The field of social studies education began as a curriculum reform 75 years ago and evolved into an educational movement that responds to local, national and international citizenship requirements of people and nations around the world. Current interests in social studies include a return to integrated content and future studies, which reflect global, interculture, comparative and interdisciplinary studies interests. The next 20 years may feature a social studies approach that aims at a universal global approach with less provincial study of man and his past, present, and future. The future, assuming all the cycles and patterns of social studies development continue, should yield what the world desperately needs, a citizen enquirer. The document is divided into eight sections: (1) a brief history of the social studies movement; (2) social studies: the early years 1920-1950; (3) new social studies reform; (4) the social studies approach adapted as a world movement; (5) African social studies; (6) the "new" new social studies; (7) the new social reforms in Kenya; and (8) beyond the new social reforms: the future. Special attention throughout the paper is devoted to developing African nations, particularly Kenya. (APG)