Although the social realist position is grounded in the fundamentally important observation that schools must engage students with knowledge that deepens and extends their understanding, rather than simply reproduce what they learn in everyday life, this approach commits a fatal flaw by equating such 'powerful knowledge' with the work of academic…

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has framed teacher education for decades, despite the difficulty of demonstrating that teacher preparation effectively develops PCK. Social studies educators have been especially wary of PCK, but their critiques have primarily challenged what knowledge is valued rather than its model of how teachers learn. This…

Middle school social studies teachers are increasingly working on argument writing in their classrooms so that students can successfully write counterarguments that acknowledge competing perspectives about historical and social issues by the end of eighth grade. The authors' prior research indicates that eighth-grade students "can" grow…