as
a result of including multiple and conflicting perspectives. Yet, despite these benefits,
civic and classroom deliberations often are, in some ways, exclusive. We know that
many civic decisions are made in spaces that include only a small subset of the overall
population and that often those who participate or are welcomed to contribute are those
who inhabit positions of power by virtue of their demographics, wealth, community
status, and more. Exclusivity and elitism tend to lead to some voices wielding more
power or impact than others, if those others are even included at all.
Additionally, we know that classrooms are increasingly racially and economically
segregated, making it even more challenging to create diverse and inclusive communi-
ties within the confines of the school. These conditions call for additional research to
understand how we can work within them to teach and enact civic reasoning, as well
46 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

as research into how trends of exclusion and segregation might be countered. Such
research might entail demonstrating for civic and school groups the improved reason-
ing that comes about through more inclusive decision making, as well as its positive
impact on the identity of the group of reasoners. Relatedly, recognizing that all groups
cannot be fully inclusive, research into how to educate citizens to understand and
assume the responsibility of being representatives for those not present is needed.

Alleviating School-Based Problems

In addition to influences that seep from larger society into our classrooms, schools
also face challenges in teaching good civic reasoning and discourse. While all class-
rooms are civic spaces and ideally should contribute to citizen development, that does
not mean that all classes are equally tasked with emphasizing citizenship or preparing
for democracy. These aims have historically been most pronounced in social studies
and history courses. Put simply, there is often insufficient time and attention devoted to
citizenship education across the curriculum. This is especially the case in social s­ tudies
and history. While some recent trends show renewed emphasis on these areas, they
have been squeezed from the school day in order to accommodate more instruction in
heavily tested subject areas like math and language arts across the past two decades
(Gould et al., 2001; Hodgin & Kahne, 2019; McMurrer, 2008). Within the social studies
and history courses that do remain, more focus should be placed on determining the
content needed within them and how it might be tied to the teaching of related civic
skills and dispositions situated within an inquiry-based classroom.
Moreover, even within the heavily tested disciplines, more integration of the knowl-
edge, skills, values, and dispositions of civic reasoning is needed. This includes math-
ematics education that engages in data literacy, explanatory modeling, and making
arguments based on numerical evidence from charts and info graphs. It also includes
science education that helps students to understand how scientific communities work
in order to build justified trust in them and participation in them (citizen science, for
example), while also enabling budding citizens to critically investigate scientific infor-
mation. Math and science curricula should be organized around joint problem solving
as well as critical discussions of methods and results. Finally, this includes focus in
language arts and foreign language classrooms on exploring differing points of view,
practicing empathy with characters in literary and non-fictional texts, engaging with
morally complex scenarios, practicing self-reflection sparked through engagement
with literature, and learning critical media literacy.
Even when citizenship education is taught, we know that there is considerable
inequity in its quality and quantity, with poorer students and children of color more
likely to be underserved (Levinson, 2014). Moreover, the digital resources and critical
media literacy instruction needed to attend to the particular challenges raised in online
settings varies considerably across places and populations (Kahne et al., 2012). Within
schools, we must also draw attention to the conditions that run counter to participa-
tion in civic reasoning and discourse. Silence policies and “no excuses” disciplinary
approaches stamp out spaces for practicing discourse, let alone engaging in warranted
dissent (Ben-Porath, 2013). Yet, even in far less extreme situations, the norms of our
schools may favor passive learning about government operations over the sort of active
DEFINING AND IMPLEMENTING CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE 47

engagement needed to cultivate habits of participation in civic reasoning and discourse.

Instead, we must craft engaging action and experiential civic education that takes up
the civic question, that does civic reasoning and discourse, rather than simply teaching
about it, if at all.
Teacher education courses can equip teachers with approaches that help to establish
new classroom norms and particular knowledge of critical civic media literacy that can
be shared with students. Education scholars, including curriculum designers, might
especially focus on practices that align the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Frame-
work for Social Studies State Standards and socio-emotional learning (Collaborative
for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning and others) with civic reasoning and
discourse, offering approaches that integrate teaching for civic reasoning and discourse
with other valued aspects of the curriculum. The C3 Framework, for example, is an
inquiry-based approach to compelling and authentic questions that requires inclusive
participation and aims to answer those questions with a summative argument, an
approach well aligned with that articulated here. Finally, educational publics composed
of education researchers, curriculum makers, teachers, and members of particular
school communities must take up the question of “What should we do?” as they delib-
erate and determine the particular content knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed
for learning how to participate well in civic reasoning and discourse.

Allowing for Differences Among Citizens

While the author has articulated knowledge, skills, dispositions, and values that
support and enhance civic reasoning and discourse, not all citizens should be expected
to learn and demonstrate the same ones. Indeed, we can bring differing and compli-
mentary components together to produce good civic reasoning and discourse.
But, significantly, not everyone is situated in our society as equal reasoning partners
and some of the components of civic reasoning and education for it as depicted here
have long been wrapped up with practices of injustice and inequity in the United States.
Some have been systematically denied to Americans of color or those with less wealth
or power. Some have been crafted by only a sliver of the population and therefore lack
not only the voice and input of others, but also fail to encapsulate the experiences of
those for whom some longstanding American ideas have rarely been achievable or
equitably provided. Yet, it is important to recognize that despite those injustices and
inequitable educational opportunities, many members of communities not in positions
of recognized power have substantially contributed to civic reasoning and have resisted
undemocratic practices.
On the other hand, the reasoning of citizens inhabiting positions of privilege is also
sometimes undermined by an array of limitations that arise from their privilege, some
of which are overlooked or downplayed because they are common among powerful or
mainstream people. These components, then, have been shaped by agendas of power
that must be acknowledged, analyzed, called out, and challenged. While we do need
some shared ways of communicating that build on common skills and values, we can
also be more inclusive of multiple approaches and more critical of dominant ways.
Some of the prevailing ways that have served many Americans well in the past may
then be revised, broadened, and improved to serve us well now and in the future.
48 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

Recognizing that demographics and injustice impact participation and the develop-
ment of citizenship, our schools may need to vary the knowledge, skills, dispositions,
and values they teach. Given inequitable starting positions for participation that grow
out of social injustice as well as differing experiences at home, some citizens may need
to learn components that depend on how they are positioned in society or on aspects
of their personalities. As just one example, some may need to develop assertiveness,
while others learn humility. Given problems in our non-ideal democracy, we may need
to emphasize some components over others. Currently, this might mean teaching more
about digital civility and critical media literacy. While educating for civic reasoning and
discourse requires sufficient access to the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and values
depicted here, teachers and communities can vary their emphasis on those components
to respond to the strengths and needs of their citizens as well as the particular struggles
they face in democracy.

MOVING FORWARD
In this chapter, the author has articulated civic reasoning as the reasoning we do as
we answer the civic question of “What should we do?” Such reasoning is civic in that
it addresses topics of shared concern, is a matter of our collective identity, and shapes
the manner in which we relate to each other. Civic discourse is a means or method
by which we engage in civic reasoning. Both face some significant challenges today.
Better understanding the obstacles and constructing pathways past them will require
cross-disciplinary research, bringing together education scholars with philosophers,
psychologists, political scientists, and more. Moreover, we must go beyond just civic
reasoning and discourse to understand and nurture civic action and agency in students.
The contributions of this chapter on the philosophical and moral foundations of civic
reasoning and discourse may help lay a groundwork for continued discussion as we
work to determine what we should do about citizenship education.1

1  The author thanks Anthony Laden for his significant contributions to the section on logic and r­ ationality
and the section on values, virtues, and dispositions. The author also appreciates Jennifer Morton for bring-
ing attention to some of problems of civic discourse, and Walter Parker, whose work not only shapes the
vision for citizenship education advanced here, but also for helpful suggestions throughout this ­paper,
including emphasizing the role of content in education for civic reasoning and discourse. The author thanks
Barrett Smith for his careful reading of a draft. Finally, a special thank you to Peter Levine, whose ideas on
the key civic question, trustworthiness of knowledge creation, and ideas on balancing inquiry and content
in citizenship education have significantly shaped this chapter.
DEFINING AND IMPLEMENTING CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE 49

Recommendations for Practice

• Collaborative problem solving using an inquiry approach: Civic reasoning often arises
when we find ourselves facing problems. Inquiry brings citizens together to make sense of
and solve problems together. Inquiry is invoked to investigate the world, hypothesize ways to
solve our problems, and experiment with solutions. The best forms of citizenship education
model and practice this sort of critical, problem-based learning. They move beyond just civics
content knowledge to teach both with and for inquiry.
• Development of informed trust of institutions and authority: Knowledge creation occurs
socially and is often carried out by institutions. Having knowledge typically requires that we
trust other people and institutions, especially those with expertise. It is not rational, however, to
automatically trust others; rather, citizens must learn how to decide which people and institu­
tions are worthy of trust.
• Critical media literacy: Given the pervasive use of technology and media to circulate civic
knowledge and engage in civic discourse, critical media literacy is an essential skill for navi­
gating such spaces well. Critical media literacy can help students identify fake news, biased
interpretations, or otherwise faulty information. Moreover, it can help students detect and
analyze power and ideology at play in the media, including identifying how they manipulate
emotions and cognitive biases.
• Empathy building: Working to see the world from another person’s perspective can help us
better relate to other citizens. Through empathizing, we come to recognize the personal stake
and emotional ties others may have to an issue. This can then dispose us to make more
­informed decisions that better attend to the well-being of others. Empathy requires us to listen
and learn from others, to imagine the emotions and experiences of others, and to be open to
changing ourselves as a result.
• Civility as responsiveness: Too often, civility is understood merely as being polite in civic
discussions. But civility should be understood in a much richer way as responsiveness. As a
form of engagement with others, civility concerns our disposition toward open and ongoing
cooperation in a just dialogue with others. It affirms the dignity and humanity of others, even
as we may disagree with or challenge them.
• Skills of and disposition to dissent: Healthy democracy relies upon quality dissent, where
citizens critique the status quo, raise awareness of problems, and put forward alternatives.
This sort of disagreement can be a source of better civic reasoning for it brings forward minor­
ity views, reveals faulty beliefs, and overcomes some of the problems group think or inertia.
Citizens need to learn how to take seriously and respond to the dissent of others so that their
civic reasoning is better informed.
• Openness to compromise: To move forward out of moments of impasse, citizens must be
open to compromise, where they may strike a deal between their own desire or belief and
someone else’s. Sometimes, this entails giving up parts of one’s own stance in order to reach
an agreement with those whose stance is considerably different. Other times, this entails craft­
ing new shared perspectives between disagreeing parties.
• Content knowledge: While inquiry may be the primary process for solving shared problems, it
often relies upon content knowledge, including political and historical knowledge. Citizens need
to know about politics and democratic practices and procedures. Knowing what has been tried
in the past can help us make wiser decisions for the future. Skills of historical interpretation
can help us use identify legitimate sources and use evidence to reach justified conclusions.
50 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

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 2

Civic Reasoning and Discourse:

Perspectives from Learning and
Human Development Research
Carol D. Lee, Northwestern University
Na’ilah Suad Nasir, Spencer Foundation
Natalia Smirnov, Independent Researcher
Adria Carrington, Chicago Public Schools (retired)

With the Assistance of:

Megan Bang, Northwestern University
Hyman Bass, University of Michigan
Andrea A. diSessa, University of California, Berkeley
Abby Reisman, University of Pennsylvania
Leoandra Onnie Rogers, Northwestern University
Alan H. Schoenfeld, University of California, Berkeley
Margaret Beale Spencer, University of Chicago
William F. Tate IV, University of South Carolina
Elliott Turiel, University of California, Berkeley

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
IMPORTANCE OF CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE FOR A
WORKING DEMOCRACY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
DEFINITIONS OF CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE, AND
ANCHORING VIGNETTE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
COMPLEXITY OF THE PROBLEM SPACE FROM HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
AND LEARNING PERSPECTIVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
HOW PEOPLE LEARN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN LEARNING AND ISSUES OF DEVELOPMENT. . . . .63
THE CONTRIBUTION OF MORAL REASONING AND IDENTITY TO CIVIC
REASONING AND DISCOURSE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Moral Development, 64
Identity Development, 67

53
54 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

AFFORDANCES AND IMPERATIVES OF THE ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES

TO SUPPORT CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Literacy, 70
Literature, 72
History/Social Studies, 75
Math, 81
Science, 85
Civic Discourse, 90
SUMMARY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR RESEARCH, PRACTICE, AND POLICY. . . . . . . . . . . . 97
REFERENCES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

INTRODUCTION
This chapter examines the issues, challenges, and opportunities relevant to civic
reasoning and discourse from the perspective of research on learning and human
development. These connected fields of study have significant implications for the
processes of formalizing and interpreting arguments, considering divergent commu-
nity perspectives, analyzing complex processes and potential social outcomes, and
developing solutions to ill-structured and far-reaching problems of civic scale, which
lack a singularly correct and apparent answer (Torney-Purta, 1995). The authors do
not propose that supporting the development of civic reasoning and discourse in K–12
schooling will in itself directly impact civic action through policy and practices in the
broader society. Rather, this project seeks to better understand how to prepare current
and future generations with the skill sets and dispositions that increase the likelihood
that they will be active civic agents as adults. At the same time, the authors anticipate
that, if schools enable the kinds of recommendations made in this chapter, then there
will be increased cases of young people in middle and high school who will indeed
engage in civic action as youth, such as the recent anti-violence movement sparked by
students at Parkland High School in Florida, the global Sunrise Movement of young
people fighting to stop the climate crisis, the historical role of youth in the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1960s, and the nationwide protests (indeed, international) following
the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.
The authors engage this complex problem space through the following strategies:
first, the chapter presents definitions of civic reasoning and discourse and outlines the
basic learning and development principles entailed in these interrelated processes. Also
offered is an anchoring vignette from a complex, contemporary situation to which the
authors return throughout the chapter as an object of analysis and practical applica-
tion. The chapter begins with an outline of key ideas from research in the sciences of
learning that inform how we understand the cognitive demands of civic reasoning
and discourse. The authors then explore how theories and research on human devel-
opment, particularly with regard to identity, belonging, and moral development, are
fundamentally involved in the work of civic cognition and debate. The chapter moves
to highlight major theories and advances across the disciplinary approaches that may be
of particular use to the tasks of civic reasoning and discourse, as informed by findings
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 55

from the learning sciences and human development, and concludes with a discussion
of research on learning and development, emphasizing strategies that core academic
disciplines can take up to support the socializing of civic reasoning and discourse,
including implications for future research and practice.

IMPORTANCE OF CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

FOR A WORKING DEMOCRACY
Support for civic reasoning and opportunities for robust civic discourse are essen-
tial for a successful working democracy—a governance system in which the citizens
themselves hold the power to make decisions, whether through direct participation or
through election of representative officers, as in the United States. The ability to col-
lectively decide on a just and mutually beneficial course of coordinated action, and to
acknowledge and correct previously enacted community harm, requires deep historical
knowledge and knowledge of our political system of governance, scientific and tech-
nical knowledge, logical reasoning ability, capacity to empathize with multiple social
and psychological perspectives, understanding of economic principles and ecological
systems, and skill at formulating and communicating arguments in multiple modalities.
The challenges of civic decision making in the United States are well established
and hotly debated. Preparing youth to engage in civic reasoning and discourse has
been viewed largely as the purview of civics education, often reduced to a senior level
civics course in high school and tests on the United States and state constitutions.
Nationally, we examine youth’s knowledge about civics as a domain in grades 4, 8,
and 12 through the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) civics assess-
ment every 4 years. The civics assessment examines what students know in terms of
knowledge, skills, and dispositions. The knowledge base concentrates on understand-
ing our political system, its history, how it functions, how citizens can engage it, and
history and geography of the United States. The intellectual skills include identification
and description, explanation and analysis, and evaluation and argumentation. Civics
courses typically work to support dispositions such as becoming an independent
member of society; assuming the personal, political, and economic responsibilities of a
citizen; respecting individual worth and human dignity; participating in civic affairs in
an informed, thoughtful, and effective manner; and promoting the healthy functioning
of American constitutional democracy.
While the NAEP assessment analyzes a national sample of students in both public
and private schools, because the U.S. federal government leaves the power to individual
states to legislate mandatory curricula in schools, access to civic education is starkly
uneven across the country. As of 2018, only 19 states required a civics exam to be passed
as a qualifier for graduation, and only 36 mandated that at least a semester-long civics
class be offered during a student’s high school career. Just eight states specified that
students receive 1 full year of civics education (Education Week, 2018). Across the board,
few districts provide the necessary training and materials for educators to effectively
teach civic content and skills; when they do, the resources typically come from outside,
nonprofit organizations and vary considerably in quality.
Although some states have made civic education a legislative priority in recent
years (e.g., between 2015 and 2019 Illinois passed new civic education requirements for
56 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

both high school and middle school students), other states are still lagging behind. In
2018, 14 students ranging in age from preschool to high school filed a lawsuit against
their home state of Rhode Island for not providing them with adequate civic educa-
tion (Goldstein, 2018). One of the plaintiffs, high school senior Aleita Cook, claimed
that the two required social studies courses she took at Providence Career & Technical
­Academy—World and American history—taught her “mostly about wars,” failing to
prepare her to understand the basics of the U.S. bipartisan system, participate in con-
temporary political debates, or file her taxes.
The impacts of these educational omissions are evident across the public sphere.
Only one-quarter of 8th grade students scored “proficient” or above on NAEP’s civics
assessment in 2014. There were no significant differences for 8th graders in the 2018
NAEP civics assessment. Earlier results from 2010 for 4th and 12th graders yielded
similar results. The level of political polarization—the gap between liberals and
­conservatives—is the highest it has ever been in the 25 years since the Pew Research
Center has begun tracking it (Doherty, 2017). Polarized political identification correlates
with divisive media consumption habits and distrust of politically contrasting institu-
tional news sources (Tucker et al., 2018), while the spread of “misinformation”—vague,
false, and misleading facts—on social media is so rampant that it earned the term the
2018 “word of the year” status on Dictionary.com. In 2019, the Gun Violence Archive
recorded 418 mass shootings across the country, many of the deadliest ones occurring in
schools, churches, and shopping centers, intentionally planned and executed as attacks
on religious and ethnic minorities (Gun Violence Archive, 2020). These aggregated
trends are evidence that the collective capacity for civic reasoning and discourse in the
United States is not simply weak; it is catastrophically broken. The educational policy
and research communities have a responsibility to facilitate access to the knowledge
base that can inform children, teachers, and the population at large in their efforts to
effectively make sense of ongoing political conflicts and to learn to think and act rea-
sonably and morally about ongoing social challenges.

DEFINITIONS OF CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE,

AND ANCHORING VIGNETTE
Throughout this chapter, the authors orient discussion of the learning and devel-
opmental issues entailed in civic reasoning and discourse around the following defini-
tions, developed by the committee for this initiative:

To reason civically is to ask what we should do, where “we” is a group of any size,
outside the family, to which the individual belongs.... The question always has an
ethical dimension: which means and which ends should we choose?... And the ques-
tion requires a rigorous empirical understanding of the situation, the most relevant
institutions, and the likely outcomes of various decisions. Emotions—from empathy to
righteous indignation—also provide input for civic reasoning and should be influenced
by reasoning.

Discourse is necessary because discussing with others is the best way of combating
our individual cognitive and ethical limitations and biases. But discourse can go badly
because of groupthink, propaganda, bias, lack of empathy, exclusion of perspectives,
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 57

and other dysfunctions. Thus, education (broadly defined) should motivate people
to feel that they are part of groups that reason together about what to do and should
strengthen their dispositions, skills, and knowledge so that they reason well. Putting the
results of a discussion into practice and reflecting on the outcome is one way to learn
civic reasoning, but it is also possible to learn from simulations, observations, data,
history, and the lived experiences of students.

The previous definitions imply that civic reasoning and discourse inherently entail the
application of knowledge, sensemaking abilities, moral principles, and communication
skills within the context of a living and historically situated community—the same
activities entailed in learning and human development more broadly. The authors’ goal
with this chapter is to demonstrate how specific principles and theories derived from
research can inform educational design and policy for civic reasoning and discourse.
The chapter grounds its discussions in an anchoring vignette drawn from a complex
civics dilemma in the United States. This situation was selected for several reasons:
(1) it is both current and historically implicated, (2) it involves competing interests, and
(3) there is no single answer to the dilemmas it presents.

On a hot August day in 2019, the busy work routine of several poultry factories in
­Mississippi was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of 600 agents from U.S. Immigra-
tion and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—a federal agency overseeing immigration law.
The ICE agents arrested 680 factory employees across multiple plant locations, citing
their status as undocumented immigrants as grounds for detaining them and launching
deportation proceedings. The workers had no choice but to follow the armed agents,
and the factory management had no power to protect their staff from the raid. Some of
the factories lost nearly half of their workers—many of whom had used fake names and
social security numbers to access the right to work at the chicken plant and pay taxes on
their earnings. The events of the ICE sting affected not only the detainees themselves,
but practically every member of the town’s community in a cascade of consequences:
the workers’ children who were left without parents; their extended family members
who had to scramble to take care of the children and the remaining responsibilities of
the detained workers; the factory employees who were left without trained colleagues
to meet the already exhausting daily poultry processing quotas; workers’ neighbors
and churches organizing to provide aid to the affected families; landlords suddenly
left without reliable tenants; and the town’s teachers having to face classrooms of
traumatized, abandoned children and risking their own job security if school enroll-
ments dropped. As the ICE buses pulled away, packed with detained workers, a factory
­employee who was left behind suggested an even bigger national impact: “This will
affect the economy. Without them here, how will you get your chicken?” (Reporting
sourced from Jordan, 2019; Solis & Amy, 2019)

In taking up this situation and its consequences as an anchoring case for unpacking
the complexity of civic reasoning and discourse, we contend with the question of what
is entailed in the activity of deciding “what we should do” about “it.” As the previ-
ous definitions suggest, a primary ethical consideration is deciding who is included
in the “we”—is it just employees of the poultry plant, just residents of the Mississippi
town where the raid took place, only legal American citizens living in Mississippi, or
only adults who are eligible to vote? Or does the “we” include the detained workers
58 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

as well, regardless of their immigration status, and their children, or the teachers
who might live in different towns but care for the children inside the county’s public
schools? Does it include their families in other countries who depend on the workers’
earnings? Does the “we” include other residents of the United States who do not live
in Mississippi or personally know any of the detainees? Does the “we” apply only to
people who eat chicken processed at the plant or also those who ethically reject factory
farming of animals?
What are means and ends that are available for reasoning and decision making
about this situation? Do “we” decide that our main priority is resuming normal eco-
nomic activity in the plant and country—making sure “everyone gets their chicken”
by whatever means necessary? Or do we decide that reuniting detained parents with
their children is most important? What legal and political tools are available in pursuit
of either end goal? Why does a federal agency have the jurisdiction to make a surprise
raid inside a commercial plant in Mississippi? Is the company responsible for its hiring
practices or the detained workers for forging identity documents in order to work? Is
the U.S. government responsible for catalyzing economic policies that impoverish and
destabilize its southern neighbors, motivating people to migrate to the United States
illegally? Do “we” care most about punishing law-breakers or about modifying our
laws and practices to ensure collective well-being?
In reasoning about this situation, how might we think about various outcomes of
different decisions? For example, what might happen if the local residents organize
a protest against ICE or other employees of the plant strike in solidarity with the
­detainees? What might happen if nothing is done and unattended children are left
without their parents for an indefinite amount of time? What are the tools available for
thinking through these complex sequences of events? Could we use historical docu-
mentaries or participatory simulations to play out and reflect on different strategies?
What are the expectations for civic discourse in such a moment? The urgency of such
discourse? What does it mean to discuss policy decisions that hold children’s lives in
the balance?
Whose feelings and livelihoods should be taken into consideration, whether or not
they are included in the “we” who get to decide what to do—those of children and
families? Business owners? Potential abusers of immigration laws? Future generations?
Where might civic discourse about these dilemmas even take place? In an 8th grade
social studies classroom? In a town hall or a church basement? What biases and
information sources will be acknowledged and ignored? What historical cases will be
brought up as precedents or alternatives? Will some young people have no opportunity
to engage in discourse about these issues at all, because the teacher will be afraid of
holding space for a controversial discussion or rush to cover content for the next state
exam?
As this sampling of questions suggests, both understanding the issue and seeking
to address the issue involve concerns around the moral and ethical dimensions of the
problem space, and how perceptions of the self and others play out in influencing
both how one understands the problem as well as how and if one seeks to engage in
civic action to address the problem. Schools have a critical role in preparing students
to grapple with such questions, and to develop the knowledge and dispositions that
increase the likelihood that they will engage in civic action.
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 59

COMPLEXITY OF THE PROBLEM SPACE FROM

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING PERSPECTIVES
There is a breadth of knowledge, dispositions, and identity orientations that are
entailed in people engaging in the work of civic reasoning and discourse, including
knowledge of a wide array of content and concepts across multiple domains, disposi-
tions that are epistemological, moral, and ethical, and identity orientations that involve
perceptions of the self and of others. This breadth of knowledge, dispositions, and
identity orientations operates within ecological systems that are always dynamic. This
chapter seeks to present a discussion of this breadth of knowledge, dispositions, and
identity orientations, documenting the research base from across relevant disciplines
that help us understand both the nature of such knowledge as well as how it develops
over time and the conditions to facilitate or challenge this development. The authors
assert that because of this complexity, it is unreasonable to believe that the knowledge
and dispositions for civic reasoning and discourse can be developed in only one sector
of our socialization systems (e.g., in the civics courses some students are required to
take in public schooling) or only at certain points in life course development (i.e.,
adolescence).
The authors believe that efforts to prepare young people for such complex problem
solving must be informed by an empirically supported knowledge base. To the extent
that so much attention to civics-related learning has been deemed cognitive, it has
been limited in its ecological validity. There is an emerging body of work that seeks to
understand the dynamic intersections among thinking, perceptions, and emotions in
human learning and development and how these unfold over time in terms of where
people are in the life course (Osher et al., 2018). This integrative frame draws from
research in cognition, the learning sciences, human development, and social psychol-
ogy. This chapter will describe foundational findings from these disciplines and their
relevance for engaging in civic reasoning, debate, and discourse, and will address not
only broad constructs about human learning but also how these play out in terms of
learning in core academic disciplines. Each content area can contribute to the breadth
of knowledge that people need to understand the complex civic dilemmas we face
and analyze the range of responses we can collectively pursue. The authors focus on
academic disciplines that currently structure the primary units of public schooling:
literacy, literature, history and social studies, math, science, and the cross-disciplinary
role of discourse repertories in classrooms.

HOW PEOPLE LEARN

In 1999 the National Research Council commissioned an integrative study of human
learning. The project produced the landmark report How People Learn (National Research
Council, 2000), which outlined the foundational theories of the sciences of learning,
including the processes of knowledge acquisition, organization and transfer across
contexts, problem solving, conceptual change, and the development and structure of
expertise. The report emphasized the salience of learners’ prior knowledge—intuitive
and cultural understandings of phenomena—in the task of learning new concepts
and approaching unfamiliar problems. Also emphasized was the significance in dif-
ferences between novices’ organization of knowledge—often shallow, fractured, and
60 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

contradictory—and domain experts’ organization of knowledge, reflecting a deep

structure of conceptual and contextual relationships in a given field. Of particular chal-
lenge, then, is the facilitation of conceptual change in learners—the task of supporting
individuals to both revise potentially existing misconceptions or partial understandings
and construct new cognitive frameworks to accommodate new-to-them ideas (diSessa,
2002; diSessa & Sherin, 1998). How People Learn additionally emphasized that knowl-
edge structures and learning processes are social by emerging and reinforcing through
interpersonal interaction, situated in specific cultural settings and activity, mediated by
cognitive and cultural tools including language and artifacts, and distributed across
objects, physical representations, and relationships within the environment. Finally,
the report and follow-up texts proposed recommendations for the design of learning
environments to support learning in accordance with these scientific understandings
(National Research Council, 1999, 2005). These include anticipating, surfacing, and
incorporating learners’ prior knowledge, providing opportunities to build varied rep-
ertoires of real-world problems in the domain, and supporting metacognitive relation-
ships to domain knowledge through collaborative and reflective activities.
In 2018, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine issued
a follow-up consensus study report—How People Learn II—that sought to expand the
focus on cognition to include greater attention to issues of culture and context, moving
beyond the focus on thinking as solely an activity within an individual’s brain (National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018). Incorporating emerging and
complementary empirical findings from neurosciences (cognitive, social, cultural),
research on human development, and two decades of advances in learning sciences,
the expanded view of learning emphasized by how the thinking and problem solving
that humans engage in is multi-faceted, richly cultured, and dynamic. This complex
systems perspective (Fischer & Bidell, 1998) further acknowledges that humans’ foun-
dational abilities and dispositions for learning are inherited from our evolution as a
species (Lee et al., 2020; Packer & Cole, 2020; Tomasello, 1999, Quartz & Sejnowski,
2002). These dispositions include newborn humans’ tendencies to explore their imme-
diate physical and social world and seek to impose meaning on their experiences in
the world, and the structures for storing these experiences and meanings as schemas
embodied physically in the body and in neural networks in the brain (Kitayama & Park,
2010). Humans’ responses to experience in the world are initially physically embodied
through their senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell), and taken up through chemical
responses that are transmitted to the brain. These chemical responses are associated
with the emotional salience human beings impose on experience, which are in turn
implicated in their decision making and behavior (Damasio, 1995). Despite the capaci-
ties of rationality, long-term thinking, and imagination that are unique features of the
human species, the evolutionarily inherited limbic system located in the amygdala can
overtake systems in the frontal lobe that drive cognition and goal orientation, particu-
larly under perceptions of stress (Adam, 2012). Thus, the emotional salience attributed
to experience is central to understanding human thinking and action.
Humans’ responses to experience are additionally influenced by ego-focused orien-
tations (i.e., who we think we are) that are formed not only by individually inherited
dispositions but also by the social relationships we have within and across contexts,
with relationships in family life as foundational (Spencer, 2006). Finally, our perceptions
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 61

of task relevance and personal efficacy always serve as filters for how we process expe-
riences in the world (Bandura, 1993). Perception of relevance is both individual and
social: sometimes we persist in problem solving because the task is personally relevant
in terms of either a short- or long-term goal. Sometimes that goal is purely individual,
and sometimes it is related to our sense of social obligation to others (Markus &
­Kitayama, 1991). We are also more likely to persist in complex problem solving when
we feel a sense of efficacy—a belief in our ability to eventually find a solution to the
problem, even if we are failing in the moment.
In summary, the new theories of learning acknowledge the dynamic complexity and
cultural and cognitive variation in the ways that people might represent and engage
with the world, including storing and retrieving information, organizing social activity,
and solving problems (Lee, 2017). This “no best way” characterization of how people
learn thus recognizes the underlying importance of the species’ physical, cultural, and
neurological diversity. Consequently, our considerations for developing learning envi-
ronments need to extend beyond issues of knowledge organization and representation,
and attend to the design of sensory stimuli, cultural resonance, embodied activity, and
emotional safety. These multi-dimensional foci are especially important in the design of
learning environments intended to prepare young people for the complex and poten-
tially stressful challenges of civic reasoning, discourse, and engagement.
Taking this complexity into account, we can see how the foundations of children
learning to reason about civic issues and engage in civic discourse begin at a very young
age and are influenced by every aspect of the child’s experience in the world. Small
children learn about the world from observation, exploration, and imitation (Meltzoff,
1988; Meltzoff & Decety, 2003). For example, they learn intuitively about gravity as a
force by picking up objects, letting them go, and seeing them fall (diSessa, 1982). They
learn intuitively about foundational mathematical constructs like “more” and “less”
by manipulating quantities in goal-directed behaviors (Starkey & Gelman, 1982; Wynn,
1992). They know when they want more or fewer objects that can be quantified. They
learn about language interactions even as infants, responding to linguistic and verbal
inputs from caregivers and siblings even when they do not have the formal linguistic
repertoires to respond (Bloom, 1976/2013; Kuhl & Meltzoff, 1996). Infants are born
with the ability to hear and discern all of the sounds of all human languages, but prune
their attention over time to the sounds that they most routinely hear (Ferjan Ramírez et
al., 2017; Kuhl & Meltzoff, 1996)—think about the difficulty that an English-speaking
adult has in hearing and producing sounds in Mandarin or Xhosa. Children learn about
narrative structures well before they can read by listening to stories in which people
engage in goal-directed behaviors (Bruner, 1990; Mandler, 1987). They also learn about
moral constructs of good and bad by observing how other people treat one another
and experiencing the consequences of their actions when they treat others well or
badly (Kohlberg, 1964; Nasir & Kirshner, 2003; Turiel, 2007). They hear their immedi-
ate family, friends, strangers, and teachers make statements about the value of certain
groups of people, ideas, and activities, and they seek to extrapolate patterns that they
then test against future experience, leading to the embodiment of content and concepts
that are stored in neural networks in long-term memory.
Through this process, children develop epistemic frames that they later bring to
bear when making sense of civic arguments (Elby & Hammer, 2010). In other words,
62 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

children are continuously forming and modifying a complex and dynamic picture of
the world and social relations and they certainly do not come to their first civics course
in 4th, 8th, or 12th grade as blank slates. This development of foundational knowledge
suggests—and we know from experience—that even very young children can develop
interpretations of the immigration case we have described, particularly to the extent
that they have some direct experiences related to the case. For instance, children whose
parents are undocumented who see the case presented on television, children who know
people who have been arrested and taken away from their families, or children who
read stories about child separation may draw on their background knowledge when
sensemaking about the case. In any of these contexts, even young children develop a
foundational sense of right and wrong and of good and bad. Figure 2-1 captures the
multiple dimensions of learning.
However, children do not intuitively and organically acquire the ability to think
about civic problems like experts of history, political theory, economics, ethics, climate
science, or environmental engineering. We cannot reasonably expect schools to prepare
students to develop professional expertise in all of these domains. Rather, we want to
consider the specific educational imperatives involved in preparing students for civic
reasoning and discourse as defined in the introduction. Civic reasoning entails engaging
with knowledge of the history of the situation, consideration of relevant stakeholders,
an ethical determination of responsible group(s), an analysis of available means and
ends, and sense of individual and collective efficacy in pursuing them. Civic reason-
ing also goes beyond purely rational considerations to include awareness of emotional
inputs, such as empathy or motivation. Discourse involves the norms for language use
and interaction, as well as norms for what counts as evidence and warrants to support
claims. The complexity of these tasks requires that the training in the analysis and inter-
rogation of evidence, discussion, perspective taking, and problem solving is distributed

FIGURE 2-1  Multiple dimensions of learning.

PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 63

across time, providing students with repeated opportunities from childhood through
adolescence to develop capacities and dispositions to engage in these activities. It also
requires that the educational experiences support students to do the necessary work
to engage in conceptual change.
Conceptual change is the process through which we learn new concepts and build
new knowledge (diSessa, 2002). Because prior knowledge is so central to how we
approach new problems, it is important to understand potential relationships between
what we already know and targets of new learning. Issues of conceptual change are
important for learning to engage in civic reasoning, debate, and discourse for several
reasons. First, in many domains relevant to civic topics, people develop knowledge
and beliefs from their everyday experiences in the world. This knowledge and these
beliefs may be inaccurate in relation to an important topic in civic issues. Second, when
our prior knowledge is in conflict with new learning targets, learning environments
that seek to facilitate new learning must address those conflicts. If we hope to facilitate
conceptual change, we need to consider both what are often intuitive understandings,
derived from our experiences in the everyday social and physical world, as well as
orientations around whether what we think we know is contestable or whether it is
definitive. For example, in the opening vignette, if young people approach the situa-
tion with the assumption that immigration hurts job prospects for U.S. citizens, that
intuitive understanding on their part may shape their uptake of alternative perspec-
tives on immigration. It may also provide a starting point for a study of the historical
and economic function of immigration in American society that might be undertaken
in schools.

INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN LEARNING AND ISSUES OF DEVELOPMENT

The cognitive foundations of human learning help us understand only part of the
complexities of civic reasoning and discourse. This is because engaging in civic reason-
ing and discourse also involves moral and ethical reasoning and identity commitments.
Historically and most heightened today are the ways that identity orientations influ-
ence political decision making. These identity orientations are connected with issues
around race and ethnicity, class, gender orientations, and with regard to our relations
with other countries, conceptions around national identity. In the United States, identity
orientations around race and ethnicity are deeply rooted in our history and reinforced
by institutions, policies, and practices. While people empirically belong to multiple
cultural communities, with cultural communities being defined by routine participa-
tion in shared cultural practices (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003), there are hierarchies among
these communities such that they do not hold equal status for us and serve different
functions. For example, our identification with our nuclear and extended families often
form a foundation for how we see ourselves and how we define our most basic com-
mitments. It is from our experiences in family life that we develop our foundational
beliefs about morality. Early life experiences shape so much about us (JAMA/Archives
Journals, 2010; Osher et al., 2018). At the same time, our participation in other related
social networks—schools, community settings, peer and extended familial social net-
works—contribute substantially to our moral beliefs.
64 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

Specifically, we must consider how processes of moral development and identity devel-
opment interact with learning processes and opportunities and how they deeply impact
young people’s ability to engage in civic reasoning and discourse. Any treatment of
instruction or content learning without a deep consideration of the developmental
needs of learning is likely to be a partial picture and result in ineffective teaching. To
effectively support young people in developing the kinds of critical and sophisticated
skills they need to fully engage in civic reasoning and discourse, and to understand
what might prevent that engagement, we must attend to what we know from psycho-
logical studies of moral and identity development.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF MORAL REASONING AND IDENTITY

TO CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

Moral Development
Moral reasoning undergirds much of our civic decision making. Our conceptions
of what constitutes good versus bad, our conceptions of what constitutes justice, our
evaluations of the internal states of others, and our abilities to empathize with others all
come into play as we wrestle with civic dilemmas. As the chapter considers the moral
dimensions of civic reasoning and their implications for K–12 education, the authors
offer a brief review of moral development in children.
Moral sensibilities develop across cultures in predictable ways. Core moral concepts
begin to develop very early on and revolve around concepts of harm or welfare (avoid-
ing harm and promoting benefits), fairness or justice, and rights. These are distinct from
reasoning about social conventions such as the conventional rules and norms of class-
rooms and school systems (Turiel, 2015; Turiel & Gingo, 2017). For example, children
understand that breaking various institutional rules (e.g., interrupting the teacher) may
lead to punishment (e.g., being publicly reprimanded) but that arbitrary punishment
or mistreatment is unfair.
Developmental research suggests that the focus of moral understanding shifts
as children move from early childhood to adolescence. While young children’s
emerging moral understandings seem to be primarily based on concerns with harm
(­physical and emotional), in late childhood and adolescence understandings of fair-
ness, rights, and social justice become better crystalized (Nucci & Turiel, 2009; Turiel,
2015). These findings are important and relevant to classroom practice in that they
refute common perceptions that children’s moral thinking is dominated by concerns
with punishment, self-interest, or the conventional standards of rules and authorities.
In fact, even young children have relatively sophisticated concepts of morality, and
can separate their own self-interest from universal moral judgments. This provides
a critical grounding for considering how one might organize learning environments
and teaching to support civic reasoning and discourse—there may be more to build
on developmentally than we might assume. It also means that these capacities can
form a base for discussion, learning, and perspective-taking in disciplines like litera-
ture or history.
Not only does moral reasoning occur relatively early, it turns out that the moral
judgments of children and adolescents constitute configurations of thinking that are
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 65

distinct from thinking about other domains of social thought—specifically, that of the
conventional norms of the social system and areas of personal jurisdiction. Moral think-
ing, revolving around welfare, justice, and rights, has features that are not contingent on
existing rules, authority dictates, or cultural practices (Helwig & Turiel, 2017; Smetana
et al., 2014). Emotions of a positive nature, including sympathy, empathy, and the
general sentiment of mutual respect, are part of all this (Turiel, 2015). An example of
moral thinking is understanding the psychological harm that cyberbullying does, and
feeling empathetic with the victims. Children also form judgments in the domain of
social conventions, involving norms that serve to coordinate social interactions within
specified social institutions. Judgments about conventional norms are contingent on
existing rules, the jurisdiction of persons in positions of authority, and accepted prac-
tices within particular social institutions. An example of social conventional thinking
is understanding that a teacher may construct certain rules in a classroom, which are
designed to keep students safe and maintain order.
The legitimacy of areas of personal jurisdiction, including concerns with choice and
autonomy, is another domain of thinking relevant to social and moral decision making
(Turiel, 2003). An example of a topic that comes under the category of personal jurisdic-
tion is that young people have the right to determine what they wear in line with their
personal preferences. All of this together suggests that moral reasoning is a complex
domain, and one that suggests early developing abilities for young children to engage
in civic reasoning and discourse in nuanced and rich ways. The complexity of these
understandings facilitates young people in being able to reason in nuanced ways about
historical events or actors, and in other disciplines such as literature as well. Figure 2-2
describes the multiple dimensions of moral reasoning.
Building on these understandings, the authors argue that education for civic rea-
soning and discourse should operate from the presumption that most children and
adolescents generally have formed sound understandings about many moral issues.
Humans have a substantive capacity for social connection, empathy, morality, and curi-
osity, and these are the very capacities that allow for (and perhaps even nurture) civic
discourse and equitable engagement (Way et al., 2018). Our questions about how to
best prepare young people frequently start from the assumption of deficit, focusing on
what we need to “teach” children and how we can help them “become” or “have more

FIGURE 2-2  Dimensions of moral reasoning.

66 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

of” whatever positive outcome/capacity is of interest—in this case, civic discourse. We

can move toward the same end of raising children who are prepared for civic discourse
by asking different questions that start from a different place.
Rather than only asking what we need to “teach” children in order for them to
engage in equitable, empathic, and generative ways, we can also ask what disrupts our
desire/ability to engage in these ways. This perspective encourages us to approach civic
discourse as a process and capacity that operates at the individual and social/structural/
societal levels; we cannot understand one level without the other. It also assumes the
good of humanity and recognizes the agency of children and youth and what they bring
to the conversation. Children are not empty vessels to be filled; they possess the very
tools (empathy, morality, interdependence) that will undergird civic discourse, and we
can learn from them. Indeed, Corsaro (2020) has written about socialization not as a
unidirectional process, but as a dialogic process where children exercise agency and
shape the settings of which they are a part. This may mean that teachers and other
adults might productively make space for the sensibilities that young people bring
about justice and equality.
However, children’s moral development is in tension with outside social influences,
such as the experience of growing up in a fundamentally hierarchical society where
inequality, abuse of power, and oppression constitute normative reality. These issues
of moral development are relevant to how children and adolescents intuit or formally
learn about unequal treatment of other human beings, especially human communities
that have been historically stigmatized through law and institutional practices. In other
words, as children develop moral values and concepts as part of their socialization pro-
cess, they see these values being unevenly applied across social groups and situations.
Consider the concept of equality—notions of equality can be traced back to at least
the time of Aristotle and beyond and are embedded in the U.S. Declaration of Inde-
pendence. In both instances, equality was strongly endorsed but not applied to large
groups of people such as women and enslaved Africans and their descendants, Native
Americans, or immigrants. Another example regarding the application (or lack thereof)
of equality is seen in research conducted in patriarchal cultures, where males who often
apply concepts of equality to other males do not do so to females (especially within
the family) (Okin, 1996). A failure to apply the moral sense of opportunity and equal
treatment is evident in contemporary democratic societies as well, including within
school systems. When we consider how to foster civic engagement and discourse, this
issue of variation of the application of moral concepts becomes a key challenge, and
one that intersects with issues of identity development. Importantly, this challenge is
a different experience for those in groups who are being left out in the way a society
applies moral concepts.
With respect to the opening vignette, even young children might feel saddened by
the thought of other children being separated from their parents and recognize that as
morally inconsistent in a society that values children’s needs. However, they may need
deeper support to make sense of that in relation to immigrants’ positioning in the U.S.
economy and the complexity of anti-immigrant sentiments.
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 67

Identity Development
Identity development is a key developmental task, one which takes place over the
life course beginning in the early years and is particularly salient during adolescence
(Erikson, 1968; Spencer, 2008). Both identity processes in general and the development
of ethnic/racial identity in particular are relevant to this discussion of the cultivation
of civic reasoning and discourse.
A core task of development is to make sense of who one is in the world, and who one
is in relation to those around us. Identity has been the subject of study in psychology
and philosophy since the early 1900s, with the early work of Charles Horton Cooley
positing the concept of the “looking glass self,” which articulated the important role
of social others on one’s conception of self (Cooley, 1902). Identity, then, is a negotia-
tion between how others—parents, teachers, peers, community members, society—see
you and the sense of self that develops from integrating and filtering those percep-
tions of others. This process is influenced by whether the perceptions are attached to
groups with which you self-identify in terms of race/ethnicity, religion, gender, class,
age, or see as other, and which groups are considered culturally default, dominant, or
desired. Conceptions of identity in turn influence perceptions of tasks, settings, goals,
and motivation.
Identity becomes especially salient in adolescence as young people move from
their families as their core social interlocutors to more centrally engaging peers and
the broader world (Damon, 2008; Roeser et al., 2006). Identity issues are deeply tied
to the basic developmental need for belonging (Haugen et al., 2019; Nasir, 2012; Powell,
2012); to feel like a part of a community or group and to feel valued and connected
to others. This need for social belonging is an outgrowth of dispositions we develop
by virtue of our evolution as a species (Tomasello, 1999). In adolescence, this need for
belonging, connection, and a sense of self that gives one’s life meaning and coherence
is exacerbated, and important questions about identity and purpose begin to surface.
Adolescence is a particularly fruitful time for this identity work to occur—it is a period
in which young people are more aware of issues of personal autonomy and personal
choices; a period of greater moral defiance; and a period where young people are
seeking to sort out contradictions and tensions in what is expected of them and what
they desire. These struggles are part of a developmental process in which they are
anticipating future adult roles. The degree of anticipated personal autonomy moving
into adolescence is differentiated across cultures. In cultural communities where inter-
dependence is historically sustained, the anticipation of adult roles include how one
learns to become directly responsible for integrating personal goals with expectations
of family. In cultural communities where independence is historically sustained, the
expectations of adult roles include anticipating autonomy beyond the family (Markus
& Kitayama, 1991). Thus, the ways in which identity processes are intertwined in
ego-focused perceptions of the self and one’s self as being a part of social networks
is relevant for how we think about identity and preparation for engagement in civic
reasoning and discourse. Civic engagement entails relationships with others, so how
we imagine the others with whom we are engaged and connected is important.
Furthermore, discussions of social and political issues often have at their core some
factors having to do with whom we feel the most affiliations and how we see ourselves.
Because we inevitably belong to multiple social communities, who we think constitutes
68 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

such communities, our perceptions of access to such communities, and our beliefs about
the perceptions of others who may or may not be part of our perceived social communi-
ties add to the complexity of how identity and civic reasoning and discourse intersect.
Our families—including those who are biologically related and the communities of
caregivers who are primary agents of socialization as we grow up with whom we may
or may not have biological relations—have powerful impacts on our sense of identity.
At the same time, there are social configurations of communities of practice that can
have different meanings in the broader public space.
In the United States conceptions of social and cultural community associated with
conceptions of race and ethnicity are powerful and complex. Because conceptions of
race and ethnicity have been so consequential in U.S. history, challenges of interrogating
them are essential for development in both childhood and adolescence. We articulate
the dilemma of conceptions of race and ethnicity for several reasons. First, race is a rela-
tively recent conception of group membership in human history. In the United States,
there have certainly been historical contestations of race, for example, of who gets to be
Black or White. Relatedly, developing a healthy ethnic/racial identity is an important
part of identity development (Phinney, 1996; Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014).
Ethnic/racial identity refers to the part of one’s sense of self that is connected to
racial or ethnic group membership. Ethnic/racial identity involves both the strength of
the felt sense of connection to other group members, as well as a sense of attachment to
the group (Phinney, 1996; Sellers & Shelton, 2003; Worrell & Gardner-Kitt, 2006). Racial
identity is complex and involves many dimensions. Sellers and Shelton (2003) identify
three dimensions, including racial centrality (which gets at the salience of racial group
membership), racial ideology (referring to the qualitative meaning of racial identity),
and racial regard (which gets at how one values racial identity). Very young children
have a strong sense of in-group and out-group dynamics, and can understand race and
reinforce stereotypes through their interactions with one another (Brown, 2011; Van
Ausdale & Feagin, 2001). Research has also shown that ethnic/racial identity devel-
opment is connected to social context in key ways. For example, experiences of racial
discrimination affect the nature and salience of one’s racial identity (Kteily & Richson,
2016; Rogers & Way, 2018; Sellers et al., 1998). Similarly, for immigrant students, ethnic
identity is impacted by the attitudes toward immigrants in the local context (Brown &
Chu, 2012; Phinney et al., 2001). Also, the presence of various kinds of supports and
challenges matters for how one’s racial identity develops, and the types of adaptive or
maladaptive coping mechanisms one develops (Spencer, 2008). As another example of
the powerful role of context, we know that pedagogical approaches in classrooms can
also provide new kinds of supports and possibilities for racial identity development,
for example, through an ethnic studies or history curriculum (Dee & Penner, 2017; Paris
& Alim, 2018), or by providing opportunities for new kinds of relationships between
teachers and students (Nasir et al., 2019).
Indeed, race, culture, immigrant status, language, and social class and how these
statuses are positioned—historically, politically, and culturally—matter greatly for how
one experiences the world (English et al., 2020; Rogers & Way, 2018; Suárez-Orozco et
al., 2015). Skin color is a remarkably accurate predictor of discrimination, whereby the
darker one’s skin, the greater the degree of social exclusion and discrimination and
the less favorable educational, economic, and job outcomes become in societies such
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 69

as the United States in which race is so historically salient (Hunter, 2007; Mills, 1997).
In the United States, there is a long history of racial oppression and domination of Black,
Latinx, Asian American, and Native peoples, which has left a legacy of deep social,
political, economic, and educational inequality (Carter & Welner, 2013). Thus, the com-
plex racial terrain in the United States poses great challenges for understanding justice
and morality, and for fostering open, nuanced, and critical discourse on civic issues.
A key issue in the psychological literature related to this history of racial margin-
alization and oppression is the role of resistance as a healthy identity developmental
process (Rogers, 2018; Rogers & Way, 2018). Resistance is one of the ways individuals
negotiate and repudiate oppressive identity norms (Way & Rogers, 2017). As such, the
development of resistance is a key developmental task related to healthy racial identity
development, and it is important in understanding resistance stories to acknowledge
the context of patriarchy and racism that creates the need for such resistance. Robinson
and Ward (1991) also underscore that resistance is not a singular and uniform process
but one that is responsive to the context—some strategies are self-focused and offer an
immediate, short-term solution whereas other strategies are more group-focused with
long-term goals toward liberation. While not all forms of resistance are psychologically
healthy for an individual, it is important to recognize that the human desire to resist
oppression is normative and necessary for equality and justice (e.g., Freire, 2000; Rogers
& Way, 2018; Turiel, 2003; Ward, 2018).
Given that young people develop substantive moral understandings, it is to be
expected that they would also be critical of social inequalities and social injustices
and react with efforts to restore justice. Such responses to social inequalities and social
injustices then entail relationships between identity development and moral reasoning.
Developmental and anthropological research has shown that moral resistance is part of
people’s (adolescents and adults) everyday lives and not solely the province of political
leaders or organized movements. Moral resistance is the process of rejecting ideologies
and norms that are harmful to the self and that undermine our core needs and capacities
of human connection (vulnerability, curiosity, emotionality, empathy, morality, social
connection). Such moral resistance is a normative and necessary response to a culture
of inequality and dehumanization (Gilligan, 2011; Rogers & Way, 2018). One way this
can be done is by providing learning experiences that help young people develop ­critical
consciousness—the ability to recognize and analyze systems of inequality and the com-
mitment to take action against these systems (El-Amin et al., 2017).
These interrelated processes of identity development suggest how young people
may reason about the anchoring case set up in the beginning of the chapter involv-
ing the detaining of 680 immigrant workers. The authors hypothesize that the degree
of empathy and civic responsibility individuals in and beyond the immediate com-
munity will feel for the detained workers and their families will depend on their
own racial, ethnic, and immigrant identity, as well as their community connections
to those who share similar constellations to identities of the detained workers. How-
ever, because human identities are multi-dimensional, there may be multiple entry
points for empathy and identity connection. For example, women in the community
who are mothers might feel a particular understanding of pain for any of the workers
who are also parents, because the biological and social phenomena of mothers after
giving birth typically lead them to prioritize the needs and safety of their children.
70 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

There is also research on identity orientations of what some call the giving professions
(e.g., the ministry, medicine, teaching, firefighters), whose professional preparation/­
socialization for work in these areas focuses on ego-fulfillment/identity expression
through service to others (Shulman, 2005). In the stories following the ICE raid, the
responses from workers, church members, and children’s teachers were especially
powerful, including providing food, money, and transportation for separated family
members of the plant workers.

AFFORDANCES AND IMPERATIVES OF THE ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES

TO SUPPORT CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE
The authors have summarized the major dimensions of human learning and devel-
opment, including social settings and activities, knowledge, embodied perceptions,
dispositions, moral and ethical reasoning, and the recruitment and interrogation of
identity resources (e.g., who am I in relation to the tasks at hand). In this section they
discuss how these elements come into play as children have robust experiences across
their K–12 schooling, including their learning across all of the core academic content
areas. The authors argue that the work of preparing children and adolescents to engage
in civic reasoning and discourse must be distributed across the entire span of schooling
and not limited to civics courses, and that the design of learning environments across
these content areas must be organized in ways to address the previously identified
foundational dynamics of how people learn. Specifically, learning environments must:

• Draw and build on students’ prior knowledge,

• Promote a sense of emotional safety,
• Establish relevance through engagement with real-world problems,
• Provide opportunities to develop personal and collective efficacy through scaf-
folded and iterative challenges,
• Support students in questioning sources of information and beliefs,
• Support students in interrogating their own assumptions,
• Support students in wrestling with complex and contradictory ideas, and
• Ensure access to a multiplicity and variety of cultural and ideological perspec-
tives, including ones that resonate with students’ own lived experiences and
those that are less represented in the dominant culture.

The authors particularly focus on literacy, literature, history/social studies, mathemat-

ics, and science. However, they also recognize the highly productive role that the arts
can play in these efforts as well.

Literacy
The authors define literacy as the ability to read, write, and use language(s) for
a wide range of communication goals and across an array of media, including print,
digital, visual, audio, and computational and interactive forms. Literacy is impera-
tive for navigating the landscapes of the contemporary world; for seeking, accessing,
and analyzing information; and for participating in discourse with others. Literacy
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 71

instruction begins early as part of schooling and is reinforced across academic disci-
plines and out-of-school contexts through expectations to engage with textual artifacts
and produce work in text-dominant genres. Cross-disciplinary literacy skills require
not only generic comprehension—the skills to make inferences, deconstruct complex
sentences, and comprehend vocabulary and rhetorical structures—but also skills in
understanding how texts within the disciplines are structured and the kinds of ques-
tions that need to be invoked to interrogate such texts (Goldman et al., 2016; Lee &
Spratley, 2009; Snow, 2002). In order to actively prepare students for civic reasoning
and discourse, the authors argue that literacy instruction needs to emphasize three
core approaches: critical literacy, media/digital literacy, and computational and data
literacy.
Critical literacy involves learning to engage with print and multimodal texts with
particular attention to power, bias, and ideology embedded in the text and to the
­rhetorical structure of particular genre forms, especially genres taken to be “legitimate”
including news sources, encyclopedias, and textbooks (Lankshear et al., 1993). Critical
literacy approaches can be leveraged across the disciplines to foreground that texts are
authored by particular people in particular historical situations, and that they embed
and carry certain ideologies and perspectives while erasing or distorting others.
Media and digital literacy expands a critical literacy approach to incorporate more
contemporary media and textual genres, including visual, film, interactive, and internet
forms (Hobbs, 2010). While still focusing analysis of texts on authorship and embed-
ded ideological positions, media and digital literacy approaches also consider the text’s
interaction with living audiences and communities. Media literacy approaches invite
learners to ask how different kinds of people would interpret this message differently.
What techniques are used to manipulate your attention? This set of instructional
paradigms also emphasizes teaching learners to remix and produce their own media
in order to deepen understanding of how messages are created, circulated, and what
impact they might have in the world. One approach that can be integrated into literacy
classrooms and that is especially conducive for the development of civic literacy and
reasoning skills is civic journalism production (Smirnov et al., 2018).
Finally, we argue that computational and data literacy should be an urgent area of
attention for literacy educators across academic disciplines (Gummer & Mandinach,
2015). Data representations including simple and complex charts, graphs, and time-
tables dominate the ways arguments are presented in the public sphere, and their
seductive reduction of complexity and visually apparent legitimacy can be easily used
to manipulate citizens and information consumers to believe inaccurate statistics or
probabilities. Engagement with data can be emphasized across the curriculum, from
math to science to history classrooms. Recently, scholars (Li et al., 2020) have argued
that a holistic model of computational literacy ought to be embraced across the disci-
plines as a way of interpreting, problem solving, and building with different types
of information, drawing on concepts from computer science such as abstraction and
automation.
All of these literacy skills can and should be integrated in instruction across disci-
plines, certainly from the 3rd grade forward, at which time children’s basic decoding
skills should be sufficient to critically examine texts.
72 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

Literature
An important dimension of civic reasoning, debate, and discourse aimed at decision
making in a democracy is the willingness to consider alternative points of view and
to attempt to understand people and communities that are different from one’s own.
Such reasoning, debate, and discourse are also enhanced by people’s abilities to wrestle
with complex human conundrums—nuanced experiences that cannot be explained by
simplistic notions of human intentionality. Literature provides unique opportunities
to examine the human condition in ways that differ from expository descriptions of
events and actions. In our conception of literature we include narrative texts that are
both written (e.g., novels, short stories, plays, poems) as well as visual (e.g., narratives
in film and television). As narrative worlds they share both structure and the invoca-
tion of rhetorical and figurative tools to invite the reader/viewer into fictional worlds
that we experience as real (Tan, 2013).
Literature invites readers into narrative worlds. Just as we watch, for example,
science fiction movies about worlds that we know do not literally exist, we enter the
narrative world as if it did exist. Thus, literature offers opportunities for readers to
imaginatively engage worlds they might otherwise not know. At the same time, great
literature, literature that is sustained across time and space, also wrestles with persistent
conundrums of the human experience. What we think of as archetypal themes embody
such conundrums as wrestling with good and evil, loss of innocence, understanding
prototypical kinds of people (e.g., the hero and the anti-hero), and what constitutes
­courageous or tragic action. For example, as much as one can learn about the enslave-
ment of peoples of African descent from historical documents, in Beloved (1987), Toni
Morrison invites one to enter the human world as she explores what could lead a
mother to kill her infant daughter in order to save her from being taken back into
enslavement and the complex consequences of such a decision. Morrison’s The Bluest
Eye (1970), beyond interrogating the consequences of a Black girl evaluating her self-
worth against a White standard of beauty, also invites the reader to wrestle with under-
standing how a father could rape his own daughter. Shakespeare invites the reader
to consider the downsides of power in Macbeth (written in 1606) while Dostoevsky’s
Crime and Punishment (1866) invites the reader to contend with the nature of good and
evil in ways that deeply resonate in the present day (see Denby, 2020).
We know that sensemaking through narrative is a human disposition, one we
inherit from our evolution as a species and is a process through which we impute
meaning to experience, both our own and those of others, while seeking to understand
goal-directed behaviors and consequences (Bruner, 1990; Mandler, 1987; Tan, 2013; Van
Peer, 2008). There are several implications of skill in and dispositions to read literature
widely and about diverse communities. First, literature offers us ways to engage with
communities with whom we have no direct contact. Because segregation based on race/
ethnicity, immigrant status, and class is so prevalent in the United States, literature can
offer opportunities to engage with diversity, which is necessary for our democratic
decision-making processes. Second, literature socializes several epistemological dis-
positions (Lee, 2011; Lee et al., 2016): wrestling with complexity, valuing engagement
with the other, and using literature as a window into self-reflection. In addition, deep
literary reasoning involves paying attention not only to the surface features of liter-
ary narratives (e.g., who, what, when, where questions) but also to the rhetorical and
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 73

structural choices authors use to gain our attention and influence the abstractions we
take from the texts (Rabinowitz, 1987). This attention to rhetoric is an important skill in
civic reasoning as so much of the public discourse around contested issues is embedded
in emotional rhetoric intended to induce particular points of view.
There are a number of implications for how the study of literature in K–12 settings
can contribute to ways that students contend with civic complexities. The most obvious
is the range of literature they are expected to read. Debates over what books students
will read are long standing and deeply contested (Applebee, 1993). There is one body
of thought that privileges the idea that literature by European and European-descent
authors should provide the foundation of what students read (Hirsch, 1988). The argu-
ment is that there is a canonical tradition in literature and that canon comes from Europe
and European American literary texts. It is still the case that the literature taught in
schools is dominated by European and European American literary texts. Despite the
fact that professional associations like the National Council of Teachers of English call
for cultural diversity in the selection of texts, the actual impact in schools is still limited.
There are long standing arguments about the value of multicultural literature—­
written by authors from diverse backgrounds both from within the United States and
by authors from around the world. How teachers think about both the selection of
literary texts and the sequencing of such texts is important for the kinds of knowledge
and understandings that students are able to develop that can contribute to their abili-
ties to engage in civic reasoning and discourse. On the one hand, literature units can be
designed to interrogate different cultural communities associated with ethnicity within
broad conceptions of national literature, with pan-ethnic cultural communities where
shared beliefs and practices span across national borders, or with communities focused
on gender. Literature units can be focused on the experiences of particular historical
moments, or focus on shared rhetorical traditions (e.g., magical realism as taken up
by William Faulkner and Toni Morrison in the United States, Gabriel García Márquez
in Colombia, and Franz Kafka in Germany). They can also focus on archetypal themes
that represent consistent conundrums—around morality, identity, vulnerability, and
resilience—that we as humans wrestle with across time and space.
There are consequences and opportunities in how literature units are organized
that can contribute to both very young and older students’ abilities to interrogate their
own experiences and those of others to consider that complex issues typically do not
have simplistic answers and to engage with moral complexity. It is important to note
here that children, regardless of age, who experience challenge (poverty, migrant status,
refugees, gender and sexual orientation, presumptions of disability) can often be better
positioned to wrestle with complexities than children of presumed privilege who have
been overly protected such that they have not had to face risks (Spencer, 2006). For
example, a 5th grader from a migrant working family may have greater access to the
conundrums in The Grapes of Wrath (1939) than a 9th grader from a wealthy suburban
family, provided that they have the necessary skills to engage the text.
The skill set required to engage in literary reasoning includes basic reading com-
prehension skills (e.g., knowledge of vocabulary, sentence structure, and literary text
structures, as well as metacognitive strategies including making and testing predic-
tions, summarizing, asking questions). Literary reasoning also includes attention to
rhetorical moves and structural choices made by authors, and the skill to extrapolate
74 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

potential meanings from such authorial choices. Advanced literary reasoning entails an
epistemological orientation to understand that as a reader, one is are not bound by what
they hypothesize are the intentions of the author and to view literature as an oppor-
tunity to interrogate the self and the social world. It is precisely these epistemological
orientations that lead people to become lifelong readers of literature. K–12 education
provides an important opportunity to socialize children to love reading and to love
reading literature as a lifelong habit.
However, there is a long history in this country of justifying a basic skills orienta-
tion versus a focus on deep conceptual learning based on deficit assumptions about
life experiences and learning repertoires that youth living in poverty (Payne, 1999)
and youth from minoritized communities bring as prior knowledge and abilities. The
authors argue that deep disciplinary reasoning in literature (and other domains) is
accessible via a diversity of cultural and experiential repertories. Meaning making
processes entailed in literature analysis can connect to everyday meaning making rep-
ertoires that students bring, including students from culturally diverse backgrounds,
in order to develop the kinds of critical competencies needed to wrestle with com-
plex literary texts. First, narrative sensemaking is endemic to the human species.
All human communities have traditions of storytelling. Whether oral or written, all
human communities have evolved traditions around strategic uses of language and
narrative structures to convey meaning. Variation in storytelling across communities
is well documented (Champion, 2003; Heath, 1983). It is also well documented how
oral storytelling traditions are taken up in literary traditions across the world, so even
young children do not come into schools bereft of narrative sensemaking skills and
dispositions.
Second, rhetorical traditions that authors of literature draw on are rooted in lan-
guage uses across national languages and dialects (Lee, 1993, 2000). We tell stories that
are satiric, make comments that are ironic, and have traditions of attributing symbolic
import to objects and actions. These rhetorical moves are also taken up in everyday
texts in print, multi-modal, and digital modalities, including television programs,
movies, cartoons, advertisements, music lyrics, works of art, and internet memes. Thus,
it is reasonable to anticipate that students from across diverse cultural and linguistic
communities will have been exposed to and engaged in such language practices (Lee,
2007). As discussed in the earlier section of this paper, scaffolding prior knowledge and
understanding relationships (connections and tensions) between prior knowledge
and new targets of learning is a basic principle of how people learn.
These implications are relevant both for the development of disciplinary skills and
the development of cognitive, epistemic, moral, and democratic socialization around
civic engagement. Literature is a gateway for identity wrestling and for interrogation of
the “other.” As Ralph Ellison (1952) powerfully notes, “fiction is but a form of symbolic
action, a mere game of ‘as if’, therein lies its true function and its potential for effect-
ing change.” Humans have been exploring the many challenging issues facing us as
individuals and collectives through works of literature, whether historical, mythical,
contemporary, or futuristic. Thus, literature provides the opportunity to experience and
integrate the lessons of prior cultural experiments, to cultivate empathy for different
kinds of suffering, and to interrogate issues of moral complexity in ways that inform
the challenges we must wrestle with in our present public sphere.
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 75

We can return to the opening case of the raid of undocumented workers in the poul-
try factory in Mississippi. How might a child or adolescent living in a wealthy suburban
community in the North imagine the experience of a parent who was arrested in that
raid and his/her child? How might a Native American child or adolescent living on
tribal land that faces great poverty imagine people living in that town who were not
working and hoped they could be hired to replace the undocumented workers who
were arrested? How might all of our youth think about the competing goals of the
power of the state, the economic interests of factory owners, and the human needs of
families and children? Literature can offer fictional windows that, when well-crafted,
make us think we are in the shoes and inside the minds and hearts of all of these com-
peting actors.

History/Social Studies
The subject area of history/social studies is a vast domain encompassing history,
geography, economics, and civics, and tasked, from its earliest formulation, with the
daunting responsibility of preparing students to address and resolve social issues. His-
tory and social studies educators have disagreed about the best method to ensure this
civic preparation, but a consensus has formed around the value of fostering in students
the capacity for engaged, rigorous inquiry. This vision is captured in the published C3
Framework for Social Studies State Standards (National Council for the Social Studies,
2013), which lays out four dimensions for disciplinary inquiry: (a) developing questions
and planning inquiries; (b) applying disciplinary tools and concepts; (c) evaluating
sources and using evidence; and (d) communicating conclusions and taking informed
actions. These disciplinary concepts, inquiry strategies, evaluation and communica-
tion skills, and decision-making practices are understood to lay the groundwork for
democratic decision making.
There is no question that knowledge of U.S. and world history, as well as knowledge
of how political and economic systems are structured and unfold here and elsewhere
over time, are important. The underlying logic of the U.S. constitutional government
is complex and powerful. It anticipates pathways through which we can wrestle with
conundrums around foundational human rights, over majority rule through voting and
minority rights, around dialectic relations between the purview of federal authority
and local authority of states, and within the federal realm relations among executive,
legislative, and judicial authority. The history of such debates and the nation’s evolving
moral, economic, and social logic are recorded in the Amendments to the Constitution
and the historic Supreme Court battles of Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education,
Roe v. Wade, and more recently, Obergefell v. Hodges.
The authors asked a highly experienced history teacher with 50 years of experience
to share her reflections about the role of history/social studies in preparing young
people to participate in civic reasoning and discourse. While she discusses her experi-
ences as a high school teacher, the lessons and broad principles shared apply to the
elementary sector as well. Adria Carrington reflected:

Preparing high school students to engage in meaningful civic reasoning and debate is
a natural fit for the social studies, particularly economics, history, and sociology. These
76 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

subjects and most of the social studies are also married to geography, and the two create
a union that is ripe with opportunities, fraught with tensions and conflict, and bound
until death tears them asunder. Civilizations have come and gone, but the land remains.
In one respect geography is the hand and history is the glove. Gloves wear out and
like fashions, change with the times, but by peeling back the glove, the contributions
of geography reveal and provide dimension and perspective for a broader understand-
ing of the course of events. Integrating and sequencing the teaching of g ­ eography with
the teaching of history is based on the simple premise that the land comes first, so
we begin with teaching basic geographical concepts and general map skills. Students
may learn more about the geography as they engage with the history. The lay of the
land and the surrounds are essential elements to the narrative. For example, the shape
of ancient Egypt was elongated, extending only a few miles out from the shores of
the Nile. Its population became denser as the river neared the delta. To the west lay
miles of desert and to the east, the Red Sea, providing natural barriers that gave some
protection from enemies. The seasonal flooding of the river, the warm climate, and
natural resources created what Jared Diamond (1998) referred to as “geographic luck”
in his book Gun, Germs, and Steel, providing an advantage to what became a flourish-
ing society. What students learn by using geography as a source in their studies of
ancient Egypt can provide a blueprint for them to use in their examination of other
civilizations, and oppor­tunities for them to compare and contrast differences they may
not have o ­ ther­wise noticed. More specifically, using this model can help reveal how
the random nature and inequality of “geographic luck” help to define differences in
development. In United States history, students are introduced to the concept of mani-
fest destiny. Most textbooks presented that movement as a noble and bold endeavor
that was blessed, if not ordained by, the Divine. Americans were urged and enticed to
go west, to stake out free land, to build personal wealth, and to spread their culture
across the continent—from sea to shining sea. This dominant narrative does not include
interrogation of Indigenous nations, Mexican national borders, and British and Spanish
colonial territories in the expansion. Native Americans are mentioned, but mostly as an
obstacle to be overcome. Mexican holdings in the West were challenged, delegitimized,
and seized through wars and negotiations. My classes were introduced to this period
in U.S. history with a world map, because large events like this do not happen in a
vacuum, not even one as large as the continental United States. We needed to know
where the people came from and why they risked moving into a mostly uncharted
­territory—uncharted by European settlers, but inhabited by Indigenous nations. Study
of the push and pull factors of immigration and migration provided data that students
used as they examined more closely the global and national events of the times. We
needed to know who the players were, and to understand that there were no sup-
porting roles when lives, land, and wealth were at stake. For example, push and pull
factors like the economic and political turmoil in China, the rebellions and wars, large-
scale natural disasters, trade conflicts, and the enticements of American companies
lured laborers to opportunities in the West. Most Europeans were persuaded to make
the move because of internal influences, especially in Germany, Scandinavia, and the
United Kingdom, countries that comprised the overwhelming majority of immigrants
to this country. Landless and economically challenged Americans and speculators also
seized upon opportunities in the West. The actions of all of these players take shape in
a place—on the land—and the questions of who has a right to that land and why they
have that right required study within the broad context of history and geography. High
school sophomores viewed these events through the lenses of their own backgrounds
and prior learning. They were required to use historical thinking skills to further inform
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 77

what they already knew, and to help them tackle the essential question of who had
the right to the land. This was both a historical and civic debate that raised questions
about entitlement and ethics. It was for them to consider where the moral authority of
manifest destiny came from, why it happened at the place and time it did, and who ben-
efited from it. What I learned from teaching this lesson was the identities and cultural
heritage of students I never would have perceived as being Native American. A few of
the Mexican-descent students became more animated in the discussions. Some White
students, while expressing regret over how the land was gained, balanced that with the
position that it was put to more productive uses (feeding the nation through farming,
cattle ranching, and the building of towns and cities). It became clear to some students
that land ownership and who possessed the ability to exploit its natural resources were
essential markers of who controlled the wealth of an area or region. Also noted, but not
dwelled on, were the ramifications of this on the politics and economy of the regions.
Standardized assessments measured whether students grasped historical details and
could put them in sequences of change over time, cause and effect, and so forth. These
required clear right answers. The civic debate, however, required them to consider the
impact and ramifications of actions as revealed through a diversity of understandings,
perceptions, and biases that emerge when everyone referenced the same source mate-
rial. As teachers, we are charged with helping them hear and honor other positions
and work toward an aspect of common understanding that continues to enhance their
learning experiences. Today, we are confronted with a new challenge to the information
we receive about the world, and to the interpretations of the past that we have long
taken for granted (consider Holocaust deniers). These sources intentionally defy the
conventional understandings we have relied on from our histories. Information now
comes like a blitz from multiple media sources that are broadcast on a 24-hour cycle.
Terms like “fake news” and disparaging descriptions of media with opposing points of
views are becoming normalized. This fracturing of news sources has led to the creation
of data silos where citizens reaffirm their thinking by tuning in to “designer” media
that parrots their existing positions. It is not hard to imagine that this presents a chal-
lenge for teachers. Opposing points of view are not new, but the amount of tailored
news received today will require more debunking in the classroom in order to engage
in meaningful civic debate.

While Mrs. Carrington focuses on a high school illustration, the problems she
raises apply across the grade levels. This teacher’s observations reflect both how
important it is to develop core understandings, for example, of how geography influ-
ences political and economic developments within and across nations and the frailty of
national boundaries, and how such developments are also influenced by both internal
and international contingencies. Understanding the complexities underlying both the
establishment of the United States in the original 13 colonies and its expansion both
westward and beyond our geographical boundaries (consider Alaska and Hawaii
as states and the territories of American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands,
Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands). Our current immigration issues and the
relations along the U.S.–Mexico border must be understood in part from the results
of the Mexican-American War from 1846–1848. U.S. involvement in the politics of the
Middle East are complex and need to be informed, at least in part, by the public’s
understanding of the complex histories and diversity in terms of ethnicity and religion
in that part of the world.
78 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

In Mrs. Carrington’s illustration, students’ interrogations of U.S. westward expan-

sion were influenced by their ethnic identities. A fairly extensive body of research has
shown that students’ cultural, ethnic, and racial identities inform their understanding
of the past and are often strong enough to counter narratives presented in textbooks
(Epstein, 1998; Goldberg & Savenije, 2018; Ho et al., 2017). At the same time, an equally
robust body of literature continues to underscore the intransigence of dominant, school-
sanctioned historical narratives (Epstein, 2010). Mrs. Carrington was able to create an
environment in which students were able to draw on their identity repertoires, interro-
gate complex factors at play in an important historical moment in U.S. history (one that
still has ramifications today), engage in epistemic complexity, and have opportunities
to engage with alternative points of view different from their own. We certainly cannot
definitively predict what these experiences will mean for their future civic engage-
ments. At the same time, it is hard to argue that the experiences of Mrs. Carrington’s
class are not a good unto themselves; it is also useful to consider what it would mean
for these students to have had similar experiences across grades K–12 and across the
content areas.
Extrapolating from this intimate view into one teacher’s classroom, the authors
foreground several constructs from research on the teaching of history that ought to be
attended to across students’ careers in schools: sourcing and contextualization of texts
(Monte-Sano & Reisman, 2016; Reisman, 2012; Wineburg, 2001), historical conscious-
ness (Clark & Grever, 2018), and historical empathy (Endacott & Brooks, 2018). These
constructs represent efforts on the part of scholars to operationalize what is entailed in
historical reasoning, and each has relevance to how we might use history and historical
thinking in wrestling with contemporary issues.
Sourcing involves questioning the authorship, purpose, audience, context, and reli-
ability of a source and corroborating its claims with other pieces of evidence. Sourcing
lies at the epistemological heart of a disciplinary approach to history. When one sources
a document and considers the probity, authorship, purpose, and context of its message,
one fundamentally acknowledges its human constructedness. For example, historians
are cautious about blindly accepting propositions put forward in primary and second-
ary source documents. Primary source documents are ones written during the historical
period and by actors engaged in the historical activity. Secondary source documents
are those written outside of the historical time period by actors not directly involved
in the historical activity. Historians ask that we raise questions about the reliability of
the source, the conditions under which the document was written, and in what ways
the information in the document is corroborated in other sources. For example, a letter
written by a low-level soldier during the Civil War about the goals and intentions of
particular military strategies may be called into question because although he was
fighting in the war, he still may not have had access to the decision-making process
of generals and politicians. It matters to understand that the House Divided Speech
by Abraham Lincoln was a political speech when he sought the office of state sena-
tor for Illinois running against Stephen A. Douglas, but also at the same time must be
understood in the context of the debates at the time around states’ rights with regard
to slavery. Research from the 1990s indicated that students were not likely to sponta-
neously source documents, and that they tended to accept the authoritative account
of the textbook (Wineburg, 1991). A flurry of interventions over the past two decades
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 79

suggests that students can learn to source documents with the right instructional sup-
ports (Britt & Aglinskas, 2002; Paxton, 2002; Wolfe & Goldman, 2005). A growing body
of literature also examines students’ critical analysis of online information and maps
its similarities/differences to disciplinary historical reasoning (McGrew et al., 2018;
Wineburg & McGrew, 2019). The importance of preparing students to critically source
information should be self-evident in our current age of heightened polarization and
misinformation.
Contextualization, or the ability to locate a historical event or document in its his-
torical context and appreciate the past as fundamentally different from the present,
has been a more elusive skill in comparison to sourcing or corroboration. In part, that
is because contextualization requires historical background knowledge. To situate an
idea or event in its context, one must have a general understanding of the relevant
chronology and historical actors, the general zeitgeist. Such background knowledge has
also been found necessary for higher-level reasoning about contemporary events (e.g.,
Shreiner, 2014). When, for example, we consider the national reckoning about historical
racism following the spring 2020 uprisings in response to George Floyd’s murder, we
must acknowledge that many White Americans have been engaged in an extended his-
tory lesson, many learning for the first time about Reconstruction, housing segregation,
redlining, and police violence in ways that have begun to chip away at dominant nar-
ratives about equal opportunity and the American Dream and possibly open the door
to meaningful civic discourse. Contextualization, at the same time, requires holding at
bay our natural tendency toward “presentism”—the assumption that we can transplant
our understanding of how the world operates onto the past. Instead, contextualization
asks that we acknowledge and identify what we do not know, and stretch ourselves to
better understand this unknown (Wineburg, 2001). Likewise, civic reasoning requires
that we muster a similar sense of humility in the face of the unknown and a willing-
ness to understand perspectives and worldviews that differ radically from one’s own.
Another construct from history education highly relevant to civic reasoning and
discourse is historical empathy. One big debate among scholars of historical empathy
is whether it is a process or a cognitive achievement. Those who embrace the latter
conceptualize historical empathy as the end goal in a developmental process in which
students struggle to understand events and people from the past whose worldviews
differ dramatically from our own, not unlike contextualization. Other scholars have
operationalized empathy as a more affective process in which students identify with
the motives or experiences of historical actors. These two constructs in many ways lie
in tension with one another; one values the analytic distance that students place between
themselves and historical actors and the other seeks to close that distance (Endacott &
Brooks, 2018; Lee & Ashby, 2001; Lee et al., 1997). However one conceptualizes histori-
cal empathy, it clearly holds relevance to fostering civic discourse with others across
social, cultural, and ideological differences.
Scholars of historical consciousness move beyond the procedural heuristics of aca-
demic historians to capture more broadly what it means to exist as a historical being
in the present (Clark & Grever, 2018). For example, a great deal of scholarship related
to historical consciousness captures the disjuncture between how alienated people
are from formal history (as presented in school or other dominant narratives) and the
myriad ways that they engage in “everyday” history through personal or community
80 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

connections, family heirlooms and reunions, or visits to historical sites. From this
perspective, academic conceptualizations of historical thinking miss the ways we
encounter history through personal and collective memory, tourism, and popular
culture. One way that historical consciousness manifests is in our assumptions about
historical identities that are tied to any number of groups or institutions, each of which
has its own history. Although research on student identity in history education is not
typically connected to historical consciousness, a fairly extensive body of research has
shown that students’ cultural, ethnic, and racial identities inform their understanding
of the past and are often strong enough to counter narratives presented in textbooks
(Barton & McCully, 2004, 2012; Goldberg et al., 2006; Porat, 2004). At the same time, an
equally robust body of literature continues to underscore the intransigence of dominant,
school-sanctioned historical narratives (Epstein, 2000; Santiago, 2019).
At the same time, historical consciousness refers to an awareness and acknowledg-
ment of our temporal existence as groups of people, and recognition of the impermanence
and ongoing evolution of our institutional configurations and cultural commitments
(Rüsen, 2004). In this sense, historical consciousness puts us in touch with the social
constructedness of our lived reality. Scholars disagree as to whether the achievement
of historical consciousness requires formal academic study. For the purposes of our
current discussion, however, it is worth considering how a presentation of history that
insists on the constructedness and impermanence of our current institutional structures
might open the door for generative civic discourse.
We can see how all of these constructs play out in the illustration of Mrs. ­Carrington’s
history classroom as students learn about historical concepts like manifest destiny
through the perspective of their own ethnic and racial identities, experience empathic
responses to historical actors, and debate, in the present, the privileges and tradeoffs of
their own national identities. The development of skills for critically examining docu-
ments of historical activity from the past and the present is especially important in this
era, in which there is such a vast array of representations and positions with regard to
social, political, and economic issues in print and digital media.
These dimensions of historical reasoning play an important role in youths’ abili-
ties to interrogate complex issues in the public domain. Conceptual and procedural
understandings of how our system of government operates, its historical evolution, and
view of it as a living, dynamic system are foundational. But it is equally important that
citizens actively protect the Constitution’s foundational principles, rooted in proposi-
tions around fundamental human rights, despite the fact that its history of addressing
who has which human rights is deeply checkered. Hopefully, these illustrations from
Mrs. Carrington’s history class help to demonstrate how civic reasoning is recruited
and built into the study of history, as well as how issues of identity affiliations and
moral and ethical reasoning come into play, and how the design of an instructional
climate can be consequential in supporting students’ sense of efficacy in their abilities
to interrogate these complex questions, emotional safety to stretch themselves, to take
on positions different from their peers, and engage in identity exploration by examin-
ing the limits and opportunities of their perceptions of themselves as actors connected
to historical events.
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 81

Math
All students in K–12 schools are required to study mathematics. But just what
mathematics content, practices, and pedagogies are appropriate for today’s class-
rooms and relevant for supporting students’ development as civic actors? The field’s
understandings have evolved in major ways over the past half century. For most of
recorded history, when people spoke of mathematics, they meant the content that was
taught—for example, numbers and operations on numbers, measurement, proportion
and ratio, mathematical functions, statistics, and probability. Moreover, mathematics
was typically taught as a body of material to be mastered: first demonstrated by the
teacher, then practiced by the student. Research in the 1970s and 1980s revealed that
there was much more to doing mathematics than merely applying techniques one had
been taught. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Curriculum
and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (National Council of Teachers of Mathe­
matics, 1989) highlighted both content and processes, for the first time elevating the role
of problem solving, reasoning, communicating, and making connections. This trend
continued with NCTM’s (2000) Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, and then
the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, which call for the following practices:

• Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

• Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
• Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
• Model with mathematics.
• Use appropriate tools strategically.
• Attend to precision.
• Look for and make use of structure.
• Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

More broadly, rigorous mathematics instruction seeks to socialize students into

weighing evidence, exploring multiple explanatory models, engaging in argumentation
(Schoenfeld, 1985, 2014). These represent powerful epistemological orientations that if
internalized and developed over time can prepare young people to ideally invoke these
dispositions beyond the requirements of schooling.
Concurrent with the evolution of the field’s understanding, there have been some
parallel changes in curricula corresponding to uses of mathematics in the world outside
the classroom. We use mathematics in our daily lives, particularly around issues of
personal finances. In addition, mathematics is used as a tool in civic decision making
around a plethora of issues such as uses of statistical data to capture patterns around
distribution of resources, mathematical modeling to predict financial trends or politi-
cal trends, evaluating numbers, percentages and averages, cost benefit analyses, and
use of graphs for data and modeling. The COVID-19 pandemic depends heavily on
mathematical modeling to inform deeply consequential health, social, and economic
decisions. A civically engaged public needs to have the knowledge and dispositions to
understand these public mathematical displays and arguments.
John Paulos (1995) offered compelling examples of how mathematical data
are offered to make claims about social, economic, and political problems. Paulos
(2007) writes about discussions in the public arena, in this case back in 2004, around
82 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

recommendations to divert 2 percent of peoples’ social security taxes into private

accounts:

Looking a little further, however, one can find a few stories noting that the 6.2 percent
of the average American’s taxable income that goes to Social Security taxes will be cut
to 4.2 percent. That’s a 2 percentage point cut—not a 2 percent cut, but a 32 percent cut!
This will leave a huge hole in Social Security revenues for present retirees.

Paulos raised similar questions about the logic used to estimate illegal border cross-
ings and deaths in the Iraq War. In a recent announcement about employment numbers,
President Trump put forward the number of people currently employed as the largest
in U.S. history. However, providing the raw number does not take into account the
growth in the population over time, and so this can be misleading. There are so many
issues today around which policy decisions are being made that entail mathematical
data as evidence (Tate et al., 1993). There are many opportunities for citizens to weigh
in on these policy decisions through direct voting, participation in surveys, attempts to
influence policy makers, and through individual decisions people make such as finan-
cial contributions to organizations. However, informed participation often requires
robust understandings of mathematical concepts, such as percentages, data collection
and analysis techniques, and skills for evaluating evidence. Curricula have evolved in
recent years, and the Common Core now calls for aspects of statistics and probability
to be taught throughout the middle and high school years, but these concepts are often
oriented toward solving abstract, decontextualized problems rather than discussed in
relation to historical and contemporary social issues where mathematical calculations
have consequential effects, such as in immigration and environmental debates or health
care and economic policies.
The study of mathematics has many relevant applications and does not have to
remain so disciplinarily abstracted. The “math for social justice” literature shows how
projects can be the “servant of two masters,” maintaining classical disciplinary stan-
dards and also enfranchising students by drawing on their cultural heritage and making
use of it in discipline-based inquiry.
For example, professor Hyman Bass of the University of Michigan has developed
an undergraduate course titled “Mathematics and Social Justice.” He describes the
course as follows (Bass, 2020):

this course will foreground the public sphere, prioritizing some of the deepest chal-
lenges facing our society (for example wealth inequality, abuses of our electoral system,
educational opportunity, the school to prison pipeline, information privacy, etc.), and,
in each case, to study the ways that mathematics is implicated in these issues. Inter-
estingly, this leads to exposing a different, and broader, range of mathematical ideas
and tools, some quite sophisticated, than encountered in traditional QL [quantitative
literacy] courses. (personal communication)

He emphasizes in the course the need for students to engage in respectful discourse,
be willing to hear alternative perspectives, and reflect on their own mathematical expe-
riences and identity. It is also interesting that in this class, students read texts about
topics such as inequality but also texts from fields like human development to provide
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 83

them with knowledge that can inform the kinds of questions they raise and issues they
consider. This integration of reading and writing in a quantitative literacy course is also
innovative and relates to calls for reading in mathematics that is beginning to emerge in
mathematics education in the K–12 sector (Adams, 2003). Some work on mathematics
and social justice (e.g., Gutstein, 2006) has involved students doing project-based math-
ematical analyses grounded in data from their own local communities, thus providing
them with mathematical tools for taking social action.
A second important strand of work in the field of K–12 mathematics education
is ethnomathematics. As we have discussed, the extent to which students perceive
learning in academic content areas as being relevant to their lives is associated with
engagement, and therefore motivation and persistence. There are several stereotypes
that have come to be associated with the fields of mathematics. One is that mathematics
is primarily an outgrowth of European intellectual history. Ethnomathematics (Ascher,
1991) as a field documents not only how growth in mathematics has been distributed
across time and space, but also across regions of the world, including the ways that
interactions—political, economic, and social—across different regions have contributed
to the spread and evolution of mathematical ideas. Ethnomathematics also documents
the everyday mathematical practices of diverse communities (Saxe, 1988).
Another important emerging area of mathematics education is what Tate calls
­algorithmic justice. Algorithmic approaches and computational models inform decision
making in health care, social services, the judicial system, electoral politics, and all
across society. Tate (1994) asserted that the use of mathematics and statistics in our
democratic society is often linked to an attempt by one group seeking to gain an advan-
tage over another group. Situations are mathematized in order to maximize advantage.
For example, Suri and Saxe (2019) remarked: “Enhanced by computer power, partisan
gerry­mandering poses a burgeoning threat to the American way of democracy. Workable
standards based on sound mathematical principles may be the only tools to counter this
threat. We urge the Supreme Court to be receptive to such standards, thereby enabling
citizens to protect their right to fair representation.” The math of gerrymandering rep-
resents a potential facet of civic reasoning. Because algorithms often operate invisibly,
embedded in proprietary and corporate software, the ways they manipulate our decision
making and external experiences are even more unsettling than other forms of manipula-
tive information. Learning to analyze algorithmic manipulation will require new forms of
math education, including computational literacy. Computation can constitute a genuine,
new literacy having impact on our civilization comparable to that of textual literacy.
The authors argue here that developing deep mathematical knowledge and epis-
temological dispositions and learning to use that knowledge and those dispositions to
interrogate social, political, and economic issues before us can be powerful preparation
for thoughtful civic engagement based on critical reasoning. They do not suggest that
such knowledge and dispositions will lead to inevitable common propositions about
how to address problems in the civic domain, but can at least ground civic discourse
in a shared epistemic orientation toward logical sensemaking. This kind of approach
is buttressed by research that indicates that when people make predictions about the
rate of occurrence of various phenomena (e.g., incarceration or immigration rates,
the frequency of abortions), and then are given the actual data, they will reconsider
their previously firm opinions (Munnich et al., 2005).
84 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

All of the previously mentioned approaches, however, still tend to focus on students
as the objects of instruction, asking what kinds of information they should be presented
with and what kinds of techniques they should learn to use. That kind of focus places
little emphasis on what the students themselves bring to instruction, and how that can
(a) be built on, and (b) relate directly to students’ conceptions of themselves as thinkers
and learners, and their personal identities. Here, the authors re-emphasize that disci-
plinary reasoning, in this case mathematical reasoning, entails cognition, perceptions
of efficacy and relevance, attributions of emotional salience, and can involve identity
wrestling as the focus of mathematical reasoning is connected to experiences that are
meaningful.
Not just in mathematics, but in all subject areas, there is the question of what kinds
of classrooms consistently produce students who are knowledgeable, resourceful, and
agentive thinkers and learners—who are capable of reasoning powerfully, and of engag-
ing in the kinds of discourse that draws on and builds on knowledge in collaborative
discourse. It can be taken for granted that if students do not have such opportunities,
whether in mathematics or other content areas, they are unlikely to develop such skills
and understanding. There is now an extended body of evidence under the umbrella
of the Teaching for Robust Understanding Framework (see, e.g., Schoenfeld, 2014;
Schoenfeld et al., 2018) indicating that such learning outcomes correspond strongly to
their learning in environments that:

• Engage students in a rich mix of disciplinary (and if appropriate, interdisciplinary)

content and practices;
• Do so in ways that build on student knowledge and resources, broadly construed;
• Provide meaningful opportunities to contribute to and refine collective under-
standing, carefully building on both the formal and informal understanding
students bring into instruction; and
• Do so in ways where such ideas and practices are made public, so that student
thinking is revealed and the teacher can adjust instruction so that students are
engaging in sensemaking in their zones of proximal development.

Crafting these kinds of robust environments within classrooms will help students
to develop both the skills and propensities to engage in such discourse outside the
school walls.
The authors seek here to make the case that the study of mathematics in K–12
classrooms is not merely an exercise in cognitive–technical knowledge. As illustrated,
mathematics offers resources for examining a complex range of civic dilemmas through
mathematical reasoning. The robust teaching of mathematical reasoning requires atten-
tion to epistemic complexity (examining evidence and warrants for claims, considering
multiple ways of addressing the same problem), can be powerfully applied to problems
that entail moral complexity (e.g., distribution of shared resources, environmental
impacts), and can support the development of self-efficacy and emotional safety as
students learn to persevere in solving challenging problems.
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 85

Science
Science seeks to help us understand the natural world and the consequences of this
understanding ought to help us design artifacts, policies, and practices that enhance
our general well-being and quality of life. People of all ages need a sound scientific
understanding to reason about many issues that affect public life (e.g., health policies,
environmental crises, the current COVID-19 pandemic). However, many of the details
and technicalities of the latest science are continuously emerging and evolving (e.g., the
specifics of viral mutations relevant to the spread of zoonotic diseases, such as corona­
virus), and do not make for a plausible prerequisite to engaging civic discourse–relevant
thinking. Instead, science education can cultivate an epistemic disposition to inquire
into that which one has limited technical knowledge and the skills and tools to engage
in such an inquiry with reasonable humility and efficacy. Additionally, some of the tasks
for engaging in civic reasoning and discourse can be embedded into the instruction of
science itself. The authors view this as a necessarily collaborative project between those
concerned with civic reasoning and discourse and researchers and educators focusing
on science education.
According to the National Research Council (2012, p. 7),

Science, engineering, and the technologies they influence permeate every aspect of
modern life. Indeed, some knowledge of science and engineering is required to engage
with the major public policy issues of today as well as to make informed everyday
decisions, such as selecting among alternative medical treatments or determining how
to invest public funds for water supply options.

The Next Generation Science Standards offer a comprehensive framework for the
teaching of science in K–12 settings to prepare students to become critical consumers
of scientific information. The framework moves beyond a focus on content to empha-
size deep conceptual understandings. The standards fall into three broad categories:
scientific and engineering practices; crosscutting concepts; and disciplinary core ideas.
See Figure 2-3 for a full list of these dimensions.
The scientific and engineering practices identified here directly support the quality
of epistemic reasoning that is important to civic reasoning and discourse. The cross-
cutting concepts are important because they represent underlying systems thinking
principles and relationships that operate in the natural world. For example, in under-
standing the current COVID-19 pandemic, it is useful to know that the structure of the
virus matters for how it functions in terms of stability and change, and to understand
how this virus can both belong to a family of viruses about which we already know
something while simultaneously being a unique expression of that family, and as a
consequence, poses new challenges. Knowledge of core biological processes in the
life sciences is consequential for basic understanding of how the coronavirus operates
within our physiological systems. These foundational understandings enable basic
sensemaking about the underlying processes of a viral pandemic, even if one does not
have deep technical knowledge about the actual virus spread through the COVID-19
pandemic. An interested person who has undergone mandatory science education
in school should then be equipped to investigate further questions about the virus,
to evaluate and comprehend a variety of sources, and to interrogate the validity of
86 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF THE FRAMEWORK

1 Scientific and Engineering Practices

1. Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering)
2. Developing and using models
3. Planning and carrying out investigations
4. Analyzing and interpreting data
5. Using mathematics and computational thinking
6. Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering)
7. Engaging in argument from evidence
8. Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

2 Crosscutting Concepts
1. Patterns
2. Cause and effect: Mechanism and explanation
3. Scale, proportion, and quantity
4. Systems and system models
5. Energy and matter: Flows, cycles, and conservation
6. Structure and function
7. Stability and change

3 Disciplinary Core Ideas

Physical Sciences
PS1: Matter and its interactions
PS2: Motion and stability: Forces and interactions
PS3: Energy
PS4: Waves and their applications in technologies for information transfer

Life Sciences
LS1: From molecules to organisms: Structures and processes
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, energy, and dynamics
LS3: Heredity: Inheritance and variation of traits
LS4: Biological evolution: Unity and diversity

Earth and Space Sciences

ESS1: Earth’s place in the universe
ESS2: Earth’s systems
ESS3: Earth and human activity

Engineering, Technology, and Applications of Science

ETS1: Engineering design
ETS2: Links among engineering, technology, science, and society

FIGURE 2-3  Next Generation Science Standards framework.

SOURCE: See https://www.nextgenscience.org.
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 87

conflicting information they encounter. The public debates in the United States around
wearing masks to mitigate the spread of the virus reflects the consequential importance
of the public’s basic understanding of science.
There are many more plausible resonances between civic discourse and science
education. As discussed in the section on How People Learn (National Research Council,
1999), the authors are committed to the idea that all students have rich pools of “spon-
taneous concepts”—intellectual resources that students intuit from their experiences
in the everyday world (Vygotsky, 1986). For example, very young children develop
a sense that there are some forces at work that pull objects downward. They know if
they drop a ball, it will not go up into the air, but rather will fall to the ground. This is
before they know anything about the formal construct of gravity or about the counter
forces at work in addition to gravity when an object falls. These spontaneous concepts
can be leveraged in the construction of both scientific understanding, per se, and tied
to developing competence in civic reasoning and discourse. The idea of spontaneous
concepts—concepts we intuitively learn from our experiences in the everyday world—
supports the broad proposition that robust learning occurs as people engage in activ-
ity or what in learning theory is referred to as constructivism. Constructivist theories
of learning, stemming from ideas of Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, and John Dewey,
privilege the importance of connecting knowledge and dispositions that learners con-
struct from their everyday experiences as scaffolds, important in part because as we
learn from acting in the world, we engage in observations, struggling to make sense and
impose coherence on experience, supporting our efforts to use what we know to learn
new things. Constructivist pedagogies in education, particularly with regard to learning
in mathematics and science, require students to actively engage exploring, observing,
extrapolating, and testing explanatory propositions. This pedagogical model resists
passive learning where students are simply expected to recall things from teachers’
lecturing or reading textbooks. More recent applications of constructivist principles are
described as “strength-based instruction” in opposition to “deficit-based instruction.”
The latter model constructs students as empty vessels, or worse, containers of “false
theories” or irrelevant-to-instruction “misconceptions.”
While a commitment to constructivist principles is fairly widespread in fields like
the learning sciences, science education was arguably the earliest discipline to work
persistently within a constructivist paradigm (Papert, 1988). As such, constructivism,
per se, forms a strong resonance between civic reasoning and discourse and science
education, in part because it calls on students to examine prior knowledge and dispo-
sitions developed through experience in the world. This suggests that when science
learning involves active participation in the unfolding of scientific phenomena, students
are more likely to view science as socially and hopefully personally relevant, increasing
the likelihood of sustaining interest over time and beyond formal schooling.
Another way science instruction can contribute to preparing students to engage
in civic reasoning and discourse is through attention to epistemic dispositions. Epis-
temic dispositions have to do with how we think about knowledge as being simple
or complex; as fixed or subject to ongoing investigation (Chinn et al., 2011). Epistemic
dispositions also include the criteria on which we draw to evaluate evidence to support
claims. Normative descriptions of productive epistemological judgments in the field
of science are often described as the “nature of science” (Lederman, 2006). “Personal
88 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

epistemology” or “intuitive epistemology” in the science education world describe the

common intuitive, informal, and cultural resources that students bring with them to the
understanding of scientific phenomena. These terms suggest that intuitive epistemolo-
gies differ from those of experts and are often fragmented or contradictory. People’s
personal epistemologies tend to rely heavily on authority rather than on judgments of
sensibility and coherence (Hammer, 1994), and are therefore prone to misconstruction
and overwriting by other “authorities,” which can be easily feigned and manipulated.
Recent developments concerning epistemology in science learning seek to expand
the terrain encompassed by the term. In particular, they have sought to include interest,
affect, engagement, and identity. The latter three are particularly important as links to
elements of competence in civic reasoning and discourse that were drawn out earlier
in this chapter. This arena is often termed “hot conceptual change.” One example of
this work, by Levrini and colleagues (Levrini et al., 2018), seeks to foster and measure
idiosyncratic and personal affiliation with science subject matter, which could be aptly
called developing “scientific identity.” This work is also notable in using the history
of science (multiple competing historical explanatory frameworks for understanding
the same phenomenology) within up-to-date theories of conceptual change to study
engagement and identity formation.
Social and ideological forces can also influence our personal epistemologies. An
example might be learning about climate change and encountering conflicting messages
from fossil fuel lobbyists that seek to systematically undermine the power and legiti-
macy of scientific studies and conclusions. Science education can contribute to civic
reasoning and discourse by taking into account how students’ personal epistemologies
have been informed by ideological beliefs and anti-science rhetoric in the media. The
problems and possibilities entailed by existing ideological settings strongly influencing
learning might be called “ideologically fraught conceptual change.”
More broadly, historical treatments of science offer a superb resource for thinking
and teaching about the ideological settings of science. The history and philosophy of sci-
ence have, at times, been strongly visible in science education, especially at the dawn of
the field of conceptual change (diSessa, 2018). An early and visible innovation in physics
instruction, Project Physics at Harvard (late 1960s to early 1970s), was based on human-
izing science and increasing interest for less technically inclined students by introducing
significant strains of the human history of physics. There is now a journal, Science Educa-
tion, that concentrates on history and philosophy of science as it relates to education. At
the same time, it is important to acknowledge that the history of science has not always
been benign. We can think about the syphilis experiments where accepted treatments
were denied to Black men and the history of scientific racism (Gould, 1981). On the one
hand, educators want students to be critical examiners of science and scientific findings
and make grounded assumptions about scientific merit, and on the other hand, not to
reject scientifically accepted findings, especially those that impact policy and practices
that directly affect one’s quality of life simply because of ideological beliefs. It might
be argued that a grounding in broad democratic values provides a broad boundary in
which differences in ideological orientations can be accommodated.
Some theoretical orientations in conceptual change highlight the role of ontology
in learning difficulties (Chi, 1992). Ontology refers to basic and distinct categories of
existence, such as matter, events, and ideas. Religious ontologies include both human
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 89

ontologies and spiritual ones. It appears that ontologies are insightful in capturing
some aspects of cultural or ideological backgrounds in learning. The Western tradition
in the sciences typically employs hierarchies of existence (ontology) that place humans
at the top of the hierarchy, with animal and plant life both lower and solely in service
of human aims. In contrast, some Indigenous traditions in the Americas and elsewhere
take a very different ontological orientation where humans, other animals, and plants
are not hierarchically related, but stand as intrinsically related and interdependent.
However, it is important to note that there is contestation over such orientations, even
within the Western tradition. For example, consider that organizations such as People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals argue for “animal rights” while the dominant
speciest ontology sees animals as “resources” similar to plants, and therefore categori-
cally different from humans’ claims to rights and protections (Newkirk & Stone, 2020).
Bang and others argue that ontological distinctions are important at the policy
level, as well as the individual level (Bang & Medin, 2010; Bang et al., 2007, 2010, 2012,
2014). They lie beneath decisions concerning both the scope and basic patterns in how
science is taught. These researchers call out the need to examine critically how public
policy decisions are influenced by assumptions about, for example, whether humans
are categorically and uniquely at the top of hierarchies in the natural world. Broad
cultural assumptions about ontology—and lack of attention to them—can marginal-
ize the participation of students from particular communities. As part of a solution,
Bang calls for epistemic and ontological heterogeneity in both science instruction itself
and in research on it (Bang et al., 2012). This resonates with a long-term concern for
“epistemological pluralism” (Turkle & Papert, 1991), which has been visibly present
and influential for decades in some corners of the science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics instruction community.
While it has been slow to develop, science instruction is now actively experiment-
ing with very different activity settings for science learning in contrast to the usual
“read and problem solve” mode. A simple example is the use of research-like activities
in instruction. For example, Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences are
now becoming very popular (Dolan, 2016). A similar shift toward “inquiry in science”
has had a much more evident effect at elementary school levels. Rationales for such
innovations include that these courses engage both intrinsic interest and also employ
and develop some of the many “soft” skills that are important to science—and also to
civic reasoning and discourse—such as collaboration, managing open-ended problems,
student empowerment, and so on.
Another activity innovation that has strong face value in connection to civic reason­
ing is citizen science. Citizen science involves everyday communities participating
in data collection, data monitoring, and policy development around problems rang-
ing from environmental protection to sustaining biodiversity. This work sometimes
includes organizing roundtable discussions among critical stakeholders around policy
considerations, and it can concern sui generis problem selection—a problem focus
that comes from students and has personal meaning to them. For example, a project at
­Aalborg University (Magnussen et al., 2019) in Copenhagen, Denmark, revolves around
organizing a community of both local residents (mostly children) and professional
architects around the redesign of the physical surround of their community. Some of
the general activity structure of citizen science (Lepczyk et al., 2020) has had a stable
90 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

presence in science education that can serve as a mutually resonant focus for commu-
nities concerned with civic reasoning and discourse in concert with those concerned
with science education.
Scientific literacy through journalism is yet another new approach in science education
that is particularly relevant to civic reasoning and discourse. Polman and colleagues
(2014) argue that engaging in experiences that mirror those of science journalists, rather
than professional scientists, enables students to better use science information for per-
sonal decision making and helps them contribute meaningfully to public discourse
long after high school graduation.
The authors agree with Gutmann (1999) when she argues that public schooling
is the only institution in a democratic society that can require preparation for civic
engagement, and they further argue that because of both the importance and breadth
of such preparation, opportunities to learn to engage in civic reasoning and discourse
should be distributed across the content areas and K–12 grades. Table 2-1 summarizes
dimensions of civic reasoning across disciplines.

Civic Discourse
Much of this chapter has focused on what is entailed in civic reasoning—its underly-
ing dispositions, its moral threads, and the possibilities of embedding it across academic
disciplines in K–12 schooling. Learning is most robust when it involves action on the
part of learners to observe, to explore, and to test hypotheses. Ideally, in the context of

TABLE 2-1  Dimensions of Civic Reasoning

Knowledge Dispositions Identity Ethics
Literacy • Critically • Engage • Filter problem • Empathize with
examine texts complexity solving through others
Literature • Interrogate • Examine both self- • Privilege fairness
multiple worlds multiple points interest and the for all
of view needs of others • Use ethical
Mathematics • Use of • Weigh evidence • Wrestle with principles to
mathematical • Examine multiple drive decision
data and warrants overlapping making
modeling • Lifelong identities
Science • Understand research • Examine ego-
processes to expand focused goals
underlying knowledge • Resist
natural world • Critically stereotypes and
examine point homogenizing
History • Understand
of view and others
geographical,
authenticity of
historical,
sources
economic,
and political
processes and
forces
• Understand
democratic
values
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 91

schooling, learning should be an active process involving interaction with other people
and artifacts. Talk is a powerful medium through which both self-reflection and con-
sideration of multiple points of view unfold. Research on discussion or classroom talk
has documented characteristics of and supports for rich discussion and these findings
have implications for how we might organize open discussions across the disciplines to
embody civic discourse. Michaels and colleagues (2008) make an important observation
about how attention to dialogue and discussion contribute to larger civic goals:

For many philosophers, learning through discussion has also represented the promise
of education as a foundation for democracy. Dewey proposed a definition of democracy
that placed reasoned discussion at its very heart. He spoke of democracy as a “mode
of social inquiry” emphasizing discussion, consultation, persuasion and debate in the
service of just decision-making (Dewey, 1966, p. 56).
Globalization, multiculturalism, and diversity—whether ethnic, racial, or
­socioeconomic—now require new approaches to decision-making. In an increasingly
connected but diverse world, deliberations and discussion must be employed in the
service of not simply communicating, but as importantly, in knowledge-building
and negotiated solutions to complex political, medical, and environmental problems.
An emerging body of work addresses these issues on both theoretical and practical
grounds, drawing on Habermas’ (1990) notion of “deliberative democracy” and the
“public sphere” as an idealized discursive space where debate and dialogue are free
and uncoerced. (p. 284)

The authors explore civic discourse along three dimensions: knowledge, disposi-
tions, and norms. What are the underlying requirements regarding knowledge to
participate in civic discourse? What dispositions are required to engage? And how
might organizing and managing a structure and set of norms for discourse enhance
the experience in ways that both build knowledge and nurture the necessary disposi-
tions? This problem space of civic discourse requires that we think about both what
students need to know and be able to do, and what teachers need to know and be able
to do and entails all the complexities we have discussed around conceptual change, the
entanglements of identity orientations, and complexities of moral reasoning.
Preparing students to engage in discussion has and continues to be a major topic
in educational reform efforts. Researchers in this area draw from across multiple fields
of study including sociolinguistics, philosophy, ethnography of communication, and
cognitive and social psychology. Most research in recent decades has addressed what
has come to be called dialogic discussion, moving beyond traditional ways of organizing
classroom talk referred to as IRE (Initiate, Respond, and Evaluate) (Cazden & Beck,
2003; Mehan, 1985), where the teacher initiates questions and then the teacher responds
to and evaluates students’ responses. In contrast, dialogic discussions (Engle & Conant,
2010; Lemke, 1990; Michaels et al., 2008) are ones in which students themselves take
the lead by posing questions, putting forward propositions, and responding to one
another. However, even when students lead such discussions, they are an outgrowth of
norms that teachers establish over time and that teachers coordinate. The patterns for
developing such norms are not linear. Depending on students’ experience with inter-
rogating questions, learning how to listen, evaluate, and respond in ways that do not
cut off others, different patterns of participation emerge and shift over time.
92 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

Current educational standards including Common Core State Standards Initia-

tive; Next Generation Science Standards; and the College, Career, and Civic Life: C3
Framework for Social Studies State Standards all call for classrooms in which dialogic
discussion is the norm. Currently the McDonnell Foundation is sponsoring a multi-
year major funding effort on research on how to support such dialogic discussions in
classrooms and how to help teachers learn to plan and coordinate such discussions.
Another major longitudinal effort on classroom discourse is the program Account-
able Talk led by Lauren Resnick, Sarah Michaels, and others (Michaels et al., 2008).
­Nystrand has conducted multiple large-scale studies documenting how participation
in rich discussions contribute to student learning (Nystrand et al., 1998; Nystrand et
al., 2003). There are a number of pedagogical models for designing dialogic discus-
sions: Collaborative Reasoning (Anderson et al., 1998), Paideia Seminar (Billings &
Fitzgerald, 2002), Philosophy for Children (Sharp, 1995), Instructional Conversations
(Goldenberg, 1992), Junior Great Books Shared Inquiry (Great Books Foundation,
1987), Questioning the Author (Beck & McKeown, 2006; McKeown et al., 1993), Book
Club (Raphael & McMahon, 1994), Grand Conversations (Eeds & Wells, 1989), Litera-
ture Circles (Short & Pierce, 1990), and Interpretive Discussion (Haroutunian-Gordon,
2014), among others. (See Murphy et al., 2009, for a meta-analysis of the impacts of
these models of discussion on reading comprehension.) These families of pedagogical
models focus on supporting students in engaging in critical analyses of texts, using
discussion as a springboard and venue for exploring multiple points of view. There
has also been substantive work on the role of discussion in the teaching of science and
mathematics (see Chapin et al., 2003; Lampert & Ball, 1998; Lehrer & Schauble, 2005;
Michaels et al., 1992; Rosebery et al., 1992, and Yackel & Cobb, 1996, among others).
The Accountable Talk framework articulates targets for discussion that are appli-
cable across disciplines. These include organizing discussion in ways that privilege
accountability to the community of learners (inclusion and respecting others), account-
ability to knowledge (expectation that discussion will be based on standards of accurate
knowledge claims), and accountability to reasoning (expectation that discussion will
support mutual privileging of logical and ethical reasoning). The framework includes
exemplars of specific pedagogical moves that teachers can use in supporting students’
engagement and efforts to uphold the commitments to building a sense of community
that values knowledge and reasoning.
With regard to civic discourse, the authors reiterate how civic reasoning can be
and should be embedded in learning within and across domains, and not simply
limited to work done in social studies, history, and civics classes. This means that the
knowledge demands of reasoning in the disciplines must be an important dimension
of classroom talk. If students are going to reason about issues of climate change in a
science classroom, analyses of civic data sets in a mathematics classroom, or themes
about resilience in the face of public health challenges such as a pandemic in a litera-
ture classroom, their talk must both recruit disciplinary norms and allow students to
bring in their personal histories of and relations with topics to bear. These dimensions
of classroom talk must embody both disciplinary norms and civic norms. Civic norms
include listening to others, showing empathy for others, considering multiple points
of view, and showing respect for others even when one disagrees.
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 93

There are a number of conceptual and pedagogical challenges to designing class-

rooms where robust dialogic discussions are the norm, particularly around questions
in the public civic domain, because such questions are always contestable. The first is
that the topic or problem being addressed must be of sufficient complexity as to warrant
dialogic investigation, in which relations among interlocutors are essential to the work
at hand. There is no need for dialogic discussion around a question for which there is
a simple right or wrong answer. Sometimes, as in mathematics, there may be a right
answer to a question but multiple pathways for getting the answer and dialogic discus-
sions around the affordances and constraints of multiple pathways can be powerful.
Second, students need to have had adequate preparation regarding the requisite body
of prior knowledge needed to access the problem. How teachers think about questions of
requisite prior knowledge is complex. Assumptions about requisite prior knowledge can
be used to assume that some students are not ready to engage in rich dialogue because
they do not have requisite prior knowledge. Such assumptions contribute to deficit attri-
butions and low-level instruction. These assumptions are more often than not attributed
to students from particular ethnic minority communities and communities living in
persistent inter-generational poverty. The extent to which requisite prior knowledge can
also include students’ experiences in the world and the array of language and meaning
making repertoires they have developed robustly outside of school will also contribute
substantively to rich dialogic discussions. The relevance of life experiences to the problem
at hand can also contribute to civic discourse in that it invites participants to learn about
one another, ideally finding some sources of resonance in their life experiences or at least
getting some opportunities to wrestle together with sources of difference.
Third is that talk, no matter how rich, is ephemeral. From a pedagogical standpoint
it is important that teachers and students are able to create some kind(s) of external
representations of the big ideas, lines of argumentation, or points of convergence and
dissonance emerging from the discussion. Such external representations constitute an
object of inquiry and reflection for both students and teachers moving forward. Such
representations may be charts, graphic displays, annotations, or essays, as examples.
As students move from one discussion to another, they are ideally accruing a body
of knowledge, an evolving argument or set of arguments that can become internal-
ized knowledge. The practice of using knowledge accrued across such dialogic discus-
sions for some public purpose in particular enhances relevance to civic action.
Another important dimension of planning for discussion is the availability of diverse
language repertoires as resources. There are important relationships between students
developing skills in academic language to convey ideas in the academic disciplines. Aca-
demic language includes vocabulary and syntactical features that are typically not part
of people’s everyday language. For example, in regular everyday oral discourse, people
are not likely to use passive voice or compound/complex sentences (e.g., “Although the
viral particles can be dispersed through the air, masks can mitigate their dispersal and
social distancing also plays a significant role”). They are not likely to use word forms
where they translate from a noun form to an adjectival form (e.g., familiarity to familiar).
What are called tier 2 academic languages include specialized words and syntactical and
rhetorical forms that are associated with disciplines (e.g., “the class of mammals and the
order of carnivora”) (Lee & Spratley, 2009). Learning academic languages bears some
relations to learning a new language. In other words, it takes time and practice.
94 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

At the same time, we inevitably learn how to take on new language registers (i.e.,
levels of formality or informality assumed to be appropriate for different social contexts)
by being able to explore new ideas through our existing language repertoires. Language
repertoires include the range of knowledge of ways to speak or communicate that an
individual has developed. For example, Carol Lee grew up speaking African American
English Vernacular and learned to speak several varieties of Academic ­English as she
pursued university and doctoral studies. With close family and friends, she will speak
one variety of English, and with professional colleagues, another.
This means there are important roles for students’ everyday language repertoires in
the enactment of dialogic discussions. The use of everyday language repertoires invites
engagement. These everyday language repertoires can include different dialects, such
as African American English, as well as other national languages (e.g., students’ whose
home language may be Spanish or Hmong). Studies have shown the positive impacts
of recruiting students’ everyday languages as a medium of discussion in classrooms
(Brown, 2019; Warren et al., 2005).
Finally, there are important developmental dimensions to designing for and coor-
dinating dialogic discussion. The differences in discussions in middle school or high
school classrooms are less about the structure of such talk and more about the appro-
priateness of the topics being discussed. With regard to civic reasoning, we need a
developmental lens on the accessibility of particular topics for youth of different ages.
At the same time, as we have discussed earlier, even very young children bring disposi-
tions around moral dilemmas that can be explored appropriately.
Overall, dialogic discussion is a practice that socializes knowledge and disposi-
tions that are central to civic reasoning. The affordances of dialogic discussion play out
regardless of subject matter and across the K–12 grade spectrum. The challenge is how
to create infrastructures for teacher learning, curriculum design, and assessments that
make this pedagogical practice ubiquitous. It is important to recognize that planning for
discussion is not simply about tactics (e.g., teachers re-voicing student inputs, structures
like pair talk, etc.). Such planning requires knowledge about the multi-dimensional
nature of language in use (e.g., the ways that ideas, points of view, and indicators of
engagement or not may be implicit rather than explicit), about the multiple dimensions
of conceptual knowledge that are the target of instruction (what Shulman calls peda-
gogical content knowledge) (Shulman, 1986), and of the social, emotional, and identity
entanglements that come into play as students talk and potentially disagree with one
another. One can learn about these domains of knowledge in the abstract, but learn-
ing how to deploy such knowledge in the particular contexts in which one is teaching
requires what Hatano calls adaptive expertise (Hatano & Oura, 2003). Such expertise
evolves across one’s teaching career. Thus, support for teacher learning communities
in schools and across communities is one of the most generative systemic supports.
Examples of such learning communities include the practice of Lesson Study in Japan
(taken up also in the United States and other parts of the world) (Lewis et al., 2006),
the National Writing Project (Lieberman & Wood, 2003) which has supported across
the nation communities of teachers studying their literacy practices for decades, and
Chèche Konnen headed by Beth Warren and Ann Rosebery (Rosebery et al., 1992) from
TERC as a collaboration between teachers and researchers around bottom up–identified
problems of practice, to name a few.
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 95

SUMMARY
The prior sections have made clear how issues of civic reasoning and civic discourse
are at play in the multiple academic disciplines that young people learn in school.
Attending to robust teaching and learning of those disciplines will provide important
opportunities for young people to engage with the core skill sets and habits of mind
that will foster the kinds of civic reasoning sensibilities that young people need to
reason about complex civic and social issues. If we consider how disciplinary learning
might contribute to youth’s reasoning about the case presented in the beginning of this
chapter involving the deportation of meat plant workers in Mississippi, learners might
draw on experiences with literature in which they read about the family challenges
of a mixed-citizenship status or immigrant family, or could connect to what they had
learned in history about the long history of immigration and reliance on immigrant
workers in their history or social science course. Students might also make use of what
they are learning about data representations in mathematics to consider the scope and
scale of the problem, or might connect to their understanding of digital literacy to assess
what reliable sources of data might exist online. Thus, robust and critical disciplinary
learning is key to preparing young people to reason civically.
The authors have argued that civic reasoning and discourse recruit multiple
resources. Some resources include knowledge, including content and conceptual knowl-
edge within the content disciplines that represent the major focus of K–12 schooling.
While knowledge of history, political, and economic systems are essential to robust
civic reasoning and discourse, such knowledge in itself is insufficient. Some resources
include dispositions. These dispositions include moral reasoning, ethical concern for
both the self and others, and epistemological commitments to wrestling with complex-
ity and weighing competing evidence. They also include identity commitments that
involve critical interrogations of the self as one inevitably considers positions in rela-
tion to self-interest and assumptions about the interest of communities with which one
affiliates. Civic reasoning and discourse must also be grounded in democratic values,
values that are sufficiently broad to withstand contestation and difference. Figure 2-4
summarizes the argument about what is entailed and to be developed to support civic
reasoning and discourse.
With this complex problem space of civic reasoning and discourse, we must also
acknowledge the challenges of learning to engage in such work. While we have identi-
fied resources that the individual recruits in engaging in civic reasoning and discourse,
these resources are developed within and unfold in response to social interactions
with others, within systems that distribute resources, often inequitably, and that
­reinforce ideologies and metanarratives. Public schooling exists within these systems

FIGURE 2-4  Developing civic reasoning and discourse.

96 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

and is influenced by socially distributed ideologies and metanarratives about what is

“normal.” Certainly in the context of public schooling, there will be instances where
children and especially adolescents will face tensions between either their existing
beliefs or their perceptions of what is accepted as the norm. Schooling is fundamentally
concerned with building new knowledge by drawing on prior knowledge, the challenge
of conceptual change. But when the process of shifting and critically examining exist-
ing knowledge and beliefs entails tensions and contradictions, these challenges of “hot
conceptual change” are perhaps even more difficult for teachers as adults. ­Children
develop at an early age an appreciation for harm to others and fairness to others even
in light of their own ego-focused self-interests. These moral moorings become more
nuanced and complex as they grow into adolescence, particularly as they come to
understand the ways that society positions those deemed as “the other,” which can
lead to the development of what is called implicit bias (Moore-Berg et al., 2020; Payne
et al., 2017). Implicit bias involves assumptions about others we categorize as part of
some kind of social group, assumptions that are not explicitly stated but implicitly
assumed. Figure 2-5 identifies the range of challenges to developing strong capacities
to engage in civic reasoning and discourse, as well what influences their development.
The point is that there are risks associated with both learning to engage in robust
civic reasoning and discourse and with being active in civic reasoning and discourse.
The action itself is risky because it requires engagement with others who hold differ-
ent positions, beliefs, and commitments. Because this is a risky endeavor, it is essential
that efforts to prepare young people must be informed by what we know about robust
learning environments. We must recognize that robust learning involves more than
knowledge. We draw here on Spencer’s Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Sys-
tems Theory (PVEST) model (Spencer, 2006). PVEST is a model to account for outcomes
of risk or resilience in light of challenge. Spencer argues that it is not simply exposure to
risks that matter, but rather the relationships between the sources of vulnerability and
the nature of supports available. The model is phenomenological because it is rooted
in people’s perceptions of themselves, of others, and of settings; perceptions of what
is available to them is relevant to their perceptions of risks.
Finally, the authors take from their integrated review of research on how people
learn and develop (including how issues of identity inform learning and how percep-
tions of self, others, tasks, and settings, as well as attributions of emotional salience,

FIGURE 2-5  Challenges to learning to engage in civic reasoning and discourse.

PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 97

infiltrate action) the following core principles to inform the design of robust learning
environments (for children and for adults):

• Draw and build on prior knowledge;

• Provide a sense of emotional safety;
• Establish relevance through links to real-world problems;
• Provide opportunities to build individual and collective efficacy through scaf-
folded challenges;
• Support questioning sources of information and beliefs;
• Support interrogation of own assumptions;
• Support wrestling with complex and contradictory ideas; and
• Ensure multiplicity and variety of cultural and ideological perspectives, includ-
ing students’ own and those that are less represented in the dominant culture.

The goal is to socialize people, especially young people, to wrestle with complexity,
to consider multiple points of view, to interrogate their own assumptions, to empa-
thize with others, and ultimately to aim their lives toward doing good in the world,
including good for themselves but also good for others. When looking at the many
examples of people reaching out to help others with the aim of public service during
this COVID-19 pandemic, we can see the best of what citizenship and understanding
our interc­onnectedness as humans can be in light of challenge. This noble goal cannot
be restricted to the work in civics classes in 8th grade and high school.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR RESEARCH, PRACTICE, AND POLICY

One of the key arguments made in this paper is that all of the core academic dis-
ciplines and their specific ways of knowing and building knowledge are necessarily
entailed in the kind of robust civic reasoning and discourse required for a work-
ing democracy. However, disciplinary knowledge is constructed and reproduced by
experts and is coordinated by discipline-specific organizations who might not see
relevance to civic concerns among the priorities of their work. The authors call for
disciplinary educational organizations to talk within and across their boundaries to
consider and articulate how they should contribute to civic learning, reasoning, and
discourse across the curriculum and lifespan. There is also a need to foster dialogue
between professional communities seeking to support civic discourse in schooling
and community-based institutions, both to promote mutual learning and to develop
opportunities for academic learning and research to contribute to the needs of local
communities.
The authors have also argued that while civics course requirements are a positive
growing policy effort, a single semester- or year-long civics course is not adequate
to support children and youth in engaging in civic reasoning and discourse. Such
reasoning and discourse entails wide-scale knowledge reflected across the academic
disciplines and epistemic dispositions necessary for engaging with complexity. Equally
important are considerations of identity orientations and moral/ethical commitments.
These forms of knowledge and dispositions evolve early in child development, includ-
ing children’s evolution of moral reasoning. Humans at a very early age begin to
98 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

Learning Principles for Civic Reasoning and Discourse

1. Attention to the issues of conceptual change and moral development: Learning the com­
plex demands of civic reasoning and discourse require attention to problems of conceptual
change, self-examinations of implicit bias, moral reasoning, and epistemological dispositions
valuing complexity and weighing multiple points of view.
2. Empathy building: Central to learning to engage in civic reasoning and discourse in ways that
promote democratic values is learning to empathize with others, even when we disagree and
to interrogate the concept of democratic values.
3. Awareness of the role of identity development: Anticipate the social and emotional demands
of civic reasoning and discourse and the ways that identity orientations and commitments play
out in such reasoning and discourse.
4. Evidence informed decision making: Civic reasoning as a form of argumentation requires
having access to sufficient data on which to base claims with evidence and to articulate war­
rants for why evidence should be believable.
5. Development of advanced comprehension skills: Engaging in and examining civic dis­
course requires meta-linguistic knowledge about Ahow language can be crafted and manipu­
lated to persuade, how language can implicitly convey points of view and position judgements
as presumed facts.
6. Deep learning opportunities for civic reasoning and discourse across content areas: In
order to interrogate the array of problems addressed in civic reasoning, students must develop
content based and conceptual knowledge in each of the academic disciplines taught in schools:
a. History—chronological knowledge of events; hypothesized causal links among historical
actions, including the full range of persistent challenges in U.S. history and world his­
tory; under­standing geographical influences on the history of nations and relations among
­nations; ability to critically interrogate sources of historical information and claims
i. Government and political systems
ii. Economic systems
b. Literature—read widely literature across cultural traditions in order to develop capacities to
enter worlds different from the lived experiences of students; read widely to examine per­
sistent ethical and moral human dilemmas; read widely to imagine the personal dimensions
of experiencing historical big events and traumas
c. Mathematics—develop sufficient conceptual and procedural knowledge in order to critically
examine claims made in the public arena that include mathematical data as evidence for
claims; learning probabilistic reasoning/statistical inference; data displays
d. Science—develop sufficient conceptual and procedural knowledge in order to critically
exam­ine health, climate and other claims related to the natural world that arise in the public
domain; develop dispositions to reach out to multiple sources and understand reliability
of such sources for information needed to interrogate science related questions in the
public domain; develop a critical respect for the explanatory power of science, including its
­limitations

construct notions of fairness, morality, identity, and community that need to be sur-
faced, nurtured, and at times challenged in a safe and supportive way. The authors call
for research, practice, and policy that deals with creation and maintenance of innovative
and cross-curricular civic discourse spaces across grades that might allow students to
connect the moral values they are developing in their worldly experiences with the
content and forms of reasoning they are practicing in disciplinary classrooms, and
PERSPECTIVES FROM LEARNING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH 99

apply them to the local and global challenges they hear about in the news or media,
encounter in the lives of their extended family, or overhear on the street or playground.
Ultimately, socialization efforts toward developing empathy for others, including
others with whom we disagree, stands as a foundational goal for moral development
that can be taken up in schooling across the disciplines.
Students need spaces for trans-contextual sensemaking (Bateson, 2016) that pro-
mote seeing the deep relevance and interrelatedness of literacy, literature, social studies
and history, science, and math to young people’s lived experiences. Imagine a space
like that existing in Mississippi schools the days after the ICE raids described in the
vignette—a space where students of different ages, together with their teachers, could
actually ask “What should we do?” How they might share personal stories, consider
historical precedents, calculate potential consequences, and debate possible strategies
for community response? While that discussion might have happened in church base-
ments and living rooms across town, it ought to have been available for young people
in their public schools.
With respect to research, we need to better understand how identity, moral thinking,
and knowledge domains come together as people reason about civic issues, and how
these are not simply individual processes, but also take place in relation to communities
and to societies (Nasir et al., 2020). Researchers also might have something to learn from
studying places where this kind of disciplinary learning is already happening alongside
learning to engage civic discourse and reasoning—in classrooms and schools, but also
in formal and informal community settings.
The kinds of work the authors are calling for requires a collaborative spirit, and the
acknowledgment that we must come together in new ways toward new kind of ends
in order to bring about the kinds of transformative change that would most optimally
support young people in engaging in deep and rich civic discourse and reasoning in
multiple aspects of their lives.

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 3

From the Diffusion of Knowledge to the

Cultivation of Agency:
A Short History of Civic Education Policy
and Practice in the United States
Nancy Beadie, University of Washington
Zoë Burkholder, Montclair State University

With the Assistance of:

James D. Anderson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Andrew Hartman, Illinois State University
Walter C. Parker, University of Washington
Rowan Steineker, Florida Gulf Coast University

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
The Necessity of Civic Education, 110
Four Challenges of Civic Education, 110
Four Ways of Conceptualizing the Importance of History for Civic
Education, 114
LEGACIES—SEVEN HISTORICAL EXAMPLES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Historical Agency and Civic Education in the American Revolution:
The Uses of History, 117
Visions and Dilemmas of Civic Education in the Early Republic:
The Power of Context, 118
Civic Education and Sovereignty in the Common School Era: Tensions
and Contradictions, 122
Antebellum Black Activism and Postbellum Educational Reconstruction:
Contingency and Consequence, 125
Civic Education, Nationalism, and “Americanization” in the Early 20th
Century: Lessons and Limits, 129
Creating an Anti-Racist Civic Education: Advancement and Backlash, 132
Struggles for Self-Determination in the Civil Rights Era: Toward a
Pluralist Vision of Civic Education, 137

109
110 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Current Contexts and Demands for Confronting History, 141
Learning from the Past, 142
Looking to the Future: Four Recommendations, 143
REFERENCES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

INTRODUCTION

The Necessity of Civic Education

Civic education is a necessity of life. It is at least as important as education in science
and technology, or literacy in language and math. As the climate crisis, the ongoing
crisis of police brutality, and the recent global pandemic make plain, scientific knowl-
edge and humanist understanding may improve and enrich human life, but they are
not enough to ensure justice or human survival. Until we as citizens find ways to make
our governments more effective in confronting crises such as climate change, pandemic
preparedness, anti-Black violence, and public health, many lives and even the human
species will remain gravely imperiled. Meeting that imperative requires human agency
and civic efficacy. In this sense, we are in the midst of an acute civic crisis.
Since at least the American Revolution, a central purpose of schooling in the
United States has been civic education. As conceived by those who declared indepen-
dence from Great Britain for what they understood to be violations of their civil and
property rights, an education in knowledge and civic virtue was essential for equip-
ping citizens to bear effective witness to truth and right in the face of corruption and
abuses of power. Yet, as we know, truth itself is multiple and right is highly contested,
nor do either speak for itself. Both depend, instead, on the voices and actions of those
who have been educated about them. For these reasons, civic education must also be
concerned with the cultivation of civic agency.
This chapter examines multiple historical attempts to address the challenge of
educating future publics for pluralist democracy in the face of repeated violations and
contestations of democratic ideals. It begins by posing four central problems of civic
education, then analyzes select historical examples of how particular historical actors
have understood and engaged those problems in their own lives and times, from the
early national period through the late 20th century. To conclude, the chapter identifies
how historical knowledge and reasoning can inform education for civic agency in our
own time.

Four Challenges of Civic Education

Civic Education Implicates Both the Powerless and the Powerful

Civic education implicates both the powerless and the powerful. Although the his-
tory of civic education is intrinsically intertwined with the history of “citizenship,” the
principle of access to such education extends beyond citizens. Most of the provisions of
the U.S. Constitution delineate rights and privileges of “persons” under the jurisdiction
FROM THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE TO THE CULTIVATION OF AGENCY 111

of the U.S. government, not citizens (Bosniak, 2010). Even the 14th Amendment, which
begins by defining a federal standard of citizenship, ends with clauses that (1) explicitly
forbid states from depriving any “persons” of fundamental rights without due process
of law; and (2) that extend “equal protection of the laws” to all “persons” within U.S.
jurisdiction. In Plyler v. Doe (1982), the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that the constitu-
tion protected access to public education for all children under the equal protection
clause of the 14th Amendment, regardless of citizenship or documented legal status.
The court explained its decision with reference to the pivotal role of public education “in
maintaining the fabric of society” and “sustaining our political and cultural heritage,”
as well as to the necessity of education for individual well-being and the “ability to live
within the structure of our civic institutions.”1 In this sense, the civic value and necessity
of education transcend long-running historical debates over definitions and eligibility
for citizenship to encompass all persons residing in the United States—the powerless
as well as the powerful.
At the same time, citizenship confers certain substantive imperatives and respon-
sibilities on those who have it. The recognition, enforcement, and protection of civil
rights depends on the civic knowledge, dispositions, and agency of those who exercise
power in the United States. They depend, in other words, on the education of citizens.
As both a policy project and a curriculum project, then, civic education must aim at
educating citizens on the rights, powers, and protections that are guaranteed to others,
as much as to themselves, and to the limitations of official power with respect to all
persons under U.S. jurisdiction, whether citizens or not.
This point about civic education as the education of those who already exercise power
bears repeating in light of both history and current crises. As argued more fully later
in this chapter, civic education in the United States has often been hobbled by the
presumption that its target audiences are those who wish to become citizens. In the
early 20th century, for example, the central lessons of cultural pluralism, political
tolerance, and minority rights supposedly encoded in U.S. constitutional law and
American culture were most often taught as lessons of “Americanization” directed
to immigrants and minorities, rather than lessons taught to citizens who already
enjoyed political power.
The legacy of that history continues to this day, when those who actively seek
U.S. citizenship through naturalization must pass “citizenship tests” that many
birthright citizens cannot pass themselves. More profoundly, those persons whose
civil rights are most routinely violated—that is, Blacks, Native Americans, Latinx,2
LGBTQ persons, and members of other racialized and stigmatized ethnic and reli-
gious groups—have been forced to learn the basic terms and meaning (or meaning-
lessness) of constitutional rights and protections in a way that dominant members
of society have not. A civic education equal to the challenges of our own time, then,
must aim at the education of those who already presume to hold and exercise power
as much as at those who do not.

1  Plyler
v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, p. 210 (1982).
2  Theterm Latinx recognizes a preferred gender-neutral term embraced by many younger Americans
who are either from, or who have family from, Latin America (Morales, 2018; Ortiz, 2018).
112 EDUCATING FOR CIVIC REASONING AND DISCOURSE

Civic Education Is Itself Political

Civic education is itself political. The fact that it implies citizenship means that it has
always been embedded in conflicts over who should be accorded the status of citizens
and recognized as having civil and political rights. Paradoxically, it is precisely because
so many people see the answers to such questions as important that civic education is
often a neglected priority. A convergence of interest in support of civic education across
such differences can be difficult to effect.
The very concept of citizenship has a problematic history. Throughout European
colonization and state formation in the Americas, it has been used to mark distinctions
between settler and Native, between those who could claim to “own” land and those
who could not. Under this “logic of elimination” (Wolfe, 2006), Indian identity and U.S.
citizenship have often been constructed as mutually exclusive categories—a double
bind that Native Americans have repeatedly sought to overcome and that in many
ways remained unresolved even after the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act granted U.S.
citizenship to “all non-citizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United
States” (Lomawaima, 2013).
Ideas of citizenship and civic education have also been highly racialized. The
formal and informal education of elite leaders, soldiers, settlers, and ordinary laborers
have often included direct lessons in White supremacy. Such lessons both constructed
and justified the forced expropriation of territory from Indigenous peoples and the
capture and enslavement of Africans that enriched European individuals and nations.
They undergirded the eventual creation of the United States as an independent nation
founded in part as a league for further violent expansion, labor exploitation, and appro-
priation of land and resources. They continued into the history of the nation itself and
structured basic norms and ideas about who should be included in social and political
institutions, including schools, and for what purposes (Gould, 1981; Hannaford, 1996;
Malik, 1996; Stratton, 2016; Wolfe, 2002).
During much of the 19th century, most Whites opposed