This article deals with the card game "We Were Once" featuring the history of Kiryat Tivon. The game's components embody values expected to promote a sense of significance toward history among its young players. It consists of archival photos divided into 10 quartets: founders, mayors, beginnings, significant women, public buildings,…

The Social Studies course covers many opportunities for students to actively learn-by-doing and learn-by-living outside of the school and classroom environments. In this context, the present study aims to identify how the Social Studies Curriculum in Turkey (Ministry of National Education [MoNE], 2018) supports learning in environments outside of…

Teacher practices created experiences for students to guide their inquiry by creating opportunities to gather data through field notes. Students examined their county and gathered data from the field on a daylong investigation of their county. Students generated questions and considered their observations at multiple stops. Students learned to…

As it has been shown that teachers of social studies content are less likely than teachers of other content areas to utilize technology in their classroom, this study focuses on one instructional technology coordinators' beliefs towards technology, instruction, and students and how these beliefs impacted how technology was utilized during a…

The "International Society for the Social Studies (ISSS) Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. The following papers are included in the 2015 proceedings: (1) Local History and Local Culture at the Core of Elementary Social Studies Curriculum (C.…

Community festivals allow students opportunities to meet key contact people and investigate local resources. Further, the excitement of the social festival is infectious; it encourages learning among people of multiple ages in a common area. Festivals serve to define the community, transmit culture, and allow the community to participate in…

Service-learning projects help students make connections to their community and help them to think about civic participation. The projects can range from very simple short-term philanthropy to very complex direct involvement by the students across multiple years. Students learn both social problem-solving skills and academic knowledge through…

There is a very limited body of research on how teachers use materials from local history sites in their teaching. This paper reports on a descriptive study that progressed in two phases. In phase one, we surveyed all fourth grade teachers in one county's public schools regarding their use of curriculum materials provided by local history sites,…

The combination of students, local history, researching, and problem-based learning creates a powerful opportunity for learning to all involved. This article provides one example of how an elementary teacher and a teacher educator have used local resources and problem-based learning to teach a fourth grade unit about human communities and the…

In the spring of 2000, five Springfield, Missouri, elementary schools piloted the first semester of a WorldCom/Campus Compact Grant called "Students as Citizens: Linking Families, Schools, Communities and Universities to Enhance Learning through Technology." The grant title was later changed to "Discovering Springfield's First…