Democratic Knowledge Project

The Democratic Knowledge Project (DKP) is an initiative of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The DKP supports education for participation in healthy constitutional democracy through co-creating, testing, and sharing high quality curriculum and curricular development resources, professional development workshops, and assessment tools and resources. Our vision is that a supermajority of the population will believe democracy is essential and feel confident in having the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need to be informed and capable members of public life. We believe the place to start is in schools. We provide high quality resources for educators and students to support the development of authentic, informed, and skilled civic participants. Our resources align with the Educating for American Democracy roadmap, as well as the MA standards for the 2018 History and Social Science Framework and MA legislation requiring student-led civics projects. The MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has recognized the DKP’s 8th grade civics curriculum as one of the strongest comprehensive curricular materials available for teaching civics. Our 5th grade unit on enslavement, abolition, and suffrage was recognized as one of two core curricular materials in K-5 social studies to meet DESE’s basic expectations in standards alignment, usability, & cultural responsiveness.