This is the first in a series of six articles about how spatial reasoning can help children "read" maps, graphs, and geographic texts. Since the late 1900s, neuroscientists and psychologists have used new brain-scanning and eye-tracking technologies to do a "lot" of research about visual perception and spatial thinking. One key…

When the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) program releases its reports on student achievement in various subjects, the data are added to the NAEP Data Explorer (NDE) website. The NDE has been shown to support reflective educational practices in the social studies. Working with assessment data can stimulate ideas for how teachers…

Prior to the 1980s, Turkey experienced a period of vicious political polarisation and even violent conflicts. The 1980 coup administration strived to reach an agreement regarding nationalism, religion, and Kemalism. Following the military coup of 1980, the Social Studies course was abandoned in secondary schools in 1985 and the National History,…

The study aimed to investigate how social studies teachers give information about the immediate environment in lessons and determine course objectives through non-formal school activities. The study sample consisted of 38 social studies teachers working in Kirikkale province in the 2018-2019 academic year. The data were analyzed with content…

The aim of this study is to reveal the status of the geography course among other courses as perceived by teacher candidates, the way they use their geographic knowledge in daily life, what their expectations are from geography courses, and to determine their opinions about the necessity of learning geography and their suggestions for teaching…

The current study aimed to investigate pre-service social studies teachers' self-efficacy perception of their ability to teach geography and attitudes towards the profession of teaching in relation to the variables of gender and university attended. The study is a descriptive study employing the survey model. The research sample was determined…

This study investigated the developmental process of a dynamic geo-game, Gezgin, which was developed by the researcher based on the Four-Component Instructional Design (4C/ID) Model, and its benefits in the acquisitions, values and skills of the Global Connections learning area of the social studies curriculum applied in Turkey. It also determined…

For decades, the "expanding communities" model has dominated the elementary classroom, sustained by notions that young children need to first understand their local communities before they can understand the broader world. As proponents of this approach value how it supports young learners developmentally, critics fault its narrow scope.…

This article describes the findings of a qualitative phenomenographic study that explored students' engagement from the perspective of the students. It describes how the participants perceived their engagement when they learned social studies using GIS Story Maps. Qualitative data collection involved classroom observations, student-written…

Fostering the digital competence of educators is a key aspect that can be addressed in initial teacher training. The TPACK model (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) can be complemented with an approach that takes the Digital Competence of Educators framework (Redecker & Punie, 2017) and 21st century competences into account. This study analysed the…

Sarah Bednarz begins by thanking Rebecca Theobald for the invitation to contrubute to this issue of "The Geography Teacher"("TGT"). As a member of the National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE) Publications Committee and coeditor of the "Journal of Geography," Bednarz confesses that she was not favorably…

The social studies curriculum travels through time and space and is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. To an outsider, the social studies curriculum is a single line on a program of studies, 45 minutes of a student's school day. Those on the inside, however, know that the field covers history, geography, civics, economics, and much…

Due to the changing landscape of K-12 education in the United States, particularly issues arising from funding, safety, accessibility, and standardization, the frequency at which teachers utilize traditional field trips has diminished over the last few decades. Thanks to continued advances in communicative technology, however, teachers are able to…

In the 1960s, the High School Geography Project (HSGP) was developed in the effort to improve geography's status within high school social studies curriculum. Now, nearly 50 years later, can selected units and activities be implemented in today's social studies curriculum? This article attempts to rekindle students' interest in geography education…

It is important that preservice educators have an awareness of geography, including city, county, state, and the broader globe. Ensuring that preservice educators are aware of new technologies to promote K-12 students' knowledge of geography is important. K-12 students can benefit by gaining 21st-century skills using problem solving, critical…