During the last decade, the Syrian crisis has, in various ways, imposed many fundamental changes upon Syrian society. It has pervaded cultural issues at large with a major effect on education. Ideologies, schooling, mass media, human relationships, and mutual understanding, all have been the target of fierce upheaval. This article examines the…

The present study aimed to determine the views of classroom teachers on the inclusion or exclusion of current issues in classroom instruction, to investigate these views based on the definition of current issues, the methods and techniques employed in the instruction of current issues, the analysis of the instruction, and the positive and negative…

Background or Context: This research is situated against the backdrop of viral racial violence, global uprisings for racial justice, a polarizing presidential election, the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, widespread economic precarity, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Alongside such urgent reminders of the need for liberatory education, the daily…

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unanticipated event that has exposed human fragility in an interconnected and interdependent world. While impacts are of a global magnitude, they have been felt at the most local of levels. Across the world pupils' daily lives and experiences have been directly impacted by government-imposed measures and restrictions…

A 2018 study conducted by the independent, non-profit organization The Commission on Fake News and The Teaching of Critical Literacy Skills reported that only 2% of children have the literacy skills they need to determine if a news story is real or fake. Over 50% of the teachers in the study believe that current curriculum does not equip children…

Many elementary and middle school students are confronted by media messages constantly. They receive messages not only from family and friends, but from television and social media outlets. The media messages about current events are often politically biased, polarized in nature, and potentially inaccurate, especially on social media platforms.…

Digital technologies collapse distance and accelerate the speed at which information travels. This has made it easier for children to encounter violent clashes from across the globe. Thus, the digital era has raised new questions for educators about how to teach current events in an increasingly globalized world. When children have easy access to…

This report presents results from a survey of over 2,000 K-12 science teachers regarding their instruction related to COVID-19. Teachers were surveyed in the spring of 2020 shortly after school buildings closed. In addition, 40 teachers were interviewed. Results are reported separately for elementary, middle, and high school teachers. [This report…

This document presents the proceedings of the 26th Annual Research Forum held June 30, 2022, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included are the following ten action research papers: (1) Historical Empathy, Primary Sources, and Subjectivity in History (Camron Alten-Dunkle); (2) Cultivating Classroom Science Outdoors…

Students often ask, "Why do we have to study history?" and teachers struggle with how to answer. If a history teacher's purpose is to simply teach students about historical events, then Dimension Four of the "College, Career and Civic Life (C3) Framework," "Communicating conclusions and taking informed action," seems…

The study of current events can take several forms, and the right current event to study as a class depends on the educational purposes, the curricular standards the authors want to address, and the resources they have available to meet them, and what the needs and abilities are of the students present in the class. In this article, they focus on…

In this paper, we explore the intersection of critical literacy pedagogy, queer pedagogy, and transgender topics by turning our attention to the learning that supported the writing of an acrostic poem about Title IX and transgender students. We examine how this writing, in turn, created additional content and context that spurred others' learning.…

The purpose of this lesson is to engage young students in thinking about the complexity of socio-historical symbols in the present day. After careful preparation, the authors decided to teach about the decision by the state legislature in July 2015 to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse grounds. Presenting the…

Purpose: The purpose of this conceptual paper is to make the case for the value of fostering collaborative sensemaking in responding to literature. Drawing on examples of classroom interactions in 6th-, 8th-, 11th- and 12th-grade classrooms, it proposes methods for teachers to foster collaborative sensemaking. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing…

This qualitative study examines the perceptions that Latino students have of middle school social studies. Twelve Latino/a middle school students provided written narratives recounting their experiences in social studies and participated in two semi-structured phenomenological interviews. Findings indicate that social studies teachers rely heavily…