The disciplinary and critical divide in social studies teacher education research: A review of the literature from 2009–2019

ABSTRACT For decades, scholarship on preservice social studies teacher education in the United States has grappled with the unsystematic nature of research in this field. Given the broad and enduring attempt to overcome these divisions, however, it is noteworthy that there has not been a recent attempt to systematically categorize those divisions. This literature review analyzes 139 articles published between 2009 and 2019 through the lens of the divisions between “traditional,” “disciplinary,” and “critical” strands of social studies research on teacher education. Results indicate that disciplinary and critical strands dominate the contemporary literature and provide two distinct research agendas for understanding the development of new social studies teachers. Reconsidering social studies teacher education as a field containing two divergent systems, this review maps the fault lines defining the field and explores how it might respond to those divisions in ways that are meaningful for researchers, students, and practitioners.