This study reviewed incorporating a lesson about immigration in pre-service teachers' (N = 45) respective curricula. Additionally, it discussed participants' responses, their level of preparedness, and in some cases their hindrances to teaching controversial lessons. Crafting a framework to teach future teachers about complex subjects such as…

This article examines how teachers can develop a sense of social activism in students through critical multiculturalism. Drawing upon data from a nine-month participant observation study of a first-grade public charter school classroom in central California, this article highlights how teachers can integrate critical multiculturalism within an…

Contextualized in the critical pedagogies of universal design for learning (UDL) and social justice education, our study aimed to equip teacher candidates (TCs) to provide students with equitable access to learning social studies content knowledge, skills, and processes as a way to equally empower all students to be civically engaged, and thus to…

Taken from a larger qualitative study, this article argues that rather than an encompassing uniform definition, rigor, as understood and enacted by social studies teachers, exists on a complicated spectrum. Teacher placement on this spectrum was influenced by teacher life experience, teacher interpretation of student need, pedagogy employed, how…

"Charm City: Down to 'The Wire?'" is the title of an elective class developed by Sarah Taylor, a teacher at a private school in Baltimore. In the class, students explore their city and social justice issues from a framework that correlates to Westheimer and Kahne's (2004) concept of justice-oriented citizenship. Not only do students…

Highlighting a hero is a common response to including the history of marginalized people in the curriculum. Harvey Milk is becoming that hero as social studies curriculum responds to calls for including LGBTQ people. By studying Milk, what might young people learn about LGBTQ people, issues, and movements? What opportunities and limitations exist…

The study begins with the premise of the critical need of increased understanding of others in our global times. Given the intensive and extensive, and often complicated and controversial relations between the United States and South Korea in its modern history, it is critical for South Korean youth to build a more accurate understanding of their…

Despite 9/11, the seemingly endless Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons capabilities, and the Arab Spring and its aftermath, the social studies curricula of high schools throughout the nation generally put little emphasis on the Middle East and Islam as the foundation for understanding vital issues that…