ERIC Number: EJ1016197
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013
Pages: 10
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1523-1615
EISSN: N/A
Promoting Civic Engagement in Schools in Non-Democratic Settings: Transforming the Approach and Practices of Iranian Educators
Abolfazli, Maryam; Alemi, Maryam
Current Issues in Comparative Education, v15 n2 p53-62 Spr 2013
Established in 2011, the Online School of Civic Education (the Online School) is intended to give Iranian teachers and educators the opportunity to reflect, experiment, and create classroom experiences aimed at teaching their students how to think, rather than what to think. The Online School was developed to provide teachers and educators inside Iran with an alternative to existing top-down, ideological, and teacher-centered civic education in Iran. The Online School's approach is to encourage teachers and, by extension, their students to think independently and analytically about their surroundings through activities and reflection. We argue that it is possible to provide teachers with experiential training in democratic civic education despite and within the context of the existing civic education paradigm in Iran, which defines citizenship in terms of devotion to religious ideology. We argue that, through this model, not only can teachers gain meaningful insight into the practice of democratic citizenship, but they also can enact changes in their classroom behavior and lessons that pass such understandings on to their students.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Educational Change, Citizen Participation, Citizenship Education, Cultural Context, Religion, Thinking Skills, Skill Development, Teaching Methods, Democratic Values, Teacher Student Relationship, Teacher Behavior, Web Based Instruction, Indo European Languages, Critical Thinking, Government School Relationship, Vignettes, Case Studies, Service Learning, Natural Disasters, Activism, Online Courses
Teachers College, Columbia University. International and Transcultural Studies, P.O. Box 211, 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027. e-mail: info@cicejournal.org; Web site: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/cice
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Iran; United States
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A