Using data from a national social studies survey, the authors examined instructional trends among Illinois elementary and middle school social studies teachers. The authors found that teachers preferred whole-group and teacher-centered instructional strategies over more active, student-centered methods. While surveyed teachers predominately…

Social studies education plays an important role in preparing students for a diverse, pluralistic democratic citizenry (NCSS 2010). While the field has made some gains in addressing the needs of various marginalized communities within the curriculum, there has been very little progress in incorporating LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,…

Human rights are commonly conceived as more relevant to foreign policy than day-to-day living. Drawing on Eleanor Roosevelt's conception of human rights as beginning close to home, this article illustrates how human rights principles might inform everyday processes of schooling and learning to live together. It considers rights to, in and…

The number of middle school students with learning disabilities (LD) taught social studies in general education classes continues to rise. Providing general education teachers with additional ways to support students with LD as they navigate social studies reading materials could help planning and teaching for all students. In middle school, when…

Social studies teachers of all grade levels are responsible for (a) connecting students with standards-based content, (b) engaging students in their own learning, (c) expanding students' levels of understanding by co-constructing new knowledge, (d) motivating students to express and exchange ideas with one another, and (e) incorporating social…

Many scholars, teachers, parents, as well as others, are concerned with the decline of civility in public discourse and public schools. The sharp differences among various ideological groups, exacerbated by media incivility, are contributing factors to rising incivility. This ideological divide currently manifests itself in bitter partisan…

Literacy skills taught in the elementary grades establish a good foundation but are not adequate for the demands of secondary content curriculum. In history, preservice teachers must be prepared with a solid content base along with the pedagogy for teaching that content. To better teach and enhance student writing, preservice teachers need to…

History courses based on chronological narratives in textbooks often assume a linear format through which students accumulate substantial amounts of surface-level information, with the various pieces of that information being disconnected from each other and from larger historical contexts. In addition, such narratives are often dry and lifeless,…

The question "what if?" has been asked by historians for generations. This article explains how history teachers can use students' own what-if questions to enhance their historical knowledge and understanding by offering educators a step-by-step plan for utilizing counterfactual history into their classrooms. Additionally, the author offers a…

To promote content literacy, students have to be actively involved. This article focuses on strategies that stimulate student interest by involving them with the content during pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading activities. These processes provide students with optimal opportunities for comprehension. The authors recommend the use of a…

When teachers in elementary and middle school classrooms portray history as an immutable sequence of certain facts, dates, and events, young learners tend to view the past, and by extension the future, as something fixed and inevitable. Learning about the past through investigating biographies can help counter this tendency by teaching students to…

Teacher educators must identify criteria and develop cohesive programs featuring curricular content and instructional strategies necessary for preparing teacher candidates with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions required to begin teaching all learners in the twenty-first century. Teacher educators also must anticipate classroom teachers'…

The continued prominence of genocide and Holocaust education, along with the movement toward the affective in social studies curricula, the advent of the Internet, and continued scholarship in the field, has led to the availability of a staggering array of digital resources for teachers (D. S. Symer 2001). These resources have the potential to…

In the aftermath of such tragedies as September 11 and natural disasters like the tsunami in Southeast Asia and during contentious election years, social studies becomes more prominent in the curriculum. As such, teachers, not just parents or churches or the government, have the responsibility to help students make sense of the information to…

Many children do not enjoy social studies because they see it as having little, if any, relevance to their lives. That response is attributable primarily to two factors: Dry content and even drier instructional strategies. Teachers know that if material presented to children is not meaningful and relevant to their lives, real learning does not…