Review of: Handbook of Research on Education for Participative Citizenship and Global Prosperity, José A. Pineda-Alfonso, Nicolás de Alba-Fernández and Elisa Navarro-Medina (2019) Hershey: IGI Global, 689 pp., ISBN 978-1-52257-110-0, h/bk, $265.00
The recent rise of authoritarian populism, fueled by the spread of digital hate speech and the preeminence of emotions in the political arena, has not aroused much interest among educational researchers. In response to this gap in the literature, the authors of the present article aim to provide an overview of the educational implications of the recent wave of authoritarian populism by interviewing a group of experts on democratic citizenship education from various countries and backgrounds. The dialogue resulting from their responses helps to move forward the educational debate on how schools can deal with the emotions and hate speech that motivate support for authoritarian populisms.
The emergence and expansion of social networks in the digital age has led to social transformations that have a great impact within the field of education. Teacher-training programs face the challenge of preparing future teachers to critically interpret digital media. They must succeed in this if we are to develop citizens who are well informed and reflective, which then raises the question: Are future teachers critical thinkers? This study took third- and fourth-year students of primary education (n = 322) at five Spanish universities and explored their capacity for constructing critical discourses. It examined how well they can analyze and discuss information from digital media on social problems like poverty, economic crises, social justice, and the media. Its findings reveal that future teachers have difficulty in putting together critical discourses based on information from the Internet on social problems. Those who have doubts, compare, analyze, and reason are the minority.