Recent education literature and research has focused on identifying effective core teaching practices to inform and help shape teacher education and professional development. Although a rich literature on the teaching and learning of history has continued to develop over the past decade, core practice research has largely overlooked…

Engaging students in controversial issues provides numerous benefits for developing democratic citizenship. A wide variety of pathways and challenges exist to their discussion in classrooms, many of which are based upon societal and cultural context. This study explores the context of Guam and maps the issues of controversy within categories of…

The ability to make connections is an important aspect of teaching history and a vital skill in our increasingly globalized world. This study examines how preservice and practicing teachers organize and connect world historical events and concepts for themselves and for instructional purposes. Findings are based on interviews with 2 card-sorting…

Because a pluralistic democracy is inherently conflictual, public deliberation of issues holds the potential to expand the thinking of participants by revealing new insights, perspectives, information, or logics into the participants' consideration. These are ethical questions that ask citizens to decide whether policies, actions, and…

This article reports findings from a 3-year study on preservice middle and secondary social studies teachers' common content knowledge of politics and current events. Surveys showed that both groups were generally uninformed about these issues, and on almost all measures, the middle-grades preservice teachers performed worse than those in the…

Globalization has unleashed profound changes in education. These include positivistic international school comparisons, a singular focus on schools as drivers of economic development, and the adoption of neoliberal market principles in school. These changes, however, generally go unexamined within the field and literature of global education.…

This study focuses on a seminal moment in the history of the College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA)--the founding of its voice, "Theory & Research in Social Education" ("TRSE"). This historical study uses archival documents to construct a narrative of the journal's origins. This publication was born during a…

The article describes the work of critical special education scholars and teacher educators in the field of Disability Studies who challenge the fundamental assumptions on which special education is founded, illustrating implications for all educators. A brief history of the field acknowledges the enormity of the institutionalization of special…

The author explores the articulations of six social studies student/teachers after a viewing of "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts". The film, a documentary about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the people in and around New Orleans, constitutes an encounter with what Deborah Britzman (1998) calls "difficult…

In this article the author examines (a) preservice teachers' reactions to graphic novels featuring social studies material, and (b) the potential for using graphic novels in secondary social studies classrooms. An analysis of preservice teachers' written book reports, classroom discussions, and individual interviews revealed the range of reactions…

The purpose of this article is to evaluate a social studies teacher education vision statement as it relates to Parker's (2003) "advanced" conception of citizenship education for democratic society. The vision statement, titled "Powerful Vision of Social Studies," was created by a group of practicing teachers and teacher educators as part of a…

This study examines how two history teacher candidates, Monica and James, learned to teach historical thinking and reading in a discipline-specific teacher education program. Data include pretests and postests, interviews, observations, and university course assignments. Qualitative data analysis reveals that although both teachers excelled in the…

This study examines teacher perceptions of academic freedom and how these perceptions relate to the teaching of controversial issues. By drawing on the literature of the field and recent research, we describe threats, challenges, and variables at work that have led to the decline of academic freedom. We then explore the imperative of academic…

In the 1980s, the National Geographic Society launched a multi-million dollar campaign to improve teachers' knowledge of geography through the establishment of geographic alliances--networks of geography professors, teacher educators, and elementary and secondary teachers. To coordinate reform efforts in geographic education, the Society provides…