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Teaching Social Sciences

The social sciences - anthropology, economics, psychology, political science, communication studies, and sociology - enable scholars to understand institutions like the government, the economy, and family, as well as how individuals and groups interact with one another. While the pursuit of knowledge about basic drivers of human behavior is an important component of social progress, a natural consequence of focusing tightly on structural causes of problems is that it can leave students feeling frustrated and overwhelmed, and therefore less likely to get involved in their communities to solve the problems they are studying in class.

Solutions Journalism Network has created collections of stories with discussion questions to help teachers in the social sciences shift their teaching focus toward solutions, and introduce their students to some of the most promising solutions to social, political, and communicative problems that are being implemented around the world today.

Below we've compiled a few resources for you. First, you will see a list of keywords that you can click on and go to all of the stories in our database that have been tagged as fitting in to that topic. Next, you'll find a sampling of "Story Collections" on a variety of topics related to communication and media. Each of these collections include discussion questions that you can use with your students. For our entire selection of collections with discussion questions, visit our SJN Resources for Educators page.

All collections are free to download and licensed through the Creative Commons. Just click the "copy and customize" button within the collection to add or delete questions or stories from the Solutions Story Tracker -- SJN's searchable database of thousands of rigorously reported solutions stories published by a diversity of news outlets from around the world. If you decide to download one or more collections to assign to your students, you'll need to create a Solutions Journalism Network educator profile. Just click on the LOGIN/REGISTER in the upper right corner of the website to do so.

SJN also offers two additional resources appropriate for any discipline: the Complicating the Narratives Discussion Guides and the Making a Difference Course Modules. And be sure to check out our popular Journalist in the Classroom program. We have just a few slots remaining for this semester, so if you're interested in bringing a journalist to class to discuss a particular issue with your students, let us know.

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