Educating for American Democracy Report and Roadmap

Educating for American Democracy (EAD) is an unprecedented effort that convened a diverse and cross-ideological group of scholars and educators to create a Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy— guidance and an inquiry framework that states, local school districts, and educators can use to transform teaching of history and civics to meet the needs of a diverse 21st century K–12 student body.

The Report contains seven content themes that map out the disciplinary and conceptual terrain, as well as the skills and dispositional learning needed to support healthy civic participation.

The Report also presents the Six Core Pedagogical
Principles exemplified by the “EAD teacher,” designed to focus
educators’ effort on techniques that best support the learning
and development of student agency required of history and civic
education.

Final, the Report presents five design challenges that span the seven themes and reflect the six core pedagogical principles. These design challenges typically involve several valid, worthy, and well-articulated learning goals that exist in mutual tension. Intentional engagement with questions of instructional strategy will help educators address these design challenges.

The accompanying Roadmap provides an inquiry framework that weaves history and civics together offering students the chance to dive deeply into topics. EAD inspires students to ask difficult questions and then seek answers in the classroom through facts and discussion. This framework is designed to spark national and cross-state conversation about civics and history, bringing to life relevant questions and applications for students.