Keynote Speaker: Keith C. Barton and Li-Ching Ho

Bio -

Keith C. Barton is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Indiana University. A former elementary teacher, his work emphasizes history education and civic participation in the United States and internationally. His teaching, research, and writing focus on how knowledge of social issues and social action, in past and present societies, locally and around the world, can enable students to work toward a better future. He has served as a visiting professor, consultant, and researcher in Northern Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, Chile, and other countries, and his work has been translated into seven languages. He is co-author, with Linda Levstik, of Doing History: Investigating with Children in Elementary and Middle Schools (2023) and Teaching History for the Common Good (2004). He is the recipient of the 2023 Career Research Award from the National Council for the Social Studies. 

Li-Ching Ho is Professor of Social Studies Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research, conducted primarily in East and Southeast Asia, focuses on global civic education, issues of diversity in social studies education, and climate change education. In particular, her work has been centered on how concepts such as justice, harmony, meritocracy, civility, and democratic deliberation are addressed in different national education systems. Li-Ching was previously a recipient of the UW-Madison Vilas Faculty Early Career Investigator Award and the NCSS College and University Faculty Assembly Early Career Research Award. She is a co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Global Citizenship and Education (2018).She also has worked closely with scholars, teachers, and students in countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, the United States, Singapore, Brunei and the Philippines.

Keith Barton and Li-Ching Ho are co-authors of Curriculum for Justice and Harmony: Deliberation, Knowledge, and Action in Social and Civic Education (2022), which draws on Eastern and Western philosophies, as well as contemporary theory and research, to present a vision of education with relevance across international and cultural boundaries.

Description of break-out session "Collaborative Deliberation: An Alternative to Adversarial Discussion"

Asking students to “take sides” on difficult social issues often leads to unproductive and unnecessarily controversial debates. This workshop presents an alternative model of discussion—collaborative deliberation—that reframes social issues in terms of non-adversarial, joint problem-solving.