My biggest fear about teaching a social studies methods class with COVID restrictions was talking "at" my teacher candidates and not modeling interactive and engaging social studies education. Social studies education should be engaging and student-centered. In this article, I offer technological adaptations to lessons that center around…

Understanding, crafting, and asking questions is a critical skill for all teachers, maybe even more so for social studies content, an area where educators may lack broad, in depth knowledge of the content. Having the ability to ask high level, critical thinking questions of students takes time and practice and a skill not often mastered or present…

With a focus on methods courses, this article makes a case for social studies teacher educators to employ in their pedagogy an intersectional perspective. I ask social studies teacher educators to consider critical history monographs, specialized book-length studies that center on marginalized perspectives, as pedagogical tools that complement…

COVID-19 quickly upended life in many ways, presenting teachers with the opportunity to confront the issue with their students or forge ahead in the midst of a societal crisis. Teachers can harness such current events with youth in ways that foster active democratic citizenship, but they must be prepared to implement such pedagogy. This article…

The author successfully implemented the "House" system in a university social studies methods class and reports on the positive results that ensued. Students reported a sense of unity, camaraderie, identity, and closeness that was missing in many of their other classes. The House assignments and competitions are described, as well as…

Many elementary and middle school students are confronted by media messages constantly. They receive messages not only from family and friends, but from television and social media outlets. The media messages about current events are often politically biased, polarized in nature, and potentially inaccurate, especially on social media platforms.…

This article introduces the social studies field to Dorothy Heatchote's Mantle of Expert (MOE). MOE is a dramatic inquiry approach used in several subject areas and can work at all levels in the social studies curriculum. The authors go into the development of using this approach in an elementary and middle teacher education program. After sharing…

Like many history teachers, Brent Ruswick struggles for ways to lessen his dependence on textbooks while also teaching students to read their textbook with the critical eye of a historian. It is a struggle he has come to appreciate more keenly as, in addition to teaching the standard college-level introductory history courses, he also teaches the…

The authors describe an economics-based game they have developed to instruct student teachers in the value of games and gaming for developing reasoning and decision-making skills in economics in K-12 students (5-18-year-olds). The game is designed to progress through each grade level so that by high school students have a thorough appreciation and…

Using Tomlinson's (2004) framework, the post-secondary classroom can be transformed into a community of learners where different avenues are provided for effectively acquiring content, processing ideas, and developing products. This article explores how instructors can differentiate instruction in teacher-education methods courses by…

Grounded in a belief in the transformative possibilities of social studies teacher education, I present an argument for considering the development of purpose as both content and pedagogy of social studies teacher education. As part of developing a coherent pedagogy of rationale-based social studies teacher education, I begin by exploring the…

The author describes the use of literature circles in a social studies methods course for elementary preservice teachers and analyzes their effectiveness in teaching powerful social studies ideas. Literature circles encourage students to take more of a leadership role in the classroom, expect their active involvement, and challenge them to think…

This article encourages elementary teachers to offer opportunities for their students to critically analyze maps as part of powerful geography instruction in order to help them become well-informed and civic-minded citizens. The article reviews challenges to powerful geography instruction, including traditional geography textbooks and pedagogy and…

With the realities of standards-based accountability, it is imperative to model and demonstrate for students how subject areas and teaching methods transcend across traditional boundaries. In an effort to prepare future social studies educators to teach for global awareness and to meaningfully integrate critical literacy skills into their…

While there are obvious benefits of summer school for students and faculty alike, summer teaching/learning poses some unique challenges. Summer class meeting periods often have fewer contact hours but are longer and more frequent than sessions during the regular academic year. Thus, there are shorter periods between formative and summative…