Esther Enright, assistant professor of curriculum, instruction and foundational studies, recently published initial results as co-author of an ongoing study on how elementary students discuss and defend their unique positions on modern questions, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings from the study appear in the Journal of Social Studies Research and the National Council for the Social Studies.
The study, Deliberation on the Public Good during COVID-19: A Case Study Examining Elementary Students’ Use of Civic Perspective, co-authored by William Toledo, assistant professor of elementary education at the University of Nevada, Reno, is an endeavor to understand how young students develop interpretations of and explain concepts like “common good” in order to look beyond themselves and consider best outcomes for the larger community.
The recently published findings examined how teachers adapted their instruction during the pandemic to support their students’ learning about locally relevant issues, including developing study-relevant lesson plans to facilitate student deliberation.