In this article, the author examines how the New York State Social Studies Resource Toolkit supports argument discourse in social studies and then explores a primary teacher's curricular and instructional decisions regarding the development of children's argumentation skills. The study provides insights into how teachers can involve some of our…

In this piece, the authors unpack a heuristic developed by the Great First Eight curriculum for helping young children to recognize and act on injustice. First, they explain the rationale behind the heuristic, known as ReAD, and the inspiration behind its creation. They then detail a series of seven practical principles that can help to…

This case study examines the political and social pressures high school social studies teachers face in rural areas. In the political sphere, many social studies teachers focus on the end of course exam. The resources that informed this study were public materials on the web. Findings indicate teachers stay to state tested content.

The purpose of this comparative, bounded, and embedded case study (Creswell & Poth, 2018) is to understand the development and implementation of district administered preparation opportunities which support technology integration in secondary social studies classrooms at Hiawatha Middle and High School, a high achieving suburban school…

The present study aimed to compare social studies or equivalent course textbooks in Turkey, the United States, and France (ethics-citizenship education) based on values education content. The study was designed with the holistic multi-case method, a qualitative research approach, and the study data were collected with document analysis. The study…

Assessments are one of the vital pillars of education but often are designed without the specific needs of students considered. Instruction is often differentiated for students with individualized education programs (IEPs), but rarely are assessments. Students in classes with IEPs in the social studies department at the project site school in the…

This study explores social studies teachers' self-reported instruction about teaching the 2020 election in U.S. secondary schools. We analyzed survey responses from 1,723 secondary social studies teachers from 12 states (3 left-leaning, 3 right-leaning, 6 battleground) collected in the weeks after the election, examining self-reported pedagogies,…

Drawing upon Weick's (1995) theory of sensemaking, this qualitative study described how high school social studies teachers make meaning of culturally responsive sustaining education (CR-SE) as outlined in New York State's (NYS) CR-SE framework. This study also examined how that sensemaking is reflected in social studies teachers' curricular and…

Citizenship education is the bedrock for the (re)making of future adult citizens in mono and multicultural democratic nations, and social studies is typically and optimally the premier discipline that primes students for engaged citizenry. Anti-immigrant sentiments towards fourth wave immigrants and the nearly absent research on and training for…

Using the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U-Test to analyze 128 survey responses from K-12 teachers, this paper considers how value-added measures (VAM) impact educators' decisions to include Latinx topics in their social studies lessons. The authors found that VAM teachers are more likely to rely on district/state curriculum standards whereas non-VAM…

Currently, the perceived use of critical theoretical frameworks to shape instruction in public K-12 education is undergoing intense scrutiny in popular and political debate. Chief among such frameworks has been Critical Race Theory (CRT), which, at the time of this writing, has been legally banned or restricted in eighteen states -- with similar…

During the past two decades there has been a concentrated effort to enact standards-based education reforms at the federal, state, and local levels. Following a grounded theory approach, this article examines the experiences of secondary social studies teachers who have been directly impacted by the incorporation of English Language Arts based…

Using a student-centered approach, Generation Citizen's (GC) action civics model helps students gain civic knowledge and skills as they work together to take action on a local issue in their community. This paper draws upon reflections from GC's decade-plus of teaching action civics at scale in middle and high schools across the United States,…

New York State has long been a leader in educational reform, including initiating efforts to enhance civic education. For example, in 1985, concerns regarding the civic and economic literacy of the state's youth prompted the New York State Education Department (NYSED) to mandate a fourth credit in social studies education. This fourth credit…

Integrating current events and news media in the curriculum is essential to social studies teachers' efforts to promote critical citizenship skills. In this mixed-methods study, Christopher H. Clark, Mardi Schmeichel, and H. James Garrett draw from a survey of more than one thousand social studies teachers to examine factors that influence the…