Third Way Civics

Students sit around tables in a classroom, talking and collaborating during a group discussion.

Educating Undergraduates for American Democracy

What does it mean to live in a democracy? What is the nature of our own democratic system? And how should we, the people, act to sustain its best features and remedy its flaws?

These are hard questions, made harder by deep divisions in American society. Third Way Civics (3WC) is designed to help undergraduates put those divisions in context and turn them into opportunities for individual and collective growth—not just in the classroom, but in the workplaces and other institutional spaces they will enter after college.

3WC fosters the civic and career readiness students need to lead personally rewarding, publicly meaningful lives.

The Need for a "Third Way"

The nation faces a civic crisis, and our institutions of higher education are too often mired in the history and civics wars that are further dividing Americans. Is US history a story of triumph or tragedy? Does good citizenship require reverent patriotism or critical activism? 3WC teaches undergraduates that history tells many stories, citizenship takes many forms, and a healthy democracy—including schools, neighborhood organizations, and workplaces of all kinds—depends on citizens’ ability to learn and work across differences.

The 3WC Difference

Too much civic learning relies on simply exposing students to great texts and great ideas, transmitted and interpreted by great professors. By contrast, 3WC puts students—individually and collectively—at the center of knowledge creation. No textbooks or lectures tell them what to think about the complex issues they encounter. Instructors help students wrestle with diverse primary sources and one another’s varying interpretations, teaching them to think for themselves, but never by themselves.

The 3WC Community

3WC provides intensive, immersive professional development for instructors who want to foster their students’ civic readiness without indoctrination and without abandoning their other teaching objectives. Faculty learn and practice ways to design their courses, establish classroom environments, and adopt new teaching postures to create a rigorous, engaging, empowering civic learning experience that works in their institutional and disciplinary context. Regular term-time meetings and annual summer workshops reinforce a culture of shared commitment, mutual support, and individual innovation—a community of purposeful practice.

Beyond History and Government

3WC began as an experiment in providing a better, more personally and publicly useful course in US history and politics. Almost immediately, faculty in other disciplines grew interested in the student-centered, active-learning strategies that define the 3WC approach. Today, the 3WC approach is used to teach undergraduate courses in economics, international relations, mathematics, psychology, public health, scientific and technical communication, sociology, world languages and cultures, and a growing number of other fields seeking learners and problem-solvers who are self-directed and creative while also responsible, reflective, collaborative, and adaptive.

Beyond the Ivory Tower

Originally designed for undergraduate contexts, 3WC has attracted the interest of K12 educators. We have provided 3WC professional development for teachers in the Muncie Community Schools as well as districts in California, Florida, and Minnesota, and the 3WC approach is a major component of two US Department of Education grants aimed at supporting standards-aligned yet creative and character-building K12 civic learning in Florida.

Civic Readiness is Career Readiness

3WC fosters the skills and dispositions required for responsible, creative, productive citizenship: critical assessment of evidence, curiosity about divergent perspectives, reasoned argumentation, self-reflection on biases and assumptions, and collaborative intellectual and creative work across differences. And guess what? Experienced business leaders recognize those same skills as essential to the health and growth of their own organizations. 3WC is an investment in American civic and career readiness, helping students and employers understand that civic skills are work skills while also recognizing that workplace practices have public consequences.

Questions?

For any questions or inquiries, please contact our Associate Director for Economic and Civic Learning, Trygve Throntveit.

Center for Economic and Civic Learning

Teachers College (TC), Room 839
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306

217-721-6741