This study analyzes the use of community-based pedagogy in a social studies methods course to encourage teacher candidates to initiate similar practices in the classroom. Through a culturally sustaining framework, community-based pedagogy encourages teacher candidates to center the assets, knowledge, and experiences of students, families, and…

Purpose: This article describes an effort to ease the tension between boundary spanning roles for interns participating in a yearlong Professional Development School (PDS) program. In order to do this, the structure of a Social Studies Methods course was revised to mimic a professional learning community (PLC) and assignments were not evaluated…

Accompanying a senior methods course, 19 teacher candidates at Southeastern Louisiana University participated in a semester-long social studies fifth grade mentorship at an International Baccalaureate World School. Teacher candidates identified factors they perceived to affect the success of the experiential learning experience through…

The author successfully implemented the "House" system in a university social studies methods class and reports on the positive results that ensued. Students reported a sense of unity, camaraderie, identity, and closeness that was missing in many of their other classes. The House assignments and competitions are described, as well as…

This manuscript presents findings and implications from a multiple case study of how teacher candidates in secondary and middle childhood programs learn specialized knowledge, skills, and expertise from disciplinary experts in content courses and enact practices of disciplinary literacy in field placements. An expert-novice framework was employed…

In light of societal pluralism, diverse visions exist for social justice. In this sense, uncertainty is a marker of social justice education and research. This article shares insights into how we came to ask a question about teaching for social justice through cross-cultural collaborative self-study. Eight New Zealand pre-service teachers…

This article explores the researcher's use of field trips as an experiential learning tool in a social studies methods course as a pilot study. The researchers analyzed course evaluations and student reflection papers using document analysis to determine (a) the positive and negative aspects of utilizing field trips during the course, and (b) the…

The process of teaching world religions is fraught with dispositional and pedagogical concerns for pre-service teachers. To address these issues, middle grades pre-service teachers were asked to integrate an inquiry-based approach while considering their own histlexia, which we define as an inability to articulate positions. The findings of this…

This article describes how elementary preservice teachers used four documentary films to think historically about the United States Civil Rights Movement. The author situates the descriptive case study within research about historical thinking and documentary film, identifying the need for using documentary film to think historically in the…

The teaching force in the United States of America is still predominantly white and monolingual. Yet, the U.S. population is rapidly becoming culturally and ethnically diverse. As a result, white teachers have expressed doubt in their efficacy in teaching students whose cultures are different than theirs (Helfrich & Bean, 2011). The purpose of…

In this qualitative study, researchers inquired about preservice teachers' (PST) experience in becoming culturally responsive in a graduate teacher-licensure social studies methods class (N = 20). Researchers examined PST lesson plans and reflections, and rated them based on Geneva Gay's (2002) framework for preparing culturally responsive…

In this analysis of promising practice, we demonstrate how social studies methods instructors can incorporate data analysis of the 2010 United States History National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP-USH) to facilitate pedagogical aims, engage teacher candidates in critical discourse, and investigate the contexts of teaching and learning.…

This paper describes how 20 pre-service teachers enrolled in two social studies methods courses at Buffalo State College worked collaboratively to produce a Cross-cultural Literacy Fair at an urban-based elementary school. The participatory activities created for the event were provided in conjunction with a community after-school program and…

This research examined the change in the perceptions of preservice teachers regarding the use of digital minigames to support middle school level social studies learning. The results of a Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test for matched pairs revealed that participants' (N = 18) perceptions were positively modified by participation in a series of digital…

This paper examines the attitudes of student teachers in social studies towards an educational research assignment, undertaken in an educational research methods course given at the Fatih Faculty of Education at Karadeniz Technical University, Turkey. A questionnaire containing open-ended questions and an interview were used in the data-collection…