Human dignity is a complex, though essential, concept for students to master. Inserting human dignity into existing curricula provides students with more opportunities to consider the problems of vulnerable classmates and the status of human dignity and rights in the United States and around the world. Using parts of the US modern Civil Rights…

We report on U.S. middle school Arabic-speaking students who were agentive in translanguaging for disciplinary learning during social studies inquiry and suggest specific ways that students' academic learning and bilingual development can be supported through translanguaging in the context of English-dominant classrooms. We engaged in design-based…

As states, school districts, and teachers continue to adopt the inquiry-based principles of the College, Career, and Civic (C3) Framework, social studies teacher education must engage in a concomitant instructional shift to focus its efforts on preparing inquiry-based educators. One possible approach is to organize social studies teacher education…

Elementary teachers can maximize instructional time by interweaving social studies disciplines while fostering inquiry and promoting literacy development.

In light of societal pluralism, diverse visions exist for social justice. In this sense, uncertainty is a marker of social justice education and research. This article shares insights into how we came to ask a question about teaching for social justice through cross-cultural collaborative self-study. Eight New Zealand pre-service teachers…

Jeremy Thomas and Russell McBride are social studies teachers in North Carolina and, until recently, were colleagues at a charter school outside of Raleigh, serving students in grades 6-12. After learning about the Inquiry Design Model (IDM), both teachers implemented it into their classrooms and immediately saw how the blueprint helped deepen…

Developing activities which are effective in assessing what counts in social studies and showing progress is challenging for social-studies teachers. In this article, we explore the three dimensions of the social studies learning area which were identified in the Nature of Social Studies (NSS) scale developed by the National Monitoring Study of…

In social studies, students learn about society and the culture in which they live, current and historical events, people from different backgrounds, and how to develop skills for participating in a democratic system. As people with disabilities are members of our society, participation in social studies content is an important component of their…

This study provides a clearer portrait of the extent to which practicing history and social studies teachers, who explicitly expressed an interest in the potential of technology and advocate the use of primary sources within their teaching, are using Internet technologies to prepare students to learn to think historically and in turn participate…

Learning concepts implies certain attitudes and skills on the part of both teachers and student; means recalling specific perceptions, discovering relationships, and applying these structures to situations. Students who have learned to conceptualize have the ability and training to view their own lives in relations to their physical and cultural…

A sequential, problem-solving approach is offered as a strategy for the classroom teacher who wants to help the student increase his skills of inquiry, conceptual learning, and value clarification. (Author/KM)

Proposes that educators answer the question "What is social studies?" by utilizing normative methodology where a concept, in this case social studies, is evaluated and then modified to develop an applicable definition instead of implementing either a descriptive or conceptual methodology. Provides guidelines for arriving at applicable definitions…

This paper describes one pioneer effort to develop materials for teachers who operate on the premise that the student can learn from his environment. Three environments are considered: 1) the inner environment of the child; 2) the immediate environment in which he finds himself; and, 3) the global environment which is of so much concern to…