Teachers need opportunities to explore the communities in which they teach to understand how the local contexts can be used to enhance the curriculum. Professional development that focuses on ways to integrate local primary sources into the social studies curriculum can help teachers plan authentic lessons for students to learn about their…

Despite psychology's position within the National Council for the Social Studies' definition of social studies, the American Psychological Association is advocating the rebranding of psychology as a science course. This study interviews six high school psychology teachers and employs a Foucauldian framework to understand different perspectives on…

This article is a qualitative investigation of teachers' pedagogical approaches to the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. The ten participants are regionally diverse in-service teachers who attended workshops conducted by the 9/11 Memorial Museum and Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York during June and July, 2019. Teachers…

This article provides a chronological analysis of the historical development of social studies in Ghana with a focus on the impact of international donor agencies. The influence of donor agencies on the introduction and implementation of social studies in the Ghanaian general education curriculum shows that post-colonial countries struggle with…

The University of Southern California (USC) Democracy Project responds to the inadequacies of traditional civics education, particularly its failure to engage marginalized students in meaningful democratic participation. Grounded in the theories of John Dewey and Paulo Freire, the project uses an action civics model to connect students with…

The aim of this study is to comparatively examine the status of observation skills in the questions contained in the 2007 and 2020 fifth grade social studies textbooks published after the 2005 and 2018 curriculums. The reason for choosing the fifth class as a class level is that observation skills were included at this class level in both 2005 and…

The recent Norwegian curriculum reform for schools, called "The subject renewal", is part of an international trend regarding knowledge-based curricula. The Norwegian curriculum, which places decisive emphasis on subjects and subject concepts, aims to bring in-depth learning and knowledge back to schools. This paper is based on Rata's…

This article presents the findings from a yearlong narrative inquiry of teacher enactment of state mandated curricular reform in middle level social studies. Four brief narratives and cross-narrative themes are presented to provide examples of the complexities of teacher decision making and positionality when implementing new reforms. Analysis…

This historical inquiry analyzes the appeal of Harold Rugg's social reconstructionist social studies for Alberta educators in the 1930s. It demonstrates why and how this small, rural province adapted Rugg's curriculum, a program and resources he developed to guide American students' understanding of what he called "the American problem."…

In this 6-year longitudinal interpretative case study, the researcher examined four white elementary teachers' beliefs and practices related to teaching race. Interview, observation, and classroom artefact data were collected from their teacher preparation program through their fifth year in the classroom. Using critical race theory and critical…

Purpose: In 2017, the Government of Québec made a high school financial education course compulsory. Anchored in the social studies, it tackles themes like consumer rights, savings, and employment. This paper strives to understand the types of citizenship education they promote. Design/methodology/approach: Our research is based on a content…

The authors of this self-study set out to examine their own process of developing queer counternarrative lesson plans for use in early elementary social studies classrooms. Having designed and tested a set of kindergarten lesson plans about Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's, we sought to answer the question: As teacher…

In the 21st century, the idea that students should have opportunities to develop powerful knowledge has been influential in educational research. Social realism as an educational philosophy, and a focus on knowledge derived from academic disciplines, have been advanced as an alternative to social constructivism and traditionalism as a basis for…

This research aims to compare the social studies curricula of Thailand and New York State, USA, analyze their similarities and differences, and propose guidelines for improving the Thai social studies curriculum. The study employed a qualitative research methodology, using documentary analysis of the Thai Basic Education Core Curriculum B.E. 2551…

Purpose: Using Johansson-Sköldberg "et al."'s (2013) descriptions of design discourses, this study aims to analyze teacher interviews, research notes and teacher and student artifacts to determine if engagement in design practices led to changes in the teacher's thinking. Design/methodology/approach: This article presents results from a…