The ability of the Internet to serve as a bridge to cultural understanding relies in great part on issues related to accessibility. My focus in this article is on accessibility as it relates to providing individuals with the full capabilities of the Internet to facilitate a process of association and learning, which can alleviate many issues that…

The setting of this case study was a course within a large university's teacher preparation program entitled "Integrating Technology Into the Social Studies Classroom." Simultaneous with this course, the students in this study also received instruction in effective teaching strategies, social studies methods, and completed two field experiences in…

There have been repeated calls for educational researchers to increase their use of interpretive and naturalistic research paradigms to study, understand, and explain what happens in classrooms. A review of educational research literature, however, revealed only a few naturalistic studies of life in the classroom. Encouragingly, it appears that…

Following every unfortunate and tragic school shooting is an accompanying cry for moral/character/values education, in the belief that such teaching could have prevented the tragedy. Society decries the rising statistical evidence of the apparent lack of values and character demonstrated by youth as evidenced by soaring crime rates among very…

Few educational debates have been as sustained and acrimonious as whether school curriculum should emphasize history or social studies. This article argues that school history has largely shared social and individual goals with social studies, while the latter has relied on history as central to learning about the present. Although the article…

This article is largely the author's reflections on one particular aspect of history and social studies education, reflections that are very much those of an outsider. Nationally, she is not an American, but a Canadian, and professionally has been, until recently, a historian rather than a history educator. And the differences, are profound. This…

Currently, no research exists that teases apart and compares how pre-service teachers within different national educational settings begin to reorganize, reconstruct and transform their own experiences, knowledge and perspectives on history and history teaching as they negotiate the process of learning to teach history. This comparative case study…

The current debate over history and social studies is partially founded in the belief that an integrated social studies approach lacks the rigor of a history approach resulting in deficient content knowledge by students. Charlotte Crabtree of the National Center for History in the Schools stated that the only disciplines worth studying are…

The notion that one can argue history "versus" social studies requires that one commit to a troublesome dichotomy resulting in a partitioning of the two subjects into separate entities. As practiced in the schools, the courses consistently overlap. In fact, the commonalities are so extensive that often the terms social studies and history are used…

The author's ninth grade world history students communicated the connection they felt to three women whose stories they evaluated in class. The women represented ordinary people living during time periods being studied, and their personal stories demonstrated how the political, economic and cultural events had an impact on people in unique and…

In this study, elementary teacher candidates were asked to identify the personal criteria employed in selecting lesson plans for placement in their social studies e-portfolios. Because the criteria developed by the candidates always included references to students' engagement with the lesson, it was recommended that e-portfolios should contain…

We live in a global era of transcendent democracy. According to recent surveys by Freedom House, most peoples of the world favor democracy over other types of government. A global revival of education for democratic citizenship accompanies the worldwide resurgence of democracy. Diverse peoples in various parts of the world commonly understand that…

A long recommended central purpose of civic education has been preparation of students for responsible democratic life. The authors of this paper contend that teaching students the domain-specific process of historical thinking and the habits of mind that are incorporated into this discipline-specific act will contribute to students' ability to…

The focus of this article is on the role that content and concepts drawn from the field of economics should play in education for self-government. How important is economic knowledge for the practice of effective citizenship in a democratic society such as the United States, and what core economic knowledge is required for effective civic…

Becoming a competent civic educator--one who can inspire and prepare students for informed, responsible, and humane participation in civic and political life--requires ongoing study of the content, pedagogy, and resources of civic education. Many elementary, middle, and high school teachers (and their students) would benefit from effective…