The Teaching for Democracy Alliance is leveraging existing, high quality materials for professional development opportunities for teachers. The alliance was established as a strong collective voice for democratic learning to better equip teachers to ring practical democracy lessons to their students, especially in a tense political year.
The Alliance is coordinated by CIRCLE, which is part of Tufts University's Tisch College of Civic Life.
Core Principles of the Alliance
The Alliance is coordinated by CIRCLE, which is part of Tufts University's Tisch College of Civic Life.
Core Principles of the Alliance
- An informed citizenry is important and can be cultivated early through civic learning,
- All students need access to opportunities to learn about core democratic processes like elections and voting,
- A variety of high quality and culturally relevant resources are needed to reach all teachers and students, and
- It's important for student learning to acknowledge political actors to model democratic practice.
|
|
|
Yet political polarization and structural barriers in many school districts have reduced opportunities for millions of young people to learn about modern democracy. Only 38% of social studies teachers think they would get strong support from their district to teach about an election, and only 28% think parents would strongly support them (Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge, 2013).
Let’s teach for democracy.
