Hello,
Thank you for reaching out to the library. We're happy to help. This looks like a good paper topic and I'm sure we'll be able to assist. To begin with, it would help for you to do some pre-writing and brainstorm the things you might want to research and write about in this paper. For this, I would just start a bullet-point list and begin listing related topics. For example:
Teaching Civics in High School:
- January 6 2021 capital attack
- Benefits
- Arguments against
- Federal requirements for highschool education
At this point, you can use these and other ideas to help you frame and outline your paper. For example, you can create a bullet point outline of what you might talk about. The below is an example, not something that I'm suggesting you use exactly. For example:
A civics course should be required for high school graduates
- Introduction (Summarize the problem and reasons for requiring a civics course)
- Reason 1
- Reason 2
- Reason 3
- Thesis statement (write a thesis statement)
- Body Paragraph 1: Talk about the basic problem as evidenced by the Jan 6 attack, etc. How does this evidence need for the course?
- Body Paragraph 2: Summarize what you might talk about here.
- Body Paragraph 3: Summarize what you might talk about here.
That can help you get started by laying out the structure of your paper. When you get to citing resources, our APA Guide can help you figure out format of the paper and citations. It also has an APA Paper Template that you can download and use to write the paper.
Now for the research! I will include screenshots here to help you navigate our collections.
Step 1: I would log into the AIU Library Website (link circled in red below). Then you can either search using the Find Articles and eBooks search box (circled in purple below), which searches most of our collections all at once, or go to a specific collection under Search Individual Databases (circled in orange below).
Step 2: I would advise, for this topic, that you start with opening Opposing Viewpoints underneath Search Individual Databases (shown below). This collection shows different opinionated viewpoints on societal topics such as this, with related resources. You can open Opposing Viewpoints and then search for: Civics.
Step 3: You may also want to search under Find Articles and eBooks on the library homepage. I would suggest searching using the following keywords: civics class highschool.
After getting to the search results, I would go to the left and click on Journal Articles (under Source Type) to limit your results to academic journal articles.
Please let us know if you have any questions or if we can help with anything else!
Additional resources: