Social Science Classrooms Research Articles

Fostering Critical Thinking Skills: Comparative Creative Projects in General Education Humanities and Social Science Classrooms

According to both post-secondary educational advocates and employers, critical thinking is a vital skill for students to learn during their university education. It is not a skill, however, that students can be introduced to once and then expected to independently apply. Instead, critical thinking skills should be integrated and practiced throughout a student’s degree program. Including project-based learning (PjBL) in general education classes can serve a dual purpose for the general education instructor: first, well-designed project-based assignments allow students to practice many of the cognitive and metacognitive skills associated with critical thinking, and, second, they enable students to connect the material in the general education classroom to their own experiences, making it a more robust learning opportunity while at the same time providing students choice. This essay reflects on the PjBL assignment “Thinking Outside the Essay” to illustrate one potential avenue for humanities and social and behavioral science faculty to facilitate practice in critical thinking, provide student choice, and connect course content to students’ lived experiences.

Show and tell: scaffolding practices in lower secondary social science classrooms

ABSTRACT Inquiry and teaching with high levels of student activity are central to social science education, and research has shown the importance of scaffolding and other expressions of supportive structures in teaching (Christensen, 2021; Mathé, 2020). Nevertheless, there have been few studies documenting how actual teaching takes place and whether a teacher’s activities support the work of their students. This article, part of QUINT—Quality in Nordic Teaching, drew on video observations from 16 lower secondary social science classrooms in Denmark and Norway. We began by using the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation (PLATO; Grossman, 2019) to identify the extent of teacher scaffolding practices. From this, we analysed the scaffolding to understand what kinds can be observed in social science education, with a specific focus on inquiry-based teaching. Although we identified scaffolding in a minority of lesson segments, what we did observe was related to a number of skills and strategies, both generic and specific to social science education. We concluded by identifying the strong potential in developing scaffolding practices related to social science inquiry further, before discussing implications and opportunities based on our findings.

Chasing Deliberation in the Social Science Classroom. A Study of Deliberative Quality in Whole-Class, Small Group, and Pair Discussions

While classroom discussion is often cherished as a cornerstone of effective social science teaching, knowledge on when and where discussions tend to turn deliberative is lacking. To make up for this lack of knowledge, the present study examined classroom discussion in three conditions: a whole-class condition, a small group condition, and a pair condition. The study made use of video observations from a classroom intervention to evaluate how each condition affected the deliberative quality of the discussion process. To this end, 585 student utterances were coded for aspects of deliberation using the Stromer-Galley observation manual. The results showed that both the small group and pair conditions promoted key aspects of deliberation compared to the whole-class condition. The small group condition generated the highest levels of contestation and engagement, whereas the pair condition generated the highest level of equality. While these results suggest that the deliberative quality of classroom discussion might sometimes benefit from the teacher’s absence, more research is needed to determine the circumstances in which this is likely to be the case.

Making way for memes in the social science classroom: How generational media preferences may impact discussions of racial inequities

AbstractThis pilot study analyzes student responses to two political cartoons which satirize racism in varying national contexts. Eight moderated focus groups viewed political cartoons then shared reactions via survey and discussion. We found that participants responded negatively to a French cartoon which they perceived endorsed racist attitudes. Participants had more positive responses to an American cartoon which they perceived to “punch up” at the racial hierarchy. A third, unanticipated set of findings relates to participants' spontaneous feedback that though they welcomed the use of popular comedy in teaching, political cartoons felt less engaging than other media formats. This left us with a new question to explore in a future second phase of our project: How can instructors consider generational differences regarding media preferences when selecting popular comedy materials for use in classroom discussions of racism? We speculate that memes, rather than political cartoons, may provide a more effective springboard for discussion. We plan to incorporate memes in the second phase of this project, a cross‐national study regarding the use of popular comedy materials as springboards to classroom discussions about racism.

The unexpected subject

When an emotionally heated discussion erupts in the social science classroom, it can bring the teachers and students into a topic or question that none of them had foreseen. Within the research field of social science education there is a growing interest for these unexpected teaching situations. The aim of this theoretical article is to further develop didactical theory of the unexpected in social science education with an emphasis on the didactical why-question. By drawing on Hannah Arendt’s theory of the subject and action, the article outlines a perspective on the unexpected in social science teaching. This perspective highlights how students’ actions can be understood as a distinct revealing of the individual that is unique, risky, and unexpected. The article puts this Arendtian perspective in relation to the citizenship ideal of the “the reflective spectator” that has been formulated within the research field. The article ends with a discussion on how to understand the conflict between different ideals of citizenship in the research field of social science education.

Suggesting a framework for students’ academic perspective-taking in secondary social science education

Contributing to secondary students’ perspective-taking is one of the main purposes of social science education in school, closely related to the democratic mandate. Previous literature has distinguished between interpersonal and academic perspective-taking, both deriving from theories on social perspective-taking (Gehlbach et al., 2012; Sandahl, 2020). The purpose of this article is to argue for and discuss a framework for facilitating academic perspective-taking in secondary social science education. The framework combines an existing model of perspective-taking with recent deliberative and agonistic democratic theory to integrate disciplinary perspectives, students’ per­spectives and perspectives from broader social and political debates and processes. In presenting the framework, I argue that and discuss how perspectives from deliberative and agonistic theory can contribute to and have different implications for social science classroom practice in secondary school. To contribute with practical implications of the article’s theoretical contributions to social science didactics research, I outline some didactic opportunities for working with perspective-taking, focusing on the specific purpose of the activity.

Problem-Based Learning: A Learner-Centered Approach to Upsurge Academic Triumph in Social Science Classroom

Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is a useful learner-centered approach in which learners collaborate within small groups to solve an authentic ill-structured problem that has no right or wrong answer. However, facilitating and designing PBL can be challenging for teachers as well as for learning environment with learners with diverse needs. The main purpose of this action research is to upsurge the academic triumph of Grade 12 Senior High School Learners using PBL in teaching Social Science Classroom. Specifically, this action research sought to answer the following questions: (1) what is the level of learners academic performance in terms of their quarterly grades in UCSP as to their 1st Quarter Grade and 2nd Quarter Grade? (2) what is the mean difference between learners academic performance in terms of their 1st and 2nd quarter grade in UCSP? and (3) how do the learners describe their lived experiences during and after the implementation of problem-based learning as a learner-centered approach in teaching social science classroom? The study is limited to Grade 12 learners from Understanding Culture, Society, and Politics Class of Sta. Catalina Integrated National High School from September 2022 to October 2023. In the conduct of the action research, Mixed Method Research was used to gather necessary data and information. Mean and standard deviation were analyzed using descriptive statistics for quantitative data and thematic analysis for qualitative data gathered from focus group discussions. The findings have shown that PBL as a learner-centered approach to teaching social science, had a large and positive effect to upsurge the academic triumph of Grade 12 learners which marks Very Satisfactory on the level of their academic performance in UCSP Class. For an instance, the conduct of more studies on the different factors affecting PBL integration and specific effects of PBL on various learner domain is recommended to facilitate comparative educational research in the future.

Peer feedback in Undergraduate Classrooms: Students’ Perceptions

One of the key elements to success in teaching and learning is feedback. Peer feedback is as important as teacher-student feedback. The main objective of this quantitative study was to find out the perception of students about peer feedback. The population of this study was undergraduate students from the faculty of sciences and the faculty of social sciences. A convenient sampling technique was used to select a sample size of 150. An extensive literature review supports the researcher of this study to develop an instrument comprising 15 items on a five-point Likert scale. Cronbach Alpha value of the questionnaire was .87. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. The study found that the majority of the students engage in providing feedback to their peers during assigned tasks in social science classrooms while in science classrooms students perceive that they do not have time for providing feedback to their peers during classes and laboratory engagement... The study recommends that there may be a discussion of the importance of peer feedback in undergraduate classrooms.

Students' Insights from Interactive Visualizations Arranged Multimodally in Knowledge Visualizations

In this study, a visual analytics application is put into practice in Swedish secondary school social science classrooms. The application offers support to analyse vast amounts of data through interactive data visualizations. Previous studies have demonstrated that the visual interactive interface challenges the traditional practice in school, where students usually demonstrate their knowledge by means of written texts. Thus, this study examines what happens if students work with more malleable, adaptable, or fluid modes when attempting to express their conclusions from work with interactive data visualizations. It aims to detect patterns in how knowledge visualizations are produced and arranged multimodally. Inspired by design-based research, the study conducted two classroom interventions followed by video captures. It employed a socio-material semiotic approach, which enables the study of interactions between both social and material actors. Three patterns emerged when students’ insights were translated into knowledge visualizations – exploring, gathering, and inserting. It became obvious how different actors taking part of such a digital multimodal writing activity affect and change every actor/everyone/everything, which in turn transfers, relocalizes, reformulates, and re-presents the communicated message. Knowing how knowledge visualizations are produced might strengthen students’ visual abilities when transforming insights multimodally.

Students’ multimodal knowledge sharing in school: Spatial repertoires and semiotic assemblages

In a world ‘flooded’ with data, students in school need adequate tools as Visual Analytics (VA), that easily process mass data, give support in drawing advanced conclusions and help to make informed predictions in relation to societal circumstances. Methods for how the students’ insights may be reformulated and presented in ‘appropriate’ modes are required as well. Therefore, the aim in this study is to analyse elementary school students’ practices of communicating visual discoveries, their insights, as the final stage in the knowledge-building process with an VA-application for interactive data visualization. A design-based intervention study is conducted in one social science classroom to explore modes for students presentation of insights, constructed from the interactive data visualizations. Video captures are used to document 30 students’ multifaceted presentations. The analyses are based on concepts from Pennycook (2018) and Deleuze and Guattari (1987). To account for how different modes interact, when students present their findings, one significant empirical sequence is described in detail. The emerging communicative dimensions (visual-, bodily- and verbal-) are embedded within broad spatial repertoires distributing flexible semiotic assemblages. These assemblages provide an incentive for the possibilities of teachers’ assessments of their students’ knowledge outcomes.

Engaging Social Science and Humanities Students in Community-Based Research on Nitrogen Oxide Pollution

A significant challenge to the community of chemistry education is the creation of materials that can be used in nonscience settings, including those of social science and humanities classrooms. As part of a larger effort to engage new communities in understanding how science data can impact such settings, including in the community, an experiment to detect the level of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the air was implemented in university sociology and history classrooms. The use of an authentic scientific method within these settings generated important data for classroom use in classroom sociological and historical discussions. The impact on student attitudes and learning was also determined.

Concepts for historical and geographical thinking in Sweden\u2019s and Spain\u2019s Primary Education curricula

The goal of this study is to compare the presence of concepts for historical and geographical thinking in the national curricula for Primary Education in Spain and Sweden in order to analyze if these thinking concepts can enable new active learning methodologies in the Social Science classroom. The comparative study is based on a qualitative investigation using a horizontal evaluation instrument (international compared analysis). Compared items were divided in four dimensions: 1. curriculum structure—subjects, timetable, compulsory, ratio, etc.-, 2. educational methodologies—project-based learning, research, practical lessons-, 3. Objectives and evaluation—aims, evaluation criteria, standards-, and 4. Contents—conceptual, procedural, and attitudinal. The results show that, despite a different structure for the history and geography subjects in Primary Education, neither of the two curricula present historical and geographical thinking concepts as a fundamental aim for Primary Education and, at the same time, the low presence of these thinking concepts is linked to traditional teaching models still based on positivism and memorization.

Developing social and civic competence in secondary education through the implementation and evaluation of teaching units and educational environments

Recent international research in social science teaching highlights difficulties adolescents face when constructing social and citizenship awareness, and their own identity. To shed more light on this process, the present study is framed in the context of social science classrooms, and more specifically around how social and civic competence is developed via particular teaching methodologies and specific learning environments in Spain. The focus is on the analysis of democratic citizenship, as it is commonly accepted in the theoretical and epistemological bases of social sciences that citizenship education is one of the aims of the educational system. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effects of implementing two teaching units on the development of social and civic competence among 110 students in five secondary and high schools in Catalonia. A qualitative observational method is used to identify, describe and analyze the implementation and effects of both teaching units on a hermeneutic-interpretative basis. An ethnographic perspective is used to obtain accounts of education professionals and students. In addition, 19 field notes are analyzed using QSRNVIVO 12 software on two dimensions: citizenship and classroom climate. There are two main findings: first, regarding the formative value of both sequences regarding democratic, active and critical citizenship; the second, regarding the importance of the classroom environment created for this purpose by designing ad hoc learning spaces using active methodologies to contribute to the development of active and responsible citizenship. The conclusions highlight two important issues. The subject of History in secondary education should be vindicated as a key instrument to build democratic awareness, based on the skills of active and critical citizenship. Furthermore, there is a relationship between the development of critical and active citizenship and the creation of learning environments that foster reflection, analysis, interpretation and dialog. The implications of this study pose an important challenge for the study of social sciences. Initial teacher training methodology and syllabi should be reviewed, the importance of the Humanities in our society should be defended, and classrooms and schools should be democratized to promote active participation in citizenship education.

Spectrum of Social Science Education: Reconstruction of Social Science Competencies Based on Vygotsky’s Social Reconstruction Formula in Primary School

Abstract: In general, this research aimed to develop new formula of ideas and hypothesis of social science education curriculum of primary school. The development was done through the integration of the principles of social reconstruction and constructivism of Vyg otsky in interactional construction. This research used the design of development research, conducted in Bali Prov ince by inv olv ing education experts, principals, teachers and primary school students as research samples determined by purpos ive-randomization. The data instruments of this research consisted of observation sheets interview guides, questionnaires and test of learning outcomes. The whole research data was analyzed qualitatively with an interactive cycle model and CAR (Contextuality-Accuracy- Relevancy) Model, combined with quantitative analysis to comparatively graded the advantage of social reconstruction design with conventional learning design in social science education of primary school. The result of the study indicated that: the social science competency which allowed for students of primary school in accordance with the social constructivism design of Vygostky consisted of: personal competence, sociocultural and intellectual competence, the relevant social science material structure to develop was when systematically organized as real pedagogical learning experiences, sociocultural, psychologycal by relied on the principle of “A student’s as a psychological, sociocultural and intellectual horizons reconstructions-based” and social science classroom environment was a psychological and sociocultural context that should be laid out and directed at efforts of. dynamization of student position from natural position to sociocultural position, provide facility and personal and sociocultural mediation to students in their endeavors to reconstruct the contents, functions and operations contained within their personalities structure.

Enhancing classroom interaction: the integration of image-sharing projection software in social science and humanities classrooms

ABSTRACT Fostering student-student and student–faculty interactions involves not only pedagogical design but also classroom technology. Image-sharing projection software, which allows multiple students to simultaneously share images from their electronic devices to the classroom's screens, offers a new form of communication in medium to large-size social science and humanities classes. While there is a body of literature that analyzes the effectiveness and best practices of clickers and image-sharing software in STEM classes, few studies have evaluated the potential of image-sharing projection software and its impact on student engagement in social science and humanities undergraduate courses. Based on a case study of a general education introductory social science course, this paper demonstrates how giving undergraduate students the ability to share visual depictions of their ideas increased engagement among those students who report not feeling comfortable interacting in medium to large-size class discussions. Overall, this case study illustrates the potential of image-sharing projection software to simultaneously address several known challenges to collaborative learning and to increase the types of students who participate in “the doing” of active-learning pedagogy, especially the idea-sharing component.

The impact of a computer-based graphic organizer with embedded self-regulated learning strategies on the argumentative writing of students in inclusive cross-curricula settings

This study investigated the effects of a computer-based graphic organizer (CBGO) with embedded self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies on the argumentative writing performance of 4th-and 6th-grade students, including advanced and struggling writers, in the inclusive social studies and science classrooms. This study extended previous research to examine how CBGOs with embedded SRL strategies can support students' writing across content areas. Sixty-nine (N = 69) students participated in a randomized control trial study. Quantity (e.g., number of words and sentences) and quality (e.g., number of transition words, holistic writing quality) of students’ argumentative writing were measured at pretest, posttest, and maintenance test. Results indicated that all students regardless of their abilities and needs benefited from the CBGO with embedded SRL strategies. There were statistically significant differences between the experimental group that used CBGO and the control group that received traditional writing instruction in the quality of writing at posttest and maintenance. There were no statistically significant differences in the quantity measures (e.g., number of words). In addition, the experimental group generalized the improvements in written arguments in the area of social studies to writing in science. These findings add to the limited body of research on computer-based instructional strategies that support all students in writing across the curriculum.

Attending to Precision: Vocabulary Support in Middle School Mathematics Classrooms

ABSTRACTMastery of language is critical to the mastery of content in middle school content area classrooms. In order to comprehend the disciplinary-specific texts that they encounter in their social studies, language arts, science, and mathematics classrooms, students must be literate in the content area vocabulary that is specific to those disciplines. Otherwise, specialized content area language may pose a barrier to student comprehension of content. Therefore, middle school teachers hold the dual responsibility of not only teaching their content but thoughtfully engaging their students with content area language during instruction. In this descriptive observational study, we explore the language support and focus in 1 middle school’s mathematics classrooms. We observed a total of 4 teachers and classrooms over a month-and-a-half time period.

Challenges while Teaching English in the Social Science Classroom: A Bangladesh Perspective

This paper written is based on the findings from a study conducted among the Social Science students of Advanced Level undertaking the English Language courses as Elective or compulsory and their mode of learning is Bengali other than few of these English courses. I have tried to explore some of the difficulties while teaching these students. Two groups of students were selected for experimental study and teaching was given following traditional approaches like CLT. Data were collected through classroom observation and questionnaires. Though the results found have some limitations, this paper aims at suggesting for the probable solutions to the problems and finally it opens a new window to face the learners with this type of challenging situation by adopting some of the innovative methods using the Humanistic approach of learning in English Language Teaching and Education.

‘Teaching Maths is Easier Than This!’: Pre-Service Educators Confront the Challenges and Opportunities of Teaching Emotive and Contested Pasts in Post-Apartheid History and Social Science Classrooms

This paper describes some of the affective fall out of teaching slavery in South African schools following the latest version of the curriculum, known as the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS). Over several years, it has become apparent to the author, who is a teacher educator at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), that teaching the sections of the curriculum on Cape slavery and on transatlantic slavery causes significant distress among school learners and that student educators have become increasingly apprehensive about the impact these topics will have when they present them to their own classes comprising several dozen adolescents. Student educators have expressed concern that they will be unable to resolve racial conflict that seems to be just under the surface, and which teaching topics like slavery threatens to release. The author gives an account of an ongoing experiment in what are called ‘silent conversations’ that she has conducted with student educators and which, as a methodology, many have subsequently taken with them into their own teaching at schools. It is argued that the silent conversations allow for students to converse with each other in a way that keeps emotions in check while allowing them to express their responses to stimuli related to the topic of slavery. The silent conversation methodology is rooted in an international literature referred to in the paper that investigates possible solutions for teaching controversial histories at school level in countries where divisive political or other allegiances make them particularly difficult to present.

The Educational Governance of German School Social Science: The Example of Globalization

Purpose: This article challenges the outsiders' views on European school social science adopting genuine cosmopolitan views, when globalisation is treated in social science classrooms. Method: The article is based on the theoretical framework of educational governance analysis and on qualitative corpus analysis of representative German Laenders' social science curricula from 1994-2014 (n=13). Findings: The article highlights tendencies of renationalisation of the global learning agenda and the problematisation of democracy in contexts of globalisation studies at German schools.