This resource guide was prepared to provide government and political science teachers with information on recent trends and developments in political science, sources of classroom materials, and a listing of professional references. It is hoped that the guide will be helpful to social studies supervisors, librarians, political science educators…

There are many available resources, other than textbooks, for studying government. Simulation games are available, both commercial ones and those an imaginative teacher can develop. Newspapers, video tapes, educational films, and computer games are other resources which can be used in government courses. (CS)

What makes a case interesting enough or important enough to be heard by the Supreme Court is discussed, tips to help teachers use a Supreme Court docket in the classroom are presented, and teaching strategies are described. Resources for studying the Supreme Court are also cited. (RM)

Notes the importance of using documents in teaching social studies. Describes several sources which teachers can use to teach about the United States Constitution and the Northwest Ordinance in the bicentennial year of 1987. Describes and lists several organizations, programs, and materials. (RKM)

An inventory of resources available to the classroom teacher is divided into the following sections: curriculum materials, curriculum guides and bibliographies, resource units, bibliography of teacher resources, games and simulations, periodicals, organizations, and a directory of political scientists. (Author/JB)

Focuses upon classroom presentation of issues related to the Fourth Amendment of U.S. Constitution. Presents a description of a drug test case simulation (D. Hess); a case involving drug testing in the public sector which is to be heard by the Supreme Court (L. Mandell); and other teaching strategies (D. Hess). Provides a guide for finding Supreme…

If students are to understand the American Constitution, they must, like the Founders, take political philosophy seriously. Books and essays that college teachers can use to teach about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are discussed. (RM)

Herbert Storing taught students at the University of Chicago about the Constitution by using a textual rather than the usual thematic basis. Students read, discussed, and analyzed the entire Constitution. This textual approach serves to undermine the dominant belief that the Constitution is only what the judges say it is. (RM)

A course on the Constitution should help students see that the Constitution is not a document that provides solutions to problems, but a document that helps individuals come to a fuller understanding of contemporary problems by exposing them to the intellectual foundations and historical dimensions of the issues. (RM)

The relation between the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the provisions of the Bill of Rights or the first 10 Constitutional amendments is discussed. (RM)

When constitutional questions are raised, the means-ends approach turns to the framers of the Constitution not for specific answers, but rather for general guidance as to what the Constitution was intended to accomplish and how constitutional questions can be resolved in a manner consistent with these overall intentions. (RM)

The Supreme Court clearly bases the creation of new rules on its own personal predilections not by the phrases of the Constitution nor in terms of the expressed intentions of those who wrote the Constitution. The court might not be so popular if people knew what it is really doing. (RM)

In New Jersey v. T.L.O., a case argued in 1984, the Supreme Court was asked to decide whether incriminating evidence found by a school assistant princial during the search of a student's purse can be used in a criminal trial. Issues, facts, background, and arguments of the case are provided. (RM)