Journal of Social Studies Research最新文献

This study explored how U.S. middle school students made sense of a variety of topics from world history. I conducted qualitative, task-based, small group interviews with 66 sixth and seventh grade students enrolled in world history courses. Findings indicated that students assimilated new information from world history to their prior knowledge of U.S. history, often mixing content knowledge from U.S. history into their understanding of world history. They also used a narrative theme of progress to structure world history knowledge and centered historical narratives on individuals rather than larger social/political circumstances. Thus, narratives that served as tools in students’ reasoning about U.S. history were found to wield significant influence over their understanding of world history topics. These findings suggest that conceptual changes are necessary for students to develop more complete and nuanced historical understanding.

This study examined the historical perspectives of eleven emergent bilingual and bilingual students at two middle schools. Data analysis revealed that the participants’ perspectives on U.S. history reflected three schematic narrative templates focused on nation-building, equality, and discrimination. The participants primarily employed the (in)equality narratives when discussing aspects of U.S. history directly linked to their identities. The findings add to the extant research on student historical perspectives and use of schematic narrative templates. The findings further suggest that engaging (emergent) bilingual students in examining multiple perspectives and conducting critical history inquiry can contribute to notions of culturally and linguistically responsive social studies instruction.

This exploratory mixed-methods study considers what motivates pre-service social studies teachers to pursue a career in teaching, and the extent to which those motivations are connected to a desire to promote democratic citizenship. We seek to put pre-service social studies teachers’ motivations into a broader context by comparing them to those of pre-service teachers in other certification areas. Using surveys and open-ended responses, we analyzed the motivational factors of 218 pre-service teachers using the FIT-Choice Scale and Westheimer and Kahne’s categories of citizen-types. Our findings suggest that being civically motivated is not a phenomenon unique to social studies teachers. However, participants’ responses to the open-ended prompts suggest a greater likelihood of pre-service social studies teachers articulating a more nuanced vision of “good” citizenship than their peers in other certification areas. Our findings offer implications that extend beyond social studies teacher education to the structure of teacher education programs more generally.

This exploratory study investigates the ways in which secondary U.S. history teachers who attended two iterations of a teacher professional development workshop, focusing on the history of school desegregation in Virginia, planned to teach the history of school desegregation through historical inquiry. Conceptualizing the history of school desegregation as difficult history, the authors conducted the content analysis of 23 written lesson plans generated by workshop participants. The historiography of school desegregation, and research on four dimensions of historical inquiry such as Change and Continuity, Causation, Multiple Perspectives and Historical Sources, guided the data analysis. The findings suggest that teachers in this study were most likely to design their inquiry around Causation, framing the history of school desegregation within the classical timeline of the Civil Rights Movement, which begins with the Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954) and ends with the Civil Rights Act of 1968. What was often absent in these inquiries was Massive Resistance, the backlash against the Brown v. Board of Education decision, collective and political actions of African American communities to implement the Brown decision, and varying perspectives within African American communities as well as Whites who opposed the Brown decision. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is a polarizing historical survey that has become a common subject of social studies curricular battles. This mixed methods study uses survey data and interviews with teachers who frequently assign the book to understand who uses this text and why. Findings reveal that the text has functional, pedagogical, and political appeal for teachers who are committed to including multiple perspectives and critiquing historical narratives. That these teachers are not primarily animated by Zinn’s intention for the text to inspire students’ participation in social movements should undermine critics’ fears of indoctrination and sloppy history teaching, but may disappoint supporters of the text hoping for more critical pedagogical motivations.

The primary objective of this article is to describe how the children of soldiers critiqued and examined media representations of war. Taken from a more extensive qualitative case study involving eight teachers, this article examines one social studies teacher and her students’ perspectives on media coverage of war through two Socratic Seminar discussions focused on two wars: the American Civil War and Gulf War. Data was collected through interviews, focus groups, and classroom observations. Students leveled a specific set of critiques at television media and those who consume it. They also grappled with two ethical quandaries: censorship and the justness of war.

This article emerged from an unusual place – a Mathew Brady photograph. The teacher, a lecturer typically, decided to engage her students in discussion. This discussion was designed to provide “process and sense-making time,” according to their teacher, Ms. Jones, after four days of lecture on the American Civil War. Yet, the discussion grew into something much different than Ms. Jones’s original plan. It evolved into an interrogation of how the media represents war. Inspired by the thoughtful discussion, several months later, Ms. Jones engaged the same students in an examination of media representations of the first Gulf War. Ms. Jones is the focus of this article because out of the eight other teachers in the larger qualitative study, she was the only one to focus on classroom time (two entire class sessions) on media representations of war.

This case study explores the use of collaborative book clubs and word sorts to influence teacher positionality in an undergraduate social studies methods course for pre-service teachers. Drawing upon existing literature that suggests the effectiveness of dialogue as a means of navigating prior beliefs and the benefits of collaborative spaces for teachers to engage in collegial discussions, the study utilized books surrounding socio-political themes and educational inequalities to prompt conversation among participants. Results of the study suggest that dialogic and collaborative activities like word sorts and book clubs provide productive opportunities for pre-service teachers to (re)negotiate their positionalities and grapple with their existing assumptions as they learn and co-construct meaning from and with one another. At the same time, the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of privilege and identity seem to remain somewhat unexamined and the teachers remain hesitant about the practical reality of working to dismantle inequalities in their own classrooms.

This study investigated approaches to the elementary social studies methods syllabus from instructors of courses across the United States. Using qualitative content analysis, we explored 48 methods syllabi using a deductive framework of Information Based Systems of education, Transformation Based Systems of Education, and Inquiry Based Systems of education. Ultimately, we determined that over half (n = 27) of the collected syllabi reflected an Information Based System of education meant to prepare students for certification, lesson and unit planning, and best practice social studies instruction. Fewer (n = 14) prepared pre-service teachers to challenge official knowledge and position social studies instruction within socio-political realities of students and fewer still prepared pre-service teachers to center inquiry-based instruction guided by the C3 Framework (n = 11). We position these findings within dominant trends in elementary social studies scholarship and conclude that too few methods courses reflect the scholarly trend toward transformative, justice-oriented, or inquiry-based elementary social studies.

Social studies teachers are frequently athletic coaches who are often criticized for prioritizing coaching over teaching. The purpose of this study is to investigate the experiences of preservice social studies teachers regarding the relationship between coaching and teaching with respect to hiring in middle and secondary schools. The researchers employed phenomenological research methods to investigate the hiring experiences of social studies teacher candidates. Survey and interview data were collected from social studies teacher candidates at the three largest universities in a southeastern state. Results illuminate a pervasive coaching contingency that many social studies teacher candidates face. Social studies teacher candidates perceived that willingness to coach a sport is the most important factor, other than teaching, to be hired to teach—particularly at the high school level.