In the 21st century, media literacy is an imperative for participatory democracy because new information/communication technologies and a market-based media culture have significantly reshaped the world. The better prepared students are to critically question the information and media they are seeing, hearing, and using, the more likely they are…

Most students think about social justice issues, whether schools encourage this focus or not, and they look to the adults in their lives to help them decide what to do about them. Educators should encourage authentic conversations about difficult issues, embrace the question, What can we do about it? and teach students to act. Teachers can…

The purpose of elementary school social studies is to enable students to understand, participate in, and make informed decisions about their world. Social studies content allows young learners to explain relationships with other people, to institutions, and to the environment, and equips them with knowledge and understanding of the past. It…

As noted by Onosko, the nature of the social studies curriculum typically results in superficial and disconnected coverage of the content with few opportunities for in-depth investigation and discussion of that content. Engaging students in a comparative study of U.S. Presidents and actions they took "to provide for the common defence"…

A total of 150 students, from 8 to 25 years, were interviewed about ordeal in the Middle Ages, after reading a shorter and simplified version of a text used in previous research on this topic (e.g., [Lee, P. J., & Ashby, R. (2001). Empathy, perspective taking, and rational understanding. In O. L. Davis, Jr., S. Foster, & E. Yaeger (Eds.),…

Who is an American, what is the American experience, and what historical events are important enough to include in books for youth? These complex ideas are examined in a bolder, intellectually fresh manner in information books, biographies, and histories that have been published over the past several decades. Some examples of recent works are…

This article responds to the curricular challenges teachers face with Holocaust education, including cursory treatments and a lack of focus on individual experiences. First, the author argues for a case-study approach to help students reengage concrete and complex features of the Holocaust as a point of departure for subsequent inquiry. In…

Late last month, when George Mason University's campus in the Persian Gulf emirate of Ras al Khaymah became the first American educational venture in the region to collapse, its administrators immediately blamed the international economic meltdown. In a region whose higher-education scene is quickly gaining a reputation for being as hazardous as…

This article revisits and explores the promises and challenges of reverse chronology history instruction within the social studies. In response to student disinterest in social studies, changes in our educational culture that often value content knowledge exclusively, and marginalization of instructional time stemming from testing burdens, reverse…

This project plays upon technology and an innovative way to research history -- the use of online primary source data that highlight the history of women in volunteer and reform organizations, education, the arts, the workplace, and private lives. Using an archival database from the Lycoming County Women's History collection, this curriculum…

The idea of using "little stories" to illuminate the "big pictures" of the past was creatively explored in "Teaching History 107," which offered teachers a wealth of detailed vignettes with which to kindle young people's interest and illuminate major historical events. Paul Barrett builds on the ideas explored in that…

A review of "The September 11th Education Program: A National Interdisciplinary Curriculum" reveals a sensitive and well-created program for the 5-12 social studies teacher to use in teaching about the challenging subject of 9/11. This program provides an opportunity for teachers to find a balance among understanding, critical analysis,…

The key objective of this study is to determine the Turkish elementary prospective teachers' opinions on global warming. It is also aimed to establish prospective teachers' views about the environmental education in Turkish universities. A true-false type scale was administered to 564 prospective teachers from science education, social studies…

In an effort to improve science and social studies instruction, preservice teachers developed original science, technology, and society units to teach in elementary and middle school classrooms during their clinical field experience. Data revealed that the preservice teachers fell into categories of being skeptics, open-minded instructors, or…

The author outlines ways in which conceptions of texts and literacy may be distinctive across academic disciplines. Framed in theories of social semiotics, she asserts that each discipline is recreated through a series of texts, defined broadly to include any instances of communication. Texts in each content area not only instantiate a particular…