Kentucky's elementary social studies curriculum includes introductory knowledge in state and national history, providing an opportunity for teachers to include instruction on the influence of slavery on society before and after the Civil War, and sometimes on current events. For example, following the violent events in 2017 in Charlottesville,…

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…

The new history in Britain and the new social studies in the United States each grew out of a desire in the 1960s to reform education and to create an inquiry-based mode of instruction. Although the two movements shared many similarities, the British movement succeeded whereas the American movement largely failed. The failure of the new social…

Questions about the suitability of cognitively-oriented instructional approaches for students of different academic levels are frequently raised by teachers and researchers. This study examined student participation in knowledge-building discourse in two implementations of a short inquiry unit focusing on environmental problems. Participants in…

Research supported by a grant from the Cooperative Research Branch, U.S. Office of Education.

A checklist, devised from a chart illustrating the purpose, method, and content characteristics of three social studies teaching traditions, was administered to 55 preservice teachers in Nigeria and 84 preservice teachers in Indiana to compare their teaching style preferences. (ND)

To the extent that class discussion is representative of the entire program, the dominant emphasis on memory and interpretation questions in this study suggests that the cognitive objectives of the two programs are remarkably similar. (Authors)

The work is the report of a study concerning the impact of the inquiry method of teaching on affective as opposed to cognitive achievements. Subjects were 10th grade students given a reading assignment in Asian studies. Control and experimental groups were asked to respond to questions about the material read. Attitude gains were computed for both…

This paper presents a review of the research concerning the effect of the lecture versus the inquiry teaching method on student achievement in social studies. The small amount of research found which deals with this topic revealed that the findings are inconclusive as to the best method of presentation in social studies. More research is needed.…

This research paper seeks to address new theories of learning and instructional practices that will be needed to meet the demands of 21st century education. A brief review of the literature on the topics of constructivism, reflective inquiry, and multicultural education, which form the major elements of a computer-based system called HyperCAP, are…

Although student teaching is often recognized as the most influential component of teacher education programs, only a few studies exist outlining what happens to the student teacher in the classroom, or that relate personal characteristics to achievement in student teaching situations. This study, a follow-up of an investigation about the degree…

This study reports on the impact of inquiry on the social studies curriculum in 40 New Jersey public senior high schools as of 1974. The research is a followup study to one conducted in 1964. Responses to a questionnaire, related to curriculum revision, were received from principals, department heads, and teachers of the same schools surveyed a…

This study was an attempt to determine whether, and to what extent: 1) there is disagreement about the nature and function of values and valuing among educators, and between social science educators and certain axiologists; 2) social science educators endorse valuation theories which are internally inconsistent or antithetical to the purposes of…

Discussion of the use of computerized databases in classroom instruction focuses on problem solving skills, student attitudes toward computers, and learning processes. A study of eighth graders is described that tested hypotheses involving the comparative analysis of data, and its implications for curriculum development and instructional methods…

This publication is offered as a resource guide for teachers rather than as a prescriptive syllabus. No course of study is delineated and no course objectives are spelled out. Instead there are illustrative examples for applying discovery techniques to the study of Latin America, suggestions of various themes useful in organizing a course of study…