An innovative program for schools that promotes respect and understanding between major religions enables students to engage with peers around the world via videoconferencing. Using videoconferencing and online community, "Face to Faith" enabled students from across the globe to learn from, with, and about one another. In the 2013-2014…

A second survey of a volunteered panel of readers of Social Education on trends and practices in social studies reports on the perceived climate for innovation. (JH)

Diffusion, as it relates to social studies reform, involves disseminating information about change in such a way as to improve and expand the use in schools of innovations in social education. (Author)

Four outstanding elementary teachers from different parts of the United States talk about instructional innovations that have worked for them. (RM)

In the future, videodiscs will be used in social studies classrooms as teaching tools, tutors, and storage devices or data banks. Although the videodisc is now available, educational materials using the medium are just beginning to become available. (RM)

In view of the need for open-mindedness in the instruction of new curricular approaches, such as the analysis of public issues, these studies survey pre-service social studies teachers to discover their positions relative to other pre-service subject teachers in strength of authoritarian and dogmatic characteristics. (JH)

Philography, or autograph collecting, is a good way to liven up social studies classes. For example, after watching the TV miniseries "Winds of War," students wrote to famous real life participants in the war asking them a variety of questions. The response rate was nearly 100 percent. (RM)

Teachers today are being held accountable and being judged inadequate as a result of factors--curriculum requirements and school organization--over which they have little control. In spite of this, many teachers are making extraordinary contributions to education. Examples of educational innovations being used by secondary history teachers are…

Developments of alternative schools are reviwed, emphasizing differences in five types of public school options and the similarities of these types in respect to their social education programs. (Author/KM)

Social studies educators who are seeking to combine the power and utility of microcomputers with the new generation of video technologies have a sophisticated instructional tool at their disposal in the form of interactive video systems. Three current social studies projects employing such systems are described. (RM)

Examines the Carnegie report in terms of three themes: (1) distrust of teachers; (2) commitment to teacher autonomy that is conditional on achieved results; and (3) a conception of teacher accountability focusing on student performance rather than professional practice. Concludes that the implicit view of the teacher is one of an assembly-line…

Maintains that the major dilemma of the Holmes Group Report is that improving teachers both is, and is not, by itself, the way to improve education. Raises several questions which the report ignores and offers a synopsis of scholarly literature regarding teacher education. (DH)

Criticizes "A Nation at Risk" as an agenda for conservative reaction, not reform. Comments on the underlying assumptions and implications of the Holmes and Carnegie reports. Concludes by suggesting alternatives for more substantive reform. (DH)

Individuals resist change in the same way as do institutions. Those seeking change devise their own strategies to fit each situation and guidelines are offered here involving preparation, research, identification of problem, and implementation of change. (JB)

Summarizes the Holmes and Carnegie reports and examines their major recommendations. The analysis points out the contradictory nature of the reforms, their conservative implications, and the lack of scholarly arguments to support such assertions. (DH)