The National Issues Forums Institute provides many resources for teachers.  Along with an entire section of their website dedicated to educators (including classroom material, issue guides and course descriptions), NIF has created an online forum space where educators can share experiences using NIF material. Are you looking for new ways to engage students in productive, deliberative conversations in your classroom? Are you interested in connecting with other teachers who are thinking about ways to instruct a new generation of citizens? Have you used National Issues ... (continue)

Everyday Democracy welcomes you to use and adapt this one-page tip sheet freely. The tip sheet lists ideas on how you might organize a one-day event on school violence. The summit they describe is intended to help a community address the issue, but also lay the groundwork for a long-term citizen involvement effort. Contact Everyday Democracy if you would like to organize this kind of an event with their help. Visit www.everyday-democracy.org for more details. Resource Link: http://ncdd.org/rc/wp-content/uploads/EvDem-OrganizingASummitOnSchoolViolence.doc (Word doc download) (continue)

How should schools and communities respond to the Newtown tragedy? The Deliberative Democracy Consortium produced, in partnership with the National School Public Relations Association, a guide for discussion and action on school safety and other issues raised by the events in Newtown. (DDC executive director Matt Leighninger serves on the board of NSPRA.) A number of other deliberation practitioners (all NCDD members) contributed to this guide, including: Will Friedman of Public Agenda, John Dedrick and Brad Rourke of the Kettering Foundation, Martha McCoy, Pat Scully, and Molly Barrett ... (continue)

The National Issues Forums Institute’s website includes a dedicated section devoted to sharing resources and information on deliberation programs for educators and the students they work with. Section description from the National Issues Forums Institute website… This is a space where educators of all kinds can learn more about deliberation and its use in the classroom and other educational communities. It is a place to connect with each other, to share your experiences and to learn how deliberation has been integrated into K-12 curriculum, after school ... (continue)

This 206-page book by Patricia Moore Harbour asserts that the relationships between education, community, and democracy are inseparable and illustrates that education is broader than just schooling. “Harbour challenges current thinking about education and reveals how the public participates in the education and development of youth.”  Continued from the book’s description… “This book is a call for action and responsibility—both individual and collective—to transform education beyond simply reforming schools. The author’s professional educational experiences, combined with stories from the field by and about youth and community ... (continue)

The American Democracy Project’s Global Engagement Scholars have produced the 2nd edition of their Educating Globally Competent Citizens: A Toolkit. Edited by Steven Elliott-Gower (Georgia College), Dennis Falk (University of Minnesota Duluth) and Martin Shapiro (California State University, Fresno), this toolkit is a guide for faculty and staff who want to educate globally competent citizens using CSIS’s 7 Revolutions Framework. The toolkit is a companion guide to AASCU’s Global Challenges: Promise and Peril in the 21st Century national blended-learning course. (continue)

CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement) released a new study in August 2012 on how out-of-school youth engage in civic life, and what stands in their way. Many practitioners informed this project, which was produced in collaboration with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. A vibrant and thriving democracy requires a deeply engaged and active citizenry. “Civic engagement” encompasses all the ways we identify and understand common problems in our communities, nation, and world. Robust civic engagement not only creates healthy societies; it ... (continue)

While teaching at an all-Black middle school in Atlanta, Meira Levinson realized that students’ individual self-improvement would not necessarily enable them to overcome their profound marginalization within American society. This is because of a civic empowerment gap that is as shameful and antidemocratic as the academic achievement gap targeted by No Child Left Behind. No Citizen Left Behind (2012, Harvard University Press) argues that students must be taught how to upend and reshape power relationships directly, through political and civic action. Drawing on political theory, empirical research, and her ... (continue)

One of the National Issues Forums Institute’s issue guides, Preparing Today’s Kids for Tomorrow’s Jobs: What Should Our Community Do? outlines this public issue and several choices or approaches to addressing the issue. National Issues Forums do not advocate a specific solution or point of view, but provide citizens the opportunity to consider a broad range of choices, weigh the pros and cons of those options, and meet with each other in a public dialogue to identify the concerns they hold in common. From the ... (continue)

This 1999 report by John Doble and Iara Peng of Doble Research Associates examined the inclusion and effectiveness of NIF material in high school classrooms. See more details on the NIF website. Four high school teachers who extensively use NIF in their classes partnered with Doble Research on this project. The teachers reviewed the research protocol and materials, described at length how they use NIF in their classrooms, recruited students to participate in the focus groups, made all arrangements for each session, acted as participant-observers at the sessions, joined ... (continue)