People's attitudes towards ethnicity and culture are formed in their youth. Elementary school students have a great proclivity to develop a positive outlook towards diversity when appropriately guided by teachers and school administrators. As educators aim to create an integrated and harmonious society, they need to recognize that these early…

Revolutions of all kinds are a mainstay of social studies and history classes across Canada. While revolution as subject matter is prevalent in Canadian social studies classrooms, it is unclear the degree to which what Howard Gardner calls the "cognitive revolution" has found its way into those same classrooms. This is the revolution in…

This article explores challenges and opportunities for language minority students and their monolingual English-speaking classmates during oral presentations in mainstream 7th grade social studies classrooms. The classrooms were designed to provide access to rigorous content and opportunities to develop English for use in academic settings.…

The recommitment of public education to its civic roots has revived discussion on how to engage younger generations of citizens in electoral politics and civic life. This randomized trial of 1,670 high school students in 80 social studies classrooms evaluates the impact of an election-based civics program on students' civic knowledge, skills, and…

This is a ready-to-use simulation that has high school students portraying all of the key players that decide how water from the Colorado River will be allocated. Students act as judges, lobbyists, news analysts, and even protesters during a mock water conference. Water supply is promised beyond nature's delivery, so the problem is real and will…

Bringing history home, an elementary history curriculum and professional development project, began in 2001. As originally conceived, the project's main purpose was to move history from the margins described by Bruce VanSledright into the mainstream of the K-5 school day. Seven years later, the Bringing History Home (BHH) instructional units are…

Media consolidation and convergence have increasingly changed the way individuals as both consumers and citizens access, process, and communicate information at the local, national, and global levels. Media industries and institutions influence public perception and occupy our time at work and at home more and more. Media literacy has become…

This article presents findings from a study examining how a secondary social studies teacher used curriculum and pedagogy to help racially/ethnically diverse students from low socioeconomic backgrounds build community to become active citizens with the capacity for democratic living. In particular, the article discusses his emphasis on critical…

Accreditation under the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) has contributed to the professional decline of social work. The lack of scholarship of the Board of Directors of CSWE compromises its decision making. The quality of the professional literature suffers from the weak scholarship of editors and referees. The caliber of deans and…

While it is widely acknowledged that classroom practice is shaped by its context, the dynamics of that shaping remain elusive. This study conceptualizes the ways in which changing social conditions and national priorities enter into US curriculum practice. Initially, the focus was on the US Census 2000 results showing an increasingly diverse…

Geospatial technologies of geographic information systems, global positioning systems, and remote sensing are just a few of the projects that evoke an unexpected drive and devotion from high school students in Virginia. Their integration into different curricular areas lets students focus on understanding their community and the many issues that…

This article presents four guidelines for providing direct instruction in thinking skills in social studies and history at any grade level. The author first describes, with examples, three major components of any thinking skill that students need to know. Second, he presents teaching techniques for making these components explicit. Third, he…

During a recent trip to South Africa, the author had an array of opportunities to experience the cultural, historical, political, and geographic landscape of the country. He was privileged to visit classrooms and to teach and interact with students and teachers. Through teaching some lessons on democracy and citizenship, the author learned that…

For most educational historians, the Harold Rugg textbook controversy serves as an example of the mid-twentieth-century "assault" on progressive education. By restricting their analyses of the textbook controversy to the "rise and fall" of the progressivism paradigm, however, scholars have generally missed Americans' more measured approach to the…

Teaching for social justice in a standards-driven social studies classroom can be challenging. However, the authors believe that there does not have to be a choice between meeting standards versus meeting the needs of students. Through semistructured interviews with four current social studies practitioners, the authors found similarities in the…