This is an exploratory study to determine whether the way in which attitudes about citizenship actions were measured would predict American students' endorsement of those actions. In a split-half design, half of the student respondents completed a questionnaire in which they rated the extent to which various citizenship actions were important; the…

The U.S.'s history has gone through significant cultural changes. None have been more profound than those related to a basic philosophical understanding of the foundation of our constitutional structure. This essay asks the reader to reconsider a central theory and organizational viewpoint of the founding generation, which adhered to a more…

Web-assisted social studies instruction utilizing an online module over 4 weeks with weekly face-to-face discussion of each component was used with 245 elementary teacher candidates working in 35 cooperative groups to assist them in developing an understanding of guided inquiry in social studies as represented by the learning cycle model.…

In the last decade, the debate over state-mandated standardized testing has become one of the most heated, political debates in education. Situated within that debate and drawing from it, this paper examines the relationship among teachers, teaching, and standardized testing, using the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) as a case study…

This study examines student engagement in elementary civics deliberation. Civics problem-solving steps and audience roles were introduced to two suburban fourth-grade classes to increase student engagement. Lessons were adapted from the "We The People" curriculum. Student engagement increased dramatically as students appropriated the…

The purpose of this paper is to explore face-to-face discussions and electronic threaded discussions. Forty high school students engaged in both face-to-face and threaded discussions during a world history course. Their comments and interactions were analyzed, and they revealed that both types of discussion hold promise for helping students…

This paper addresses the importance of preparing prospective teachers for their responsibilities as future civic educators. Specifically, the authors explore children's construction of civic knowledge, identify a civics pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), outline four guiding principles that contribute to the development of civics PCK within a…

This article reports on a review of research into students' reasoning about social change and causes they attribute to selected historical events. In this review, I distinguish studies into social change and causality as two methodological approaches to historical understanding before relating findings into the ways that students reason about…

A "Motivation" eliciting the "Aim" of each lesson initiates each lesson in the orthodox "developmental lesson-plan" that has dominated classroom instruction in NYC public schools for at least the past half-century. An action-research study of 38 lesson-plans (over 5 each from 5 teachers) drawn from student-teaching…

This article examines the educational ideas of Fred Morrow Fling (1860-1934). A practitioner of "scientific history," Fling believed that the principal goal of history education was to teach the historical method through the analysis of primary sources. Unlike his contemporaries, who saw sources as useful for adding interest to lessons, Fling…

The Internet has been touted as a useful resource for social studies teachers. This study used content analysis methods to examine trends in sessions focused on the use of the Internet presented at the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) annual meeting (1995-2002). Session abstracts were analyzed for: type of Internet sessions…