ICNC will soon be awarding its fourth round of civil resistance education grants to innovative high school educators from around the world. Up to 6 fellowships, each in the amount of $1,200, will be awarded to motivated and qualified educators who will work with ICNC to develop and teach a curriculum on nonviolent civil resistance to high school students during Fall 2019 or the Winter, Spring, or Summer terms in 2020. The fellowship amount will remain the same regardless of the number of instructors that will co-develop and co-teach a civil resistance course.

All High School Curriculum Fellows will also receive both educational resources and curriculum advice from ICNC staff.

The application deadline was September 8, 2019, and applications are now closed.

View the profiles of some of our past High School Fellows: 2016, 2018.

“Civil Resistance is an extra-institutional conflict-waging strategy in which organized grassroots movements use various, strategically sequenced, and planned out, nonviolent tactics such as strikes, boycotts, marches, demonstrations, noncooperation, self-organizing and constructive resistance to fight perceived injustice without the threat or use of violence.” — Veronique Dudouet, Powering to Peace: Integrated Civil Resistance and Peacebuilding Strategies

“Although the impact of civil resistance on domestic and international politics across the globe is often pivotal, we know relatively little about the dynamics of nonviolent struggle.” — Kurt Schock, Civil Resistance Today

Civil resistance education is emerging as an important element of the college-level educational experience, with a growing number of courses on civil resistance offered at various universities, including in the areas of conflict, peace and security studies, political science, international relations and sociology. As an interdisciplinary topic, civil resistance intersects various academic disciplines: politics, history, sociology, social-psychology, and international relations. A specialized course on civil resistance for high school students can offer them knowledge and skills that are relevant to future advanced studies in broadly understood social sciences.

At the same time, high school students who may be interested in careers in foreign policy, government, community organizing, or civil society organizations can find a course on civil resistance to be a career-oriented learning opportunity. As nonviolent civil resistance movements increasingly shape international affairs and domestic politics in countries around the world, government and civic actors, as well as journalists, are increasingly likely to encounter this phenomenon in their work. In such cases, knowledge about civil resistance movements can constitute an additional career advantage. Such a course may also enhance the students’ skills and commitment to be active citizens in their communities.

Faculty Eligibility

This Fellowship is open to part or full-time high school educators around the world who want to teach an entire course on nonviolent civil resistance or integrate a significant unit on civil resistance movements for rights, freedom, justice, and sustainability into an existing or new course. They may teach in:

• Public/state high schools,
• Charter high schools,
• Private high schools, or
• After or out-of-school programs and enrichment organizations working with high school-aged students

Required Teaching Load

Fellows have to develop and teach a curriculum on civil resistance during their fellowship period that proves substantive and significant, and roughly equivalent, at a minimum, of 5 or 6 class units, each at least 45 minutes long, that will be distributed over several weeks to give students ample time to reflect on the material, review assigned readings, participate meaningfully in classroom discussions, and be able to complete written or oral homework.

Possible Class Types

• a self-standing mandatory or elective course on civil resistance;
• curriculum units on civil resistance integrated into a new or preexisting social science or humanities course (e.g., Politics, Civics, Sociology, History, Geography);
• an online or “blended” online/in-class course (where the Fellow could use the ICNC online course platform–based on Open edX portal–with ICNC technical assistance); or
• a seminar on civil resistance organized as part of a social science club, after school, or enrichment program or study club.
  

Acceptable Student Grade Level

The class can be open to:

• high school seniors (final year of high school; 17-18 years old),
• high school juniors (two years prior to high school graduation; 16-17 years old) and, possibly,
• high school sophomores (three years prior to high school graduation; 15-16 years old), though we have a preference for classes focused on seniors or juniors.

Required Enrollment Numbers

A minimum of 12 students will need to enroll and attend the class.

Required Time Frame

Fellows are expected to teach their course or units either in Fall 2019 or Winter, Spring, or Summer 2020.

Language of Reporting and Instruction

• Application documents (e.g. application for, syllabus proposal, CV) must be in English
• Reporting to ICNC (two reports with requested documentation will be due at the beginning and end of the course) must be done in English regardless of the language of instruction
• Non-English languages of instruction can be considered provided there are enough translated readings on civil resistance in a specific language; or a fellow takes it upon him/herself to translate relevant key English-language texts (literature compilation from 2016) on civil resistance

To be considered for an ICNC High School Curriculum Fellowship, we will need three things from you:

• A completed online application;
• An uploaded CV or resume, and
• An uploaded curriculum proposal with units on civil resistance or a civil resistance-informed syllabus proposal.

Guidelines for Preparing Your Draft Curriculum Proposal

• Specify the structure of the envisioned curriculum delivery plan.
• Provide descriptions for each of the 5 or 6 session topics on civil resistance (in addition, you might include questions that will be explored/discussed for each topic session)
• List relevant readings (on average 15-20 pages of reading per week) for each session and any assignments and classwork that will be expected for a specific session or sessions as well as any midterm or final assignments
• Include a sample of the course assignments relevant to the subject of civil resistance that students will be required to complete during the course and the information on how these assignments will be evaluated/assessed. Possible final essay could assess a civil resistance campaign along the lines of “How ‘powerless’ youth and others helped organize ‘people power’ toward change in a public, institutional, or corporate policy”

Suggested Topics Your Proposed Syllabus Plan Could Include:

• Defining civil resistance and movements: What are they and what are they not? (with a possible focus on misconceptions about civil resistance)
• Civil resistance in history: historical cases of nonviolent civil resistance movements and campaigns, which may include international, national, or sub-national examples. Examination of the origin and emergence, conduct, impact and aftermath of these movements and campaigns
• The record and effectiveness of civil resistance movements: What have they achieved, and what is their historic success rate?
• Strategies and tactics of civil resistance campaigns
• Playing the computer-based game People Power throughout the duration of the course as part of the student home assignment. See the instructions on how to integrate the game into the course.
• Examining the dynamics of civil resistance including but not limited to how populations unify, mobilize, resist repression and cause it to backfire, engage in public communications, gain defections from their opponents, choose tactics and strategies.

In developing the curriculum proposal on civil resistance applicants are encouraged to review the following resources:

• ICNC Academic Online Curriculum (a key resource that provides a comprehensive list of topics in civil resistance studies, reading lists, videos, teaching aid and syllabi samples and other useful resources)
• ICNC Resource Library
• ICNC Conflict Summaries on Civil Resistance
• Recorded ICNC Webinars (where appropriate, consider integrating selected webinars into the syllabus as part of the student assignments)
• People Power: The Game of Civil Resistance
• Swarthmore Global Nonviolent Action Database
• Nonviolent Conflict News (for current events)
• Minds of the Movement Blog (exploring the power and people of civil resistance)

Documentaries

• A Force More Powerful, 2000
• Bringing Down a Dictator, 2001
• The Singing Revolution, 2006
• Orange Revolution, 2007

Selected chapters from the following books can be considered for reading assignments for the senior and junior high schoolers:

• Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: Macmillan, 2000)
• Maciej Bartkowski, ed. Recovering Nonviolent History. Civil Resistance in Liberation Struggles (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013)
• Shaazka Beyerle, Curtailing Corruption. People Power for Accountability and Justice (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2014)
• Kurt Schock, Civil Resistance Today, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015)

More advanced core reading on civil resistance includes:

• Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works. The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011)

Additional resources

• Selected Bibliography on Civil Resistance (March 2016): for readings more accessible for high school students check: Online publications, blogs, media articles & studies
• A Diplomat’s Handbook for Democracy Development Support

As part of the grant award, fellows will be expected to prepare the following deliverables:

• Learning gains instrument(s) prior to the start of the course to be used to monitor and assess progress in students’ learning about civil resistance. Review the learning gains templates that will need to be customized depending on the developed course content on civil resistance:
  • Template of a pre-seminar learning gains survey (distributed prior to the start of the course)
  • Template of a post-seminar learning gains survey (distributed at the end of the course)
  • Learning gains survey and results.

• Final course evaluation with students’ feedback on the course content on civil resistance. Review a template of a final course evaluation that will need to be customized according to the course content developed as part of the accepted curriculum proposal

• Final report to be submitted to ICNC after the course ends on the delivered content, including any innovative teaching tools used, students’ learning gains (how they were measured and what the results were), results of students’ final evaluation, and student feedback on the game or other relevant course exercises, and general lessons learnt

The funds for the Fellowship will be disbursed in two equal installments:

• $600 at the beginning of the course, after the submission of the updated syllabus and the confirmation of the enrollment numbers and list of students

• $600 at the end of the course after the submission of the final report and evaluation results

The application window is now closed.

If you have any questions, please contact the ICNC Academic Team.