This design case illustrates a three-semester-long curricular and instructional design project focusing on the design and implementation of a technology-enhanced case-based learning experience for pre-service teachers within a teaching methods course. This case highlights the iterative process that a teacher educator and an instructional designer…

In the current era of high-stakes testing and accountability, many social studies teachers struggle to find creative ways to add depth and authenticity to a broad, shallow curriculum. Teachers can use the time after tests are administered for students to reflect back on the social studies curriculum and select topics they want to study more deeply…

In the age of standardized testing, science and social studies are not given the same priority as mathematics and reading in the curriculum of United States schools. High stakes testing is viewed as having heavily biased schools toward teaching tested subjects and away from less frequently tested subjects. This paper is premised on the notion that…

In this article, the author contends that ethics ought to be an integral part of school curricula and that the most effective way to achieve this is to include ethics themes within the broader study of history. In this way students experience, in context, the timeless nature of moral questions and see the emergence of some universal ideas. The…

In 1942, Howard Wilson, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the editor of the Harvard Educational Review, called for the "easternization of America," in reaction to what he called the "glib" talk for years about the "westernization of Asia." Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, Wilson's…

Examines Piaget's concrete and formal operational stages of intellectual development in relation to the middle school learner. Presents teaching strategies requiring the learner to use concrete and formal operational forms of thought in dealing with a social studies unit about Quebec. (Author/JK)

Teaching current affairs is one of the greatest curriculum problems facing secondary school social studies teachers. Teachers must solve the problem by intensively planning and organizing, first selecting an appropriate organizational pattern and then developing an instructional unit. (Author/JM)

The principles of Benjamin Bloom's "Taxonomy of Education Objectives" for the cognitive domain are followed in the development of this independent study unit. The sequence uses the Egyptian Rossetta Stone as the common knowledge base and illustrates how the six principles of the taxonomy of the cognitive domain can be applied to the design of a…

This teaching guide provides an orientation and rationale for ethnic studies in social studies curricula, the necessary social science background material, teaching units, and recommendations about instructional materials. Questions are addressed concerning the nature of ethnic studies, who should be studied, how ethnic studies relate to other…

This book offers teachers guidelines and suggestions for adapting and/or selecting materials for use with students with disabilities in general language arts, social studies, and science classrooms (grades 6 through 8). Following an introduction, chapter 1 offers a nine-step procedure for adapting materials from first, creating a plan for adapting…

This article explains reasons for focusing on social studies as an untapped domain in which to foster thinking and problem solving skills of students with disabilities, discusses the use of multimedia technology in supporting projects in the social studies, explores considerations in implementing multimedia design projects, and examines challenges…

Describes two interdisciplinary programs developed for middle school students that focus on mummies and vampires and include social studies, art, language arts, creative dramatics, and media production skills. Content, multimedia, new and interesting information, and student participation are emphasized. (11 references) (LRW)

During the past decade interest in developing thinking skills has continued to be high and particular attention has been given to basic inquiry of the cognitive processes that are used in investigating topics and problems in the social studies. The central purpose of this study is to identify a set of processes that may be used to plan instruction…