Background/Context: The field of social studies education is hardly lacking in historical investigation. The historiography includes sweeping chronicles of longtime struggles over the curriculum as well as case studies of momentous eras, events, policies, trends, and people, with emphases on aims, subject matter, method, and much more. Curiously,…

Background/Context: Contemporary state and national policy rhetoric reflects increased press for "evidence-based" decision making within programs of teacher education, including admonitions that programs develop a "culture of evidence" in making decisions regarding policy and practice. Recent case study reports suggest that…

Background/Context: This essay is a part of a special issue that emerges from a year-long faculty seminar at Teachers College, Columbia University. The seminar's purpose has been to examine in fresh terms the nexus of globalization, education, and citizenship. Participants come from diverse fields of research and practice, among them art…

Background: Since the onset of standards-based reform and its continuation in the form of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and now Race to the Top, debates have continued about whether such policies foster desirable change in states, districts, schools and classrooms. Research Question: The study asks: How do state and district administrators,…

Background/Context: Schools and districts are increasingly emphasizing evidence-based decision making as a means for improving teaching and learning. In response, professional development efforts have shifted toward situated, sustained activities that involve groups of teachers in reflective inquiry about student learning data, instructional…

Background/Context: In recent decades, professional historians have made considerable efforts to reestablish influence over the teaching of history in American schools. This movement has rested upon a generally accepted historical narrative based on four assertions; first, that during the 1900s and 1910s, professional historians dominated the…

Background: This longitudinal study examines the long-term effects on the achievement of students at a diverse suburban high school after all students were given accelerated mathematics in a detracked middle school as well as ninth-grade "high-track" curriculum in all subjects in heterogeneously grouped classes. Despite considerable…

Discusses the need to revise New York State's social studies curriculum to reflect the nation's diversity in a fair way, presenting a less biased, more realistic view of history. The curriculum should cultivate multiple perspectives, teach about common traditions, include examples of many peoples, and tell the whole story. (SM)

Discussion of the social sciences as forms of thought that structure meanings,'' and of the value of teaching students to develop the social discipline approach.'' (Author/SP)

The educational reform movement of the 1950s and 1960s offered insight into the complexities and difficulites of current trends to implement educational change. Two efforts to change curriculum, "new mathematics" and "new social studies," show how the reform began and problems that were encountered. (DF)

Brown University's Coalition of Essential Schools offers alternatives to traditional routines and practices. The article observes three Essential Schools teachers who have begun changing their classroom practices. Information is presented from an ongoing, three-year study of teacher change sponsored by the coalition. (SM)

Case study of an Iowa junior high school describes how the school and community identified their resources and used them to create successful arts education programs from ordinary resources. The article examines four types of commitment that shaped school practice, noting effective teaching practices and administrative policy. (SM)