This article describes research investigating mass media's influence on elementary-aged children's understanding of world cultures through the lens of serendipitous learning. The qualitative study explored the ideas children constructed about other countries, cultures, and people through their unmediated use of various media including movies,…

It is known that oral history studies have a positive effect on students' learning, skills, attitudes, and motivations. In this direction, it has an important place in the context of student-centered constructivist practices in teaching different subjects in social studies courses. Social studies teachers should have sufficient knowledge and…

High quality teaching involves deep content knowledge, understanding students and their learning processes, and complex skills of teaching and assessment. Students who experience high quality teaching tend to achieve higher annual growth rates. This study used a descriptive, qualitative research model to explore excellence in social studies…

This article calls for greater attention to the role of emotion and affect in classroom discussions where theoretical models of discussion and deliberation tend to emphasize the rationalistic elements called for in such pedagogical strategies. Using two examples drawn from secondary classrooms, the authors highlight the role of emotion and affect…

This article evaluates the impact of extending a traditional written research paper into a digital documentary on students' perception and level of comprehension of a global sustainability issue. An adaptation of Moon's (1999) five-stage map of learning was used to assess the written and digital projects students submitted to a statewide…

Students in this post-industrial technological age require opportunities for the acquisition of new skills, especially in the marketplace of innovation. A pedagogical strategy that is becoming more and more popular within social studies classrooms is the use of computer and video games as enhancements to everyday lesson plans. Computer/video games…

When social studies students have a role in the processes of designing assignments, constructing rubrics, and conducting assessments, they participate in authentic democratic principles relative to their own learning. When given voice, choice, and ownership in their education, social studies students gain opportunities to strengthen their depth of…

Learning concepts implies certain attitudes and skills on the part of both teachers and student; means recalling specific perceptions, discovering relationships, and applying these structures to situations. Students who have learned to conceptualize have the ability and training to view their own lives in relations to their physical and cultural…

To promote diverse learning strategies, teacher education programs should use their local environments. For example, students in elementary education methods courses at the University of Maryland spend one week in the Mall area of Washington, DC. They must use all the sources in the Mall to research specific problems. (RM)

A model for sequencing intellectual skills through the use of learning hierarchies is provided. Applications of this model to social studies education are included. (DE)

Explores ways to organize skills which aid in developing the reasoning process. Suggests a social studies curriculum which focuses on a skill network composed of facilitating skills (observation, classification, spatial relationships), processes (inferring, predicting, hypothesizing), and operations (communications, interpretation, social…

Describes a technique called Structural Communication (S. C.) which organizes the learning process, as well as the facts and concepts which are to be taught. An S.C. study unit on revolution is provided. (Author/DB)

The principal goal of history teaching is to train students to become capable of doing new things, creating, discovering, and gathering evidence as "scientifically" as possible. (Author/ND)