An Economic Geography Methods Course?: Preparing Social Studies Teachers to Grapple with Critical Issues

PurposeIn both elementary schools and elementary teacher education programs, social studies is marginalized while standards require increasingly more ambitious reasoning, reading, and writing in social studies than has historically been documented in American elementary schools. The purpose of this paper is to explain the challenges that elementary social studies teacher educators face in preparing elementary school teachers to facilitate the kind of ambitious social studies envisioned in the NCSS’s C3 Framework and advocate an approach to successfully address these challenges.Design/methodology/approachThis paper articulates a targeted and ambitious approach to elementary social studies teacher education. The authors describe five recommendations from the teacher education literature for supporting preservice teachers in learning disciplinary-oriented social studies teaching, recommendations that guided the redesign of the social studies methods course. The authors then highlight key aspects of the redesigned methods course and demonstrate how the authors engaged the challenges inherent in the work of elementary social studies teacher education.FindingsAlthough this paper is not arranged in such a way as to substantiate empirical findings, the purpose of the paper is to demonstrate an approach to elementary social studies education aligned with extant literature on preparing teachers to engage in reform teaching practices, specifically those disciplinary oriented practices suggested in NCSS’s C3 Framework. As such, the paper should be read as a perspective on practice.Research limitations/implicationsThe type of disciplinary-oriented approach described here is increasingly under investigation in secondary teacher education research and similar approaches are under investigation in elementary math and science education research. To the authors’ knowledge, the approach is novel in elementary social studies education. Furthermore, the authors believe it offers a direction for researchers interested in gaps in the literature related to practice based teacher education and disciplinary-oriented social studies teacher education.Practical implicationsThe approach described here offers specific guidance and resources for teacher educators who are struggling with the challenges of the contemporary social studies education landscape and/or who wish to focus methods courses in disciplinary ways.Social implicationsResearch in social studied education has demonstrated that when students are exposed to disciplinary practices in social studies, their literacy skills improve and they learn analytical skills that support their development as citizens (consumption of media, participation in public discourse, ability to discern arguments).Originality/valueAs noted above, the approach described here is novel in elementary social studies education. Combining a disciplinary approach with a practice-based frame in elementary social studies represents an opportunity for empirical research and offers new approaches to the practice of teacher education and early career professional development.

Since its introduction as an analytic and theoretical tool for the examination of racism in education, CRT scholarship has proliferated as the most visible critical theory of race in educational research. Whereas CRT’s popularity can be viewed as a welcome sign, scholars continually caution against its misappropriation and overuse, which dilute its criticality. We draw from the cautionary ethos of this canon of literature as the impetus for examining CRT’s terrain in social studies education research. Starting from Ladson-Billings’s watershed edited CRT text on race and social studies in 2003, this study provides a comprehensive theoretical review of scholarly literature in the social studies education field pertinent to the nexus of CRT, racialized citizenship, and race(ism). To guide our review, we asked how social studies education scholars have defined and used CRT as an analytic and theoretical framework in social studies education research from 2004 to 2019, as well as how scholars have positioned CRT within social studies education research to foreground the relationship between citizenship and race. Overall, findings from our theoretical review illustrated that contrary to the proliferation of CRT in educational research, CRT was slow to catch on as a theoretical and analytic framework in social studies education, as only seven of the articles in our analysis were published between 2004 and 2010. However, CRT emerged as a viable framework for the examination of race, racism, and racialized citizenship between 2011 and 2019, with a majority of these studies emphasizing (a) the centrality of race as a core tenet of CRT, (b) idealist interrogations of race, (c) the perspectives of teachers of color and White teachers in learning how to teach about race, and (d) the role of race and racism in curricular analyses that serve as counternarrative to the master script of the nation’s linear social progress in social studies education.

PurposeThe majority of states and school systems within the USA have implemented the Common Core State Standards, but with this implementation and focus on language arts and mathematics, many believe that social studies education has lagged. The purpose of this paper is to investigate preservice teachers’ social studies self-efficacy, experiences, and beliefs. Participants were preservice teachers in a required education course. During this course, preservice teachers were required to complete a 20-hour practicum within a school. Participants completed a teacher social studies self-efficacy scale, as well as a reflection questionnaire and course discussions. Results showed that preservice teachers reported that they did not have social studies experiences within the practicum. Implications of this study support preservice teachers having additional social studies education and C3 Framework mastery experiences.Design/methodology/approachWith regard to the teacher’s sense of efficacy scale, descriptive statistics (means, standard deviations) were calculated. Following qualitative tradition (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Miles and Huberman, 1994), the author used a constant comparative method to code the reflection questionnaire and group discussions. This included calculating answers and coding themes across the sources. These data gleaned insight into the participants’ experiences within the course and practicum regarding the domain of social studies education.FindingsTo answer research question 1, means and standard deviations were calculated. Using the social studies teacher’s sense of efficacy scale, participants reported M=6.4, SD=1.25. Research question 2 concerned whether or not participants were given a mastery experience (practicum/tutoring) in social studies. Moreover, if they were not given such an experience, in what domain did they work? Results indicated that a few participants (19 percent) stated that they had an opportunity to tutor in social studies. Most reported that the majority of their tutoring is in reading (58 percent) or mathematics (24 percent).Research limitations/implicationsThe findings from this study inform social studies research as it focuses on teacher social studies self-efficacy and mastery experiences within a practicum. First, preservice teachers in this study had relatively low self-efficacy beliefs in the domain of social studies. Second, the participants had very few mastery experiences in social studies. Finally, preservice teachers seem to feel that they will enjoy teaching social studies, and they did learn social studies within their schools.Practical implicationsTeacher educators are constrained in the time that they have to impart knowledge, pedagogy, and efficacy beliefs on preservice teachers. While evolving legislative mandates are at the forefront of many aspects of teaching, a teacher’s belief in his or her ability to teach may be what leads to perseverance in the classroom. Experiences within social studies classrooms and a use of the C3 Framework will help to highlight teachers’ and students’ growth within the domain of social studies. This study highlights the need for more mastery experiences in social studies as a way of strengthening new teachers’ content knowledge.Social implicationsThe future of social studies education within the classroom seems to be a dire situation. The consequence of the marginalization of social studies within the classroom is twofold. First, students to do have direct social studies instruction. Second, preservice teachers do not have an opportunity to observe or teach within this domain. As stated earlier, legislation is guiding classroom instruction. However, if teachers and schools are informed, social studies education does not have to disappear from student’s classroom time. School systems and teachers who have not yet done so should begin to consider using the C3 Framework.Originality/valueThe need to understand preservice teachers’ social studies self-efficacy beliefs is of importance given the constraints that they will most likely be facing once they enter the classroom. In other words, if preservice teachers are expected to teach children social studies, teacher educators should understand their learning of and beliefs about teaching in this domain. This study focused on preservice teachers’ self-efficacy and social studies beliefs. This study highlights the need for more mastery experiences in social studies as a way of strengthening new teachers’ content knowledge. Today, there are limitations wherein preservice teachers do not have many experiences with social studies. Future approaches should focus on offering more mastery experiences to preservice teachers.

Practice-based research is perceived as significantly important to enhance the quality of social studies education in the literature. In particular, graduate dissertations have great potential for contributing to the literature, and using research methods, and designs that improve practice is valuable in graduate-level research. This study focuses on dissertations that employ action research. This practise-based research design can be used to find solutions to instructional problems and improve the quality of social studies instruction. The study's primary aim is to examine the graduate dissertations with action research design completed in the field of social studies education in Turkey in terms of various variables. Document analysis, a qualitative research method, was used, and 82 graduate dissertations adopting action research in social studies education were examined. Descriptive analysis was performed in data analysis. The results showed that only few graduate dissertations were completed by using action research in social studies education, these dissertations were mostly at the master's level, qualitative research methods were employed in most of the dissertations, teaching-learning approaches, methods, and techniques were mostly addressed in the data collections processes, and most of the dissertations did not involve an action or lesson plan.

Tina L. Heafner, Ph.D. , is a Professor of Social Studies Education in the Department of Middle, Secondary, and K-12 Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her administrative responsibilities include coordinating the M.Ed. in Secondary Education and the Minor in Secondary Education. Tina’s teaching and research focus on promoting effective practices in social studies and teacher education such as technology integration, content literacy development, and service learning. Other research interests include policy and curriculum issues in social studies, online teaching and learning, and the impact of content-based applications of emerging technologies for K-12 learners. Her articles have appeared in such publications as Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, Journal of Computing in Higher Education, Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education Journal of Social Studies Research, The Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, and Theory and Research in Social Studies Education. She is the co-author of Targeted Vocabulary Strategies for Secondary Social Studies, Strategic Reading in World History, and Strategic Reading in U.S. History. Released: August 2014 An Excellent Addition to Your Library!

In New York State Public Schools, social studies education centers on employing interdisciplinary approaches to help students learn civic values and historical events. Increasingly, due in no small part to the influence of popular culture, social studies education research is making fewer distinctions about racial and ethnic identities. Following some trends in the larger academic community, more of the research in social studies education categorizes ethnically and religiously diverse European and African groups into the narrow categories of White or Black. This practice of flattening diverse European and African groups into current day race frameworks can be problematic when teaching high school social studies, particularly in highly diverse urban centers, because it perpetuates binary racial constructions that both are rooted in the historical fallacy of presentism and tend to contradict the students' ontological realities.

Este manual describe el estado actual de la investigacion en la educacion de estudios sociales: un campo complejo, dinamico y desafiante con perspectivas en competencia sobre las metas apropiadas y un conflicto continuo sobre el contenido del plan de estudios. De igual importancia, fomenta nuevas investigaciones para avanzar en el campo y fomentar la competencia civica; mantenido durante mucho tiempo por los defensores de los estudios sociales como un objetivo fundamental.

Purpose This critical case study focused on how five Latina bilingual preservice teachers reconceptualize citizenship for a more inclusive and robust understanding of citizenship in the teaching of the social studies and asked the question- How do bilingual Latina elementary pre-service teachers conceptualize cultural citizenship in the social studies? The research question was viewed through the theoretical framing of cultural citizenship with an emphasis on reclaiming, as well as LatCrit, with an emphasis on naming systemic and institutional racism, affirming the experiences of Latine and recognizing the vortex and power of intersecting identities, including citizenship status and gender. This article focuses on two themes that emerged from a larger data set analysis of this critical case study which show the challenge of the curriculum as a civic narrative and the participants navigating citizenship as only they astutely can do. This study illustrates the importance of reimaging the civic curriculum to prepare actively engaged participants, and has implications for teacher educators, researchers, teachers and school administrators. Design/methodology/approach Designed as a critical qualitative study (Esposito and Evans-Winters, 2021), five participants were purposefully selected from a bilingual teacher education program at a large university in the Southwest. Data for the study was collected from spring 2021 to fall 2022. The participants participated in semi-structured recorded interviews that focused on their understanding of citizenship/cultural citizenship and their own experiences as learners and student teachers. As the instructor of their bilingual elementary social studies methods course, I also gathered written reflections regarding dominant civic narratives and counter-civic narratives that participants wanted to construct as bilingual classroom teachers. Data analysis followed the coding cycles mapped out by Saldana (2016) with a critical qualitative framing foremost in my chunking, coding, categorizing, theming and findings that emerged through my use of the LatCrit and cultural citizenship frameworks. Findings Two themes emerged from the initial data analysis of a larger data set: the challenge of the curriculum as a civic narrative and the participants navigating citizenship as only they can. Research limitations/implications First, traditional and well-entrenched approaches fail to capture the experiences and knowledge acquired and are essential for Latinx communities. If our role as social studies educators and public schools is to prepare citizens to be actively engaged participants, then crucial changes to the civic curriculum and instruction are needed. Second, the ability of Latinx bilingual preservice teachers to articulate the failure of civic instruction and narrative is further evidence that their experiences and knowledge are tools of resistance and resilience that we cannot ignore. Originality/value There can be no doubt that traditional models of citizenship education as well as marginalizing civic narratives, can no longer withstand the claims to citizenship that are endemic to linguistically and culturally diverse public schools. Standing as “civic guardians,” Latinx teachers and citizenship education and narratives are compelled to create inclusive understandings of belonging and civicness.

The purpose of this study was to determine if research in social studies education reflected the same lack of attention to population and sample definitions and description, to randomness, and to replication that the authors found in a previous review of articles in the American Educational Research Journal over a ten-year period. Their study of all the research articles in Theory and Research in Social Education and in all Research Department of Social Education through 1978 indicated that small percentages of the articles report research done with random samples of subjects, that accessible populations were not often described with data, that the definitions researchers provided for target and accessible population and the sample descriptions appeared inadequate either as a basis for sampling or for others to use in replicating the studies, and that few studies used random assignment to conditions. It was concluded that, while much time, effort and money are expended on social studies education...

The call for support of beginning teachers has ebbed and flowed over the years with the tide of educational reform. Recently, the call has taken on a more urgent and distinct tenor, focusing on specialized support for secondary teachers. This paper reviews social studies education literature in view of making the case for specialized support programs for beginning secondary social studies teachers. The authors argue that creating a teacher education continuum that includes induction programs would strengthen both teaching and research in social studies education. In addition, the authors discuss one pilot program for beginning secondary social studies teachers, including program elements and participant responses.

Background/Context The field of social studies education is hardly lacking in historical investigation. The historiography includes sweeping chronicles of longtime struggles over the curriculum as well as case studies of momentous eras, events, policies, trends, and people, with emphases on aims, subject matter, method, and much more. Curiously, scant attention has been paid to the history of social studies teacher education. This study fills a gap in the literature by considering what effect, if any, teacher education in the social studies has had on the development of the field over time. Specifically, the study focuses on history/social studies teacher education in the decades immediately preceding and following the National Education Association's landmark report, The Social Studies in Secondary Education, which commonly is credited with establishing social studies as a school subject. Purpose A basic premise underlying this study is that stability and change in social studies curriculum and instruction may be someway related to stability and change in social studies teacher education. Because the enterprise of social studies teacher education exists in large part for the sake of supporting the enterprise of social studies in the schools, changes in social studies in the schools may well affect the preparation of teachers to teach the subject, and changes in social studies teacher preparation may well affect the teaching of the subject in schools. This study interrogates how teacher education programs contributed and/or responded (or not) to the emergence of social studies as a school subject in the early part of the twentieth century. Research Design This document-based historical study looks back nearly a century to the origins of the social studies field and considers the interrelationship between social studies as it was envisioned in the schools and social studies as it was configured in teacher education programs. The study is based on published monographs, reports, and articles on the status of history (pre-1916) and social studies (post-1916) teacher preparation programs that largely have been overlooked by social studies historians to date. Findings/Conclusions The story that emerges reinforces some longstanding assumptions about the development of the field: For example, there was little agreement among subject matter and education specialists regarding what constituted the social studies curriculum, so there was little agreement on what social studies teachers and students needed to know. But, it also suggests that disarray in the social studies field may have been as much a function of disorder in the realm of teacher education as it was of conflict among curriculum-makers about the nature of social studies in the schools.

This chapter provides context for understanding the history of educational reform, curriculum, and research in social studies education in Latin America. Educational systems in Latin America have a unity because of the enormous historical, political, pedagogical, and cultural similarities across countries, but those commonalities have been produced from plurality and differences in the course of each national history. While acknowledging the plurality of the educational systems and their impact on the social studies research in each nation, this chapter highlights common aspects to present a general view of social studies education across the region.

The types of research most commonly conducted by social studies educators fall into one of three categories: surveys, experiments, or content analyses. There are additional research methodologies that might be considered, however. Brief descriptions of these methodologies, as well as examples of potential research questions involving them, are presented. A number of ways to improve the quality of social studies research are then discussed.

Future ability is a missing competence in the social studies curriculum in Taiwan. The aim of this study was to explore the possibility of infusing future ability into social studies education in terms of intended and implemented curricula created by undergraduate student teachers. The research participants were 27 student teachers enrolling on a social studies method course. In the course, the student teachers had to complete two major tasks: (1) to construct their intended curricula and (2) to complete their implemented curricula of infusing future ability into social studies education. The role of the course teacher was scaffolding students to complete these tasks using a constructivist approach. The constructivism-based scaffolding system includes lectures, provision of a variety of internet resources such as digital databases, interaction through an internet-based course website, observation of experienced teachers’ teaching, and field teaching. The results indicated that the student teachers constructed four lines of intended curricula: time, space, knowledge, and humanity. The implemented curricula were successfully constructed and fit the intended curricula. Suggestions for infusing future ability into social studies education, global education, and teacher education are posited based on the features of the intended and implemented curricula constructed.

This study analyzes the use of community-based pedagogy in a social studies methods course to encourage teacher candidates to initiate similar practices in the classroom. Through a culturally sustaining framework, community-based pedagogy encourages teacher candidates to center the assets, knowledge, and experiences of students, families, and local communities in social studies education. This critical qualitative research project examines the possibilities and complexities of teacher candidates conceptualizing, experiencing, and practicing community-based pedagogy in social studies education. The findings demonstrate how the use of community-based pedagogy in teacher preparation may expand the aim and scope of social studies. The implications discuss how teacher educators may collaborate with students, families, school district partners, and intergenerational community members in developing community-based teacher preparation in social studies and beyond.