Central to effective citizen participation is the application of group skills to the accomplishment of common goals. Sequential stages in the development of group skills are discussed, and diagnostic questions for assessing skill development are presented. (RM)

A social studies teacher, who spent a month studying and traveling in China, relates, as told to her, the impact that the Cultural Revolution had on two Chinese--a female graduate student in her mid-twenties and a middle-aged college professor. (RM)

Social studies curriculum is modified for gifted intermediate and secondary students by incorporating strategies designed to foster creative thinking. The strategies are an outgrowth of futures and creativity research and include brainstorming, attribute listing, morphological synthesis, reverse historical chronology, webbing, consequence charts,…

Hearing impaired 7- and 8-year-olds participated in a social studies unit on the community that incorporated techniques of brainstorming, categorizing jobs, interviewing parents, and goal-setting. (CL)

Secondary learning disabled students need to learn content area knowledge along with learning strategies. Techniques that can lead to meaningful learning and retention of social studies curricula include hierarchical summarization, mapping, and sociatic tutoring. In general science, optimal instructional sequences and the use of concrete analogies…

Movable or moving maps, made so that children can manipulate and assemble parts, promote active learning. Activities which can be used with elementary and secondary students are described. (RM)

In contrast to the Orwellian world of three autonomous super-states, global interdependence, not autonomy, characterizes the world today. The goals of education in our global age must be to provide young people skills to analyze, evaluate, know, and participate in the world around them. (RM)

Teacher centers respond to a teacher's own defined needs by offering assistance, instruction, and materials to help enrich classroom learning experiences. Services provided social studies educators by the Teacher Center in Humboldt County, California, are described. (RM)

Students involved in acting out a role may find it hard to remember what their classmates said; student observers may focus on one roleplayer and not the others. This causes problems in the discussion stage of the roleplay. Solution: videotape the roleplaying situation. An example is provided. (RM)

Described are some of the resources generally available to social studies teachers from the various offices of local government. (RM)

The traditional emphasis on European and American history has been balanced with new studies of Africa, Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, and Latin America. Illustrative of this new approach is a study program developed at Valhalla High School in Westchester County, New York. (Author/RK)

Locate your grade level and plot a course to skill building, understanding and fun. (Editor)

Liberal democratic states, like all complex communities, are constantly forced to make hard choices between incommensurable values. In this instance, the choice appears to be between personal freedom and autonomy, on one hand, and civic virtue and good citizenship, on the other. To promote a reasonably high level of civic virtue and good…

History learning involves more than the mastery of cognitive skills and problem solving, because history learning always takes place within socio-cultural environments, and the material is charged with values and identity issues. This paper presents a theoretical perspective for understanding and designing history learning environments outside of…

On January 1, 1863, Daniel Freeman, a Union Army scout convinced a land office clerk in St. Louis (Missouri) to open the office shortly after midnight so that Freeman could file a land claim. In doing so, Freeman became one of the first to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the Homestead Act, a law signed by President Abraham Lincoln…