CHAPTER 3: Citizenship Education Using Rational Decision Making: Donald Oliver, James Shaver, and Fred Newmann’s Public Issues Model

From the Founding Fathers to current times, preparing students for democratic citizenship has been at the forefront of American aims regarding education. Yet by all accounts traditional approaches to citizenship education have not achieved their desired effect (Griffin, 1942; National Center for Learning and Citizenship, 2004). Civic engagement as measured by knowledge, beliefs, skills, and active participation of Americans is widely reported to be less than desirable on measures such as knowledge of United States history, tolerance and willingness to compromise, civil disputation, and voting in local, state and national elections (National Council for the Social Studies, 1992). While social studies/history teachers are not the only educators charged with promoting citizenship, a job so important that all educators need to be concerned with this aspect of their profession, it is certainly true that the bulk of citizenship preparation falls within the parameters of the social studies curriculum in our schools. Thus the question arises: How can social studies teachers be more effective in the preparation of their students for their responsibilities as citizens in our democracy?