The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a major global historical event of the 20th century that permanently changed the destiny of hundreds of millions of people around the world. It was not a revolution. It was not a transition to democracy. It was not a struggle for decolonization. No one expected a world power like the Soviet Union…

The learning process, defined as behaviour change, does not only involve learning; the individual is also expected to take an active role in this process and an academic risk in uncertain situations. In this study, descriptive survey model was utilised. Participants were secondary school students (11-13 years) from Turkey. 'Social Studies-Oriented…

In an effort to improve an understanding of content area vocabulary instruction and how to support teacher-educators, in this study I sought to determine which vocabulary instructional practices were selected from the corpus and applied in instruction. I examined the knowledge and beliefs held by the participants about vocabulary instruction in…

Incited by the National Assessment of Educational Progress' 2009 Reading Framework and the Common Core State Standards, recent shifts in national education goals have urged English language arts teachers to make curriculum adjustments. One such adjustment is to shift their focus from fiction, which has traditionally dominated the curriculum, to…

Civic skills need to be practiced to keep the democracy strong, and civic training materials should be exciting and linked to real-world activities. Today, teaching government and social studies can be, must be, about students' real lives. A unit of study on "Tracking Congress" would offer an opportunity to connect civics and government…

In this article the authors demonstrate how pairing master and counter narrative picture books, along with critical literacy practices, can be used to enhance the social studies curriculum outlined by state standards taught in today's elementary schools. These intentional book pairings allow students to grapple with what history truly means and to…

Contemporary citizenship education tends to focus on the development of skills through real experiences, which has led to a relative neglect or simplification of knowledge and understanding. This article outlines a framework for analysing citizenship curricula drawing on Young's notion of 'powerful knowledge' and 'knowledge of the powerful' and on…

This article explains the approach to mass consumption developed in social studies textbooks in the early years of the transition to democracy in Spain. It begins by examining the way in which school textbooks represented consumer society and mass media in the late 1970s. This is followed by an in-depth explanation of the reasons that led the…

Genocide education would benefit from a renewed focus on how ordinary people perpetuate atrocities more so than villains. Ordinary evil is often understood via Hannah Arendt's political theory, which explains how people can contribute thoughtlessly to genocide. This "banality of evil" explains an important aspect of human behavior,…

This article describes the nature of the Social Studies program taught in the form of a class in Turkey. We use the 1968 elementary school program, where social studies were mentioned for the first time in an official program. For this purpose, we formally explained the interpretation of the concept of social studies for the first time in…

The aim of this study was to determine whether oral history is an effective method for teaching the phenomenon of migration. In this study, the action research was used to discuss the phenomenon of migration in detail and to solve the problems that may be encountered during the teaching process. Oral history interviews, self-evaluation forms, and…

People are inundated with visual information. In this study, I address the question: "When preservice elementary teacher candidates include visuals and graphics into social studies lessons, in what ways do they integrate these materials?" As part of a social studies methods course, participants created lesson plans. These plans included…

This paper is a description of a proposed action research study driven by a problem of practice. The problem for this action research is that the teacher-researcher's sixth-grade social studies students lack critical thinking skills. Critical thinkers are engaged and creative learners who analyze complex issues and challenges within society. The…

Teacher perceptions of fourth-grade students' readiness to learn Ohio's fourth-grade social studies standards were explored through this sequential explanatory mixed methods study. Implementation of Ohio's new reading policies in the lower elementary may have had an unintended future impact on the teaching of social studies in the upper elementary…

This dissertation proposes to enrich the scope of history education research, and by extension the preparation of history and social studies teachers and the classroom experiences of their students, through the inclusion of autobiography in the study of history. Education research on the teaching of history has typically focused on what scholars…