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A meta-analysis of educators’ uses of political cartoons suggests they are mostly used for teaching interpretation skills and then usually only with gifted and older students. This demonstrates creative stagnation, limited elicitation of higher order thinking skills, and age bias. The researcher previously examined young adolescents’ use of effective and efficient technologies to express historical understandings through original political cartoon construction. This methodology elicited students’ higher order thinking as they expressed learning within their creations, which were then used as a teaching tool to facilitate constructive whole class interpretative discussions. The following questions extend previous research and guide this article: “How can one categorize students’ original political cartoons?” “Which categories illustrate most clearly student-creators’ learning?” “Which categories are the best teaching tools, as judged by elicitation of lengthy and healthy discussions?” To address the first question, the researcher categorized students’ original political cartoons and presented representative examples. To address the second question, the researcher triangulated students’ reflective descriptions of intended meanings, uses of historical content, and encoded symbolism and meanings. To address the third question, the researcher detailed how the original political cartoons impacted students’ thinking during class discussions in two dissimilar contexts.

To best challenge students’ thinking, researchers and educators must locate or create innovative ways to spark enthusiasm and facilitate criticality. This paper investigates how middle school students analyzed various primary and secondary historical documents to construct original political cartoons. Students articulated newly generated understandings about the complex historical event within these original political cartoons. Students then examined and discussed peers’ original political cartoons. This approach was novel because the research literature indicated students rarely are asked to construct original political cartoons to express opinions and understandings. Political cartoons mostly are used as tools for interpretation and usually only with gifted and older students. This approach was successful because of the positive impact that original political cartooning had on students’ engagement, interpretational skills, criticality, expressivity, and the class’s discussions. The original political cartoons served as engaging teaching and learning tools that enabled students to see history’s complex and unsettled nature.

Cartoons have these last years represented an excellent way to lead debates on various socio-political and economic issues affecting Nigeria and to engage and enlighten Nigerian audiences. Almost all Nigerian newspapers and magazines have found them instrumental in their criticism of political malpractices and socio-cultural maladies plaguing the country. In line with this, many social forces (particularly NGOs) have embraced cartooning as a strong tool for environmental activism. Such social entities have in various platforms, deployed cartoons as a fruitful sensitization machinery to mobilize various segments of the Nigerian populace in favor of environmental protection. These sensitization efforts have most often entailed the construction/composition of emotionally and ideologically loaded cartoons that reflect many local myths and which are founded on local idiosyncrasies and worldviews. Understanding some Nigerian environmental cartoons has thus often been a complex task which in many instances, necessitates not only a full grasp of the principles of visual rhetoric but equally sufficient knowledge of some local myths and socio-cultural realities. In view of this fact, it may be interesting to apply semiotics in the reading of environmental cartoons. This chapter addresses this issue. It is divided into three main parts. The first part explores the state of environmental protection in Nigeria. The second part examines cartoons as a tool for social and political activism. The third part provides theoretical illuminations on the use of semiotics in the interpretation of cartoons and the last part provides a semiotic analysis of selected environmental cartoons.

The difficulty of attributing subject to editorial cartoons for indexing purposes exists both for traditional paper-based cartoon formats and for digitized or born-digital cartoons. This paper presents a selective review of literature on indexing editorial cartoons and the associated challenges.

A gap exists in published research on indexing collections of editorial cartoons for online search and retrieval. This paper presents a review of selected works that specifically address the topic of editorial cartoon indexing within a wider context of research that addresses image indexing, subject analysis and indexing challenges more generally. Works that address the interpretation of cartoons by readers and how readers respond to information communicated by editorial cartoons are also considered.

Cartoon controversies in transnational and multicultural contexts, experienced through the international news media since 2000, have dramatically increased research attention and publications in this area. Profound changes in media publication since the advent of the Internet have had an impact on editorial cartoonists and cartoon publishing. Subject indexing of editorial cartoons remains a challenge.

The potential for large indexed cartoon collections to be data-mined for topic modeling for research in the social sciences points to the need for indexers of cartoon collections to improve metadata standards and structures to allow improved access to cartoon metadata for computational analysis.

This paper places discussion of the technical challenges facing indexers of editorial cartoons within a broader context of discussions about the nature and future of editorial cartooning in rapidly changing media and publishing environments.

This chapter sets forth a plan designed to encourage and enable teachers to engage in first-person characterization in their classrooms. The author draws on his extensive background in social studies teaching, administration, and consulting to argue for the value of historical interpretation within the context of today's curricular emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This chapter then explores and explains historical interpretation from a classroom perspective, focusing on pedagogical best practices. In a first-person presentation, the presenter assumes the identity of a historical figure. The first question to be asked then is, Who is the individual I wish to represent, and why? This person should be selected from subject matter being studied in your class. Be aware that it is necessary to anticipate some element of controversy when you undertake this activity. With rare exceptions, any historical figure selected for portrayal will have something questionable in their background, and you will have to contend with this. So, the next question to ask is, Why engage in first-person interpretation in the first place? In this chapter, experienced teachers provide reasons for doing so, and consider necessary preparations for effectively implementing such a characterization. That discussion leads to examining ways to ensure successful presentations that achieve established lesson goals, followed by suggestions for debriefing and effectively bringing closure to the exercise. As the accompanying lesson extension demonstrates, a characterization can ground further study of an issue associated with the individual being depicted.

Because of its conceptually dense character, social studies can be difficult to learn. Educators often struggle to find ways to teach higher-order thinking and make academic language and concepts comprehensible for English language learners (ELLs). Visuals may be the key to effective social studies instruction for this student population. Images can be located and obtained easily through the Internet, meshing well with the learning styles of today’s adolescents. This article presents some of the most promising approaches—including historical photographs, paintings and illustrations, maps, propaganda posters, and graphic organizers— that can be used with learners at all levels of language proficiency.

Using student-centered teaching methods presents a great challenge to many new middle and high school history teachers. Having experienced mostly teacher-centered instructional approaches (such as lectures and teacher-led discussions) in secondary school and college classes, they begin student teaching with few models for how to teach using less traditional forms of instruction. This paper discusses “Ideas, Issues, and Insights,” a strategy for prospective history teachers, as they explore the use of student-centered teaching methods with middle and high school students. It analyzes written reflection papers where history teacher candidates identify their ideas for three student-centered instructional methods — small group work, primary source analysis, and historical role-plays and simulations — as well as issues that arise when these student-centered methods are implemented in the classroom. As history teacher candidates respond to their ideas and issues, they generate insights about how they can best use student-centered teaching methods in their future classrooms. The first-person perspectives of history teacher candidates are highlighted to show how college students in one university-based teacher preparation program think about their student teaching experiences and their choice of instructional methods to use with students.

Previous research on classroom uses for political cartoons identified two negative trends: creative stagnation (as teachers utilized them solely for interpretation) and age limitation (as researchers suggested they fit best with gifted and older students). Recent scholarship has addressed both trends by enabling young adolescent students to creatively express newly generated understandings through construction of original political cartoons. During such authentic assessment activities, students demonstrated high levels of criticality by using effective and efficient technologies to create original political cartoons, which then elicited constructive whole class interpretative discussions. This prior research did not detail specific methodological steps that positively influenced students’ original political cartoons. This paper compares students’ original political cartoons generated from two methodological approaches that differ in two small, yet consequential steps. One teacher required students to utilize concept maps and substitution lists prior to original political cartoon construction while the other did not. Based on the collected data, these two steps enabled the former teacher’s students to more effectively incorporate intricate and complex encoded messages through the use of abstract symbolism and complementary textual statements. The findings prove meaningful for teachers and researchers interested in enabling students’ creative and critical expressions of historical thinking.

This paper is grounded on the premise that effective educators base lessons on rich and intriguing content which is relevant to students’ lives, implement the content using engaging and age-appropriate methodology, and measure students’ learning through authentic assessments. In order to support practicing teachers’ effective implementation of best practice methodology and assessment, educational researchers investigate the interconnections between content, methodology, and assessment. As technology facilitates teaching methodologies and learning assessments, meaningful activities such as students’ original political cartooning should be examined, detailed, and adapted. In this article, the methodological suggestions for, and adaptations of, students’ original political cartoons guide educators who seek to enable students’ creative and critical expressions of understandings about complex historical content.