This article touches upon the many social, political, and economic issues that negatively and disproportionately impact Afro-Mexicans (Sanders 2020). While reading, students are asked to circle the geographic areas mentioned in the article on a map of Mexico; this not only acquaints them with Mexican geography but also focuses their attention on…

The purpose of this article is to introduce two easy-to-use analytical tools--OPTIC (Overview; Parts; Title; Interrelationships; and Conclusion) and SCRAP (Spatial-Temporal; Conditions, Connections, or Comparisons; Region; Aura, Association, or Analog; Pattern or Exceptions)--that can help teachers guide student learning with maps and photos.…

Maps are present in flags as part of their design and are more common in subnational flags. This study analyzed 4,804 subnational flags in North America -- the continent with the most flags with maps -- to identify if maps are incorporated, the area the maps represented and the presence of the theme of location. The theme of location is one of the…

Military Families and the Arts is an ArcGIS StoryMaps collection that serves military families by mapping art museums and arts centers located near active-duty military installations. The interactive maps are organized by military branch and browsable by an alphabetical list of active-duty military installations. The ArcGIS StoryMaps collection…

This research study focuses on preservice teachers' (n=66) inspection of pedagogical connections between geography and geometrical reasoning. The aim of this study was to empirically investigate the use of mathematical analysis to enrich the social studies topics of the distortion of country sizes on the world map. The analysis of data collected…

Field course is an important learning activity for students in disciplines like geography and biology. Unfortunately, lack of resources, large student groups, and unprepared students can result in students being passive rather than active during field course preparation. This article reports from a learning intervention where the use of StoryMaps…

In this article, we argue that when complex sociopolitical issues such as ethnocentrism and racial segregation are represented as complex, emergent systems using agent-based computational models (in short agent-based models or ABMs), discourse about these representations can disrupt social studies teacher candidates' dispositions of teaching…

When a student remembers an educational geography activity involving a map twelve months later, the events count as a step toward spatial understanding. Giant playground and floor maps capture students' attention and inspire teachers to develop new ways to explain geographical features and phenomena. For almost a decade, National Geographic…

This guided inquiry combines a structured approach to collecting and organizing data with substantial student autonomy in the important cognitive tasks of analyzing and drawing conclusions from the data. While the teacher decides on the compelling question, students are responsible for generating supporting questions. The detailed emphasis on…

The Giant Traveling Map program is a collection of very large, flat maps, each with an accompanying set of teaching resources. The maps are available for rent to U.S. schools and community organizations for exploring world geography. The Giant Traveling Map program provides students with a unique kinesthetic learning experience that captures their…

Almost eighty years ago, Lucy Sprague Mitchell, founder of Bank Street College of Education in New York City, wrote about social studies in ways that sound remarkably contemporary: "In the first place, we shall say that the curriculum should continue the laboratory methods, which means it should furnish the children with as many first-hand…

This article reports on teacher candidates' use of e-learning tools and activities designed for their future students. Candidates offered comments to give an idea of the strengths and challenges of each. Suggestions are made for teacher educators on the types of technology-integrated activities that lend themselves to both traditional and…

Strategic role of geographic information systems (GIS) for the geographical entity is not in doubt, but there are differences in the understanding of what, when and how to teach. The article presents some aspects of the GIS integration in school education in Kazakhstan. An analysis of the scientific and technical literature, teaching practice…

In high school American history classrooms all over the country, the Civil War is a staple in the curriculum. Of course, that is to be expected given the pivotal place that the Civil War occupies in the nation's history. Indeed, it is not unusual for high school teachers to devote weeks of instruction to exploring the causes leading up to the war,…

This exercise is designed to illustrate the concept of a region and, more specifically, the subconcept of regionalization by involving students in working with facts and statistics available in the "Statistical Abstract of the United States" (U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce 1971, 2001). The exercise supports the national…