Educating for Informed and Equitable Voting
Relatively little is known about how educators prepare youth to become active voters in a democratic society. To deepen our understanding of how to support educators to teach about voting and elections, we entered into a partnership with Abby Kiesa and Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg at Tuft’s CIRCLE and John Rogers at UCLA’s IDEA. Together, we are conducting a qualitative research study in which we follow a group of K-12 educators who taught about voting ahead of the 2020 elections in order to examine how their thinking and teaching evolved over time. The sample of participants includes educators from across the country (e.g. California, Texas, and Illinois) and in a variety of roles (e.g. teachers and administrators). As such, we are also examining how the sociopolitical context of educators’ work sites impacts the manner in which they think and teach about voting and elections.
In addition to our research study, we offer a professional development course entitled Educating for Informed & Equitable Voting that helps educators prepare youth to participate in democracy and highlights voting as one important avenue of democratic participation. During the course, participants learn about trends in youth voting, inequalities in turnout, and misconceptions about youth engagement while also exploring key strategies for motivating young people to become informed voters. The next session of this course will be offered in the summer of 2022.
Partners
Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE)
Abby Kiesa, Deputy Director
Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Director
John Rogers, Director of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access (IDEA)