Critical Inquiry, Conceptual Clarity, and Contextual Limits. A Response to “Re-centering Civics: A Framework for Building Dispositions and Action Opportunities”

In Re-centering Civics: A Framework for Building Dispositions and Action Opportunities, the authors presented a framework to help social studies teachers in any subject or grade level re-center civic education. The authors’ article draws from the C3 Framework and C3Teachers.org to offer six civic dispositions teachers might focus on cultivating with their students, and the article highlights ways in which student engagements with any historical inquiry might be steered toward real-world civic action. In this response, we underscore the strengths of Re-centering Civics while also outlining a necessary, critical attention to the concepts undergirding the authors’ framework. Our response builds from Re-centering Civics by offering examples of how the concepts at play in the initial article might be reconfigured, how teacher questioning can be made more critical, how issues of diversity and power can be more effectively attended to, and how the everyday, contextual limitations of teachers might affect their ability to carry out this framework. Our response aims to strengthen the authors’ admirable project, one we are fully aligned with: integrating thoughtful, critical, and deliberate civic education—and meaningful action—into social studies education writ large