Journal of Social Studies Research最新文献

Teachers’ instructional practices are important for student learning. However, there are few tools for evaluating instructional practices in social studies. To this end, we present a video-based instrument with teacher-student interactions for assessing teaching practices in a high school economics course. We investigate, using an iterative design-based methodology, the adaptation and validation of a test originally developed in Germany for use in the United States. We found that experienced economics teachers and those with more content knowledge demonstrated higher-level instructional skills, and were more flexibile with their thinking. Inexperienced economics teachers and those with low content knowledge not only struggled with the test items, but also with the test format, the content, inter-cultural understanding, and with feeling overwhelmed. The test provides an opportunity for economics teachers to obtain feedback, practice, reflection, and improvement of their instruction in a way that has not previously been available. It also illustrates the possibilities and drawbacks of video-based testing in teacher training.

This study aims to investigate how teachers’ citizenship beliefs relate to the way they teach citizenship in the classroom. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 65 sixth-grade primary school teachers in Flanders. The results show a dominant presence of conservative citizenship beliefs, which are also reflected in the citizenship contents teachers prefer and the roles they assign themselves. Teachers, regardless of their citizenship beliefs, predominantly use daily situations and current events as educational materials. The article concludes with recommendations for a better endorsement for teachers with particular attention for an expansion of their citizenship beliefs and citizenship education.

This study examined the experience of a first-year teacher's encounter with Confederate heritage while teaching about slavery and its legacy in a nearly all-white rural high school in a southern state. Data was collected in four interviews over the course of one academic year and through the participant's journaling of critical incidents in her classroom. Data was analyzed through a series of open and pattern coding. The teacher, identifying as a white suburban-raised Northern, adopted the framework of multiple perspectives to foster students' understandings about the harmfulness of Confederate symbols. Yet, the participant felt disillusioned and, at times, ineffective due to her limited experience in Neo-Confederate spaces, tensions between her white identity and teaching about race, her students' academic disinterest, and a lack of subject-specific mentoring. Findings demonstrate the presence of context-specific impediments, or hard contexts, that make the task of teaching hard history even more difficult in some settings and posit limitations of a multiple perspectives framework on issues of racial justice.

The article investigates the contentious relationship between economics and social studies and considers the extent to which the dominant narratives and methodological approaches in economics are compatible with ambitious views of equity in civics education. Tensions between social studies and economics are described. These include differing views on the role of government, democracy, and equality, as well as economics’ “imperious mindset” (Heilbroner, 1991, p. 463). After identifying these tensions, the article devotes significant space to recent scholarship that can bridge the civics-economics divide and introduce the kind of equity work being called for in social studies education.