In the United States, economic inequality in education is well-documented. However, less is known about the experiences of elementary school teachers who have broached issues of social class with their students. At the same time, the classed identity of teachers is still under-developed. This study takes a phenomenological approach to teacher…

Social studies education (SSE) commonly uses copying pedagogies (e.g., simulations) to help students develop a deeper understanding of self, others, curriculum, and society. This article argues that simulations are eminently mimetic (i.e., a theoretical orientation concerned with understanding the entangled relationships between originals and…

Historical empathy may be enhanced by virtual reality (VR) technologies, which provide varying degrees of immersion into other time periods and places. This study explored the effects of combining semi-immersive and fully immersive VR with a follow-up writing task to promote historical empathy with adult learners. Thirty-six participants were…

Since the early 2000s, the use of the term presentism has rapidly increased in both the historical discipline and public discussions of history. Most recently, presentism has been widely discussed and debated in articles about the pulling down and defacement of statues in countries around the world inspired by the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.…

From a sociocultural perspective, historical empathy emphasizes the reconstruction of perspectives and experiences needed to understand historical figures' actions and lived experiences. Yet, historical evidence that informs pluralistic lived experiences may often be lacking. Arts integration, which simultaneously draws upon artistic and…

Emotion plays an important role in how young people acquire the skills, knowledge, and dispositions of engaged citizenship, including being able to empathize, listen to multiple perspectives, and build relationships of solidarity with others. This study investigated how social emotional learning (SEL) standards in 17 U.S. states guided the…

Grounded in theories that establish connections among democratic listening, relational dimensions of citizenship, and civic engagement, this mixed methods case study takes up preliminary findings from prior research and explores processes that allow for empathic listening in democratic education and the outcomes promoted by empathic listening. The…

Teachers' beliefs about skills play a significant role in how they teach those skills. Similarly, students' mastery of a skill is influenced by their ideas about its value and what the performance of the skill exactly entails. In this study, 10 history teachers and 17 students in secondary school (age 16-17) were interviewed about their beliefs…

Research into students' interactions with historical video games is limited and tends to focus on teacher mediation. As a result, little is known about the meanings that students independently construct as they consume this form of media. This qualitative interview study uses "Assassin's Creed," a narrative video game with a historical…

This case study investigates an action civics curriculum, "Project Soapbox", designed to foster key civic outcomes among high school students. Framed by research highlighting profound disparities in civic educational opportunities and the best practices of civic education programs, this article examines the democratic and literacy skills…

This review of research investigates how the field of social studies education conceptualizes emotions within its literature. Analysis indicates a lack of theoretical and empirical engagement with emotions, even when the presence of emotions is explicitly acknowledged. Drawing on Michalinos Zembylas's framework for researching emotions in…

The researching and practicing of social studies education is often infused with poetry, art, literature, film, photography, and music. Engagements with and production of these aesthetic texts can promote critical thinking, foster empathetic thinking, and aid historical analysis. This article provides 3 potential theoretical explorations for why…

This essay invites social studies educators to consider critical theoretical insights related to affect, emotions, and feelings from what has been termed "the affective turn" in social sciences and humanities scholarship. Developments in theorizing affect and recent research in social studies education are related to affective elements…

This qualitative study used classroom observations, teacher and student interviews, and document analysis to examine the degree to which peacebuilding dialogue processes were implemented in 3 elementary school classrooms and how diverse students, particularly newcomer immigrants, experienced these pedagogies. The study critically examines how…

Learners' identity is considered a resource, but is also assumed to conflict with impartial history learning practices. This empirical study explores the relationship between learners' social identity and their historical practices and understanding. Sixty-four Jewish-Israeli 12th-grade students of Mizrahi and Ashkenazi ethnicities studied a…