Ongoing educational reforms and the accountability movement in public education can pose significant challenges for teachers as they strive to meet a critical, social-justice vision for the social studies. Teachers' continued professional growth and learning are viewed as the main factors towards achieving this goal; however, quite often the long-term impact of professional development goes unexplored. This qualitative case study explores the impact of an arts-based professional development program called "InsideART" on social studies teachers' decisions for curriculum development and instruction. Semi-structured interviews, curricular and instructional artifacts, and researcher's reflective journaling illuminated the impact of "InsideART" on social studies teacher-participants' curricular-instructional decisions. As such, six themes emerged from the data analysis: 1) mandated teacher professional development lacks subject matter specificity to meet the needs of social studies teachers' curricular and instructional needs; 2) arts-based teacher professional development facilitates a professional learning community; 3) arts-based teacher professional development fosters teacher renewal; 4) socially conscious, contemporary art and Visual Thinking Strategies fundamentally reflect content and critical thinking skills for the social studies; 5) socially conscious, contemporary art and Visual Thinking Strategies offer flexibility that allows coherence with the social studies curricula; and 6) arts-based teacher professional development creates a pathway for multicultural and global education social studies curriculum and instruction. The concluding recommendation resulting from this qualitative case study calls for the expansion of socially conscious, contemporary arts-based social studies teacher professional development in order to effect change in teachers' practice towards a more critical social studies. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]