Book Naomi Klein, No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs Klein’s deep dive into the evolution of branding and consumerism leading towards the 21^st century lays groundwork for conscientious consumerism. Published in 1999, Klein’s projections for brand development ring true today. The days when brands sold a simple product for its function to the consumer are gone. American consumers are being sold a packaged set of ethics instead. You no longer purchase a white-T as a staple for your closet based on its function alone; rather, your purchase must be both environmentally conscious—organically grown, zero waste production, recyclable packaging—and morally scaled—ethically sourced labor, safe working conditions, proceeds towards charitable causes. We recommend this text for the way it makes us ask questions about how separate entities influence our decisions and challenge previously held convictions. We think that this skepticism can transfer over to the classroom in analyzing primary sources, dissecting classic novels, and convincing an audience of your argument.

Book Cass Sunstein, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media Sunstein examines America’s democracy in the advent of social media. He discusses how group polarization presents itself in our online world. In a ‘Deliberation Day’ experiment, both self-identified conservatives and liberals engaged in political discussion in their prospective groups. The longer each group sat in discussion, the more likely individuals were to agree on policy stances and the more extreme group beliefs became. Sunstein raises that social media platforms, such as Twitter, Reddit and now TikTok, act as echo chambers for our individual beliefs. We love this source for the way it illuminates how perspectives can shift depending on where conversations occur and who participates. It adds an additional perspective to the conversation on how to create a classroom of belonging for students. Do said classrooms inhibit open-mindedness and solely reflect a stream-lined perspective? Can teachers foster classroom belonging without creating echo chambers for the loudest voices?

Movie Jeff Orlowski, Social Dilemma Netflix’s Social Dilemma targets big tech and their engagement algorithms to cast foreshadowing of a dystopian future at the hands of companies like Facebook and YouTube. The documentary pulls back Oz’s proverbial curtain on the social media business model, in which the user is the product. Spending hours down the ‘YouTube rabbit hole,’ the docudrama shows, exposes users to advertisements generating revenue for the platform. Companies profit off of the passive engagement—YouTube AutoPlay function—and push users to extreme corners of the internet. Social Dilemma is a great, if not exaggerated, source to kickstart conversation amongst educators about the hold media can have on students. It sets a precedent, now more than ever, to make students discerning, empowered consumers of the voices around them in a world that is rigged to control their visions of it.

In “To See or Not to See: Effects of Online Access to Peer-Generated Questions on Performance,” Yu and Yang explore the relationship between observational learning and scaffolding and student question-generation (SQG). The motivation behind this particular study is the lack of empirical evidence to support how access to peer-generated questions can aid students in their own question generation process. Because students in a class usually encounter new material at the same time, peers are often in the same zone of proximal development; visual access to others’ initial questions as they study, Yu and Yang’s research shows, supports observational learning.

Yu and Yang used two eighth grade ESL classes for this study. Each week after lessons, students participated in SQG. One class had online access to peer-generated questions in real time, while the other had no access. The study found that students with access to peer-generated questions during the first SQG had higher performance than those without. While current knowledge of observational learning and scaffolding support the original hypothesis, the data collected over six weeks suggests that ultimately access to peer-generated questions during SQG has no significant effect on student academic performance or quality of questions generated. This research operated under a time constraint to offer instant online access to peer-generated questions. This research suggests that educators should continue exploring whether longer exposure to peer-generated questions can improve learning, or if the initial thrill of encountering other students’ comprehension questions must be part of a more complex scaffold to continue effectively. We also suggest that technology developed during the pandemic to support online learning might offer teachers exactly the avenues to make more real-time, collaborative questioning work more effectively.