Delia Kundin, Ph.D., and Timothy Sheldon, Ph.D., evaluators from the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI), have joined an international team that is working to promote the teaching and learning of democratic principles and the skills of civic deliberation among young people in Latin America and the United States.
The project, known as Deliberating in a Democracy in the Americas, is funded with a grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Healthy Students. Collaborators include the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago, the Constitutional Rights Foundation in Los Angeles, and Street Law, Inc. in Silver Spring, Maryland. Thousands of high school students and hundreds of teachers from Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and the United States are participating in the project.
Professor Patricia Avery, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, directs the evaluation of the grant in partnership with Kundin and Sheldon. The project model is based on Structured Academic Controversy developed by David Johnson, emeritus professor, Department of Educational Psychology, and Roger Johnson, professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction.