What Curbs Social Investment? The Effect of Foreign Electoral Outcomes on Childcare Expenditure Levels

This study aims to deepen our understanding of social investment expansion proposing a political learning mechanism to link existing institutional and political explanations. When resources are limited, increased spending in social investment often comes at the expense of politically costly retrenchment of established social insurance policies. Previous studies suggest that this trade-off results in existing entitlements crowding out new policies, and that party ideology plays less of a role in determining social policy expansion. I argue that this is because parties face an electoral dilemma, as individual preferences for social investment and social insurance have been shown to differ between groups that partly overlap in their voting behaviour. Applying a policy diffusion framework to the analysis of childcare expenditure, this study proposes that policymakers learn from the political consequences of past decisions made by their foreign counterparts and update their policy choice accordingly. The econometric analysis of OECD data on childcare expenditure shows that governments tend to make spending decisions that follow those of ideologically similar cabinets abroad and that left-wing governments with a divided electorate tend to reduce childcare expenditure if a previous expansionary decision of a foreign incumbent is followed by an electoral defeat. The findings have implications for the study of the politics of social policy development.

Political Learning through a Social Media Network

This study tries to fill the knowledge theory gap on the impact of social media use in political discourse. This research examines social media's performance in political learning where it does not exist as part of classroom learning. Social media is differentiated between activities that do not involve political interaction directly and discussion with other users. This study develops a cross-sectional survey on undergraduate college students' representatives of the five biggest campuses in Bandung, Indonesia. A total of 977 students filled questionnaires. The results show political discussion through social media networks providing students' political learning. The more students discuss related politics through social media, the higher their level of political awareness becomes. Social media activities do not impact political learning, where these activities do not involve discussion with other users. This study shows that students obtain political learning through political discussion through their networks, not just through social media activities. Political learning through social media requires discussion related to politics. Besides, sex, age, and expenditure also affect students' political knowledge acquisition. The results have implications for conducting studies on specific platforms to confirm social media activities' impact according to each platform's characteristics.

Befähigung zu gesellschaftlicher und politischer Verantwortungsübernahme als Teil Globalen Lernens – Was heißt hier Neutralität?

Education for Sustainable Development and in particular Global Learning as political education fundamentally offer a wide range of thematic possibilities for shaping and stimulating political learning and education processes. In school practice, this potential often remains untapped as there is a great deal of uncertainty among teachers as to when the discussion of these topics will become “political” and thus, supposedly, not “neutral” but, under certain circumstances, overwhelming. The demand for neutrality, which is addressed to teachers, but which is also adopted by (prospective) teachers themselves as part of their pedagogical professionalism, leads to a focus in educational practice or in the preparation for this, on “non-controversial” ecological conditions. Addressing politically evolved structures and global injustices, which are central to Global Learning, seems to be in conflict with the claim to be a professional, i.e. “neutral” teacher. Thereby it plays a role that the question of the normativity of the concepts is little reflected. With the help of an empirical research setting, this article explores the question of how the professional self-image of (prospective) teachers is shaped in the context of the debate about the political element and normativity in Global Learning and their treatment in relation to the supposed requirement of neutrality, and which challenges this poses for the area.

Partisanship as Cause, Not Consequence, of Participation

In most democracies, citizens who identify with a political party are more likely than non-partisans to turn out to vote. But why is this the case? Does voting foster partisanship, as prominent models of political learning and cognitive dissonance postulate? Or does partisanship encourage voting, as expressive voting models and social identity theory suggest? I introduce the concept of partisan duty to capture the role of partisan social identities in the turnout decision and present new empirical tests of the relationship between partisanship and voting. I leverage a unique institutional arrangement in Chile to establish the direction of causality with a regression discontinuity, and I implement a novel survey design with behavioral outcomes to identify causal mechanisms. Data from the US confirm that the main findings generalize beyond Chile. Electoral participation does not generate partisanship. Instead, partisanship mobilizes voters: it increases the expressive benefits to voting and generates a sense of duty to support one’s partisan group.

Exploring and Researching Ideological and Political Education of College Students’ Psychological Quality for the Development of Artificial Intelligence

Students must integrate into the development of ethnic education and accept applicable norms and policies, values, and processes so that academics can continue to develop in a good direction for exploring and researching intellectual Ideological and Political Learning (IPL). The creation of a data system for the administration of IPL for university students can boost knowledge and the quality of maintenance of IPL. Therefore, this paper suggests artificial intelligence-based Ideological and Political Learning (AI-IPL) of college students depending on the psychological quality measurements. The AI-IPL method is used for the ideological and political development of the college students to encourage the students both mentally and physically. The AI-IPL method creates the differences in opinion between some of the students, which define the IPL of the eventual tendency towards creative strategy and psychological education method. The thought created by students’ experience must be evaluated for the requirements of learning and the experience of developing high-quality talent by the measure of political growth through innovating intellectual and political learning.

Sharing and Commenting Facilitate Political Learning on Facebook: Evidence From a Two-Wave Panel Study

Social media, as sources of political news and sites of political discussion, may be novel environments for political learning. Many early reports, however, failed to find that social media use promotes gains in political knowledge. Prior research has not yet fully explored the possibility based on the communication mediation model that exposure to political information on social media facilitates political expression, which may subsequently encourage political learning. We find support for this mediation model in the context of Facebook by analyzing a two-wave survey prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In particular, sharing and commenting, not liking or opinion posting, may facilitate political knowledge gains.

Design of an Intelligent Virtual Classroom Platform for Ideological and Political Education Based on the Mobile Terminal APP Mode of the Internet of Things

This article uses a software architecture model that combines two architectures, based on the traditional Android environment. Through comparative research on network technology today, Java technology has been selected as a tool for developing network education systems for future research and maintenance upgrades. The underlying network education technology relies on APP to enable education between teachers and students. This technology can not only give play to the advantages of computers in network data transmission, but also embody a new teaching model with teachers and students as the main body. It can solve various practical problems in teacher and student education and educate teachers and students by simulating the actual educational environment of the classroom and educational process using a variety of practical education management strategies. The experimental results prove that with the help of this virtual classroom platform for ideological and political education, it can provide students with more ideological and political learning resources, increase students' interest and time in learning, and promote the diversification of ideological and political learning methods. The quality of teaching is more conducive to the learning of knowledge points for students. At the same time, the system is operating in good condition. Switching between different interfaces is maintained at about 0.1 seconds. The system performance is also perfect. The overall analysis function is basically designed. It is a better learning platform.