Looking at the effects of globalization from numerous perspectives: economic, spatial, cultural, and environmental, it has become abundantly clear that today's students must possess geographic knowledge and associated skills to be prepared for civic life and informed decision-making. However, the current state of geographic proficiency among U.S.…

In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the need to understand teaching and learning not just as cognitive but also as affective experiences that are imbued with emotional complexity. There is also an emergent body of research on how to teach difficult knowledge of war. Joining this scholarship, this article presents research…

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…

This article introduces the social studies field to Dorothy Heatchote's Mantle of Expert (MOE). MOE is a dramatic inquiry approach used in several subject areas and can work at all levels in the social studies curriculum. The authors go into the development of using this approach in an elementary and middle teacher education program. After sharing…

This article reports a self-study that analyzes my experience as a teacher educator navigating a turbulent educational landscape with the advent of edTPA. The data consist of my journal entries, the syllabi, handouts, work submitted by my students, and course evaluations. Data were analyzed by using an inductive process to describe how the edTPA…

This article describes how elementary preservice teachers used four documentary films to think historically about the United States Civil Rights Movement. The author situates the descriptive case study within research about historical thinking and documentary film, identifying the need for using documentary film to think historically in the…

The emphasis on disciplinary literacy skills embedded within the Common Core State Standards requires a shift in preparing teachers to explicitly address the craft of reading and writing within social studies instruction. As teacher educators, we think it is imperative to understand the ways in which our teacher candidates integrate literacy…

The author describes the use of literature circles in a social studies methods course for elementary preservice teachers and analyzes their effectiveness in teaching powerful social studies ideas. Literature circles encourage students to take more of a leadership role in the classroom, expect their active involvement, and challenge them to think…

This article encourages elementary teachers to offer opportunities for their students to critically analyze maps as part of powerful geography instruction in order to help them become well-informed and civic-minded citizens. The article reviews challenges to powerful geography instruction, including traditional geography textbooks and pedagogy and…

With the realities of standards-based accountability, it is imperative to model and demonstrate for students how subject areas and teaching methods transcend across traditional boundaries. In an effort to prepare future social studies educators to teach for global awareness and to meaningfully integrate critical literacy skills into their…

The author shares the challenges faced in her social studies methods class due to the constraints of NCLB. By incorporating the jackdaw kit project within her social studies methods course, her candidates were able to connect what they were talking about in methods and apply it to their students teaching situations where there was little time for…

This article describes the evolution of the author's approach to teaching a secondary social studies methods course over an eighteen-year period. Earlier in his career, the author imposed a reflective, issues-centered approach to teaching social studies as the preferred model of teaching. As a result of a combination of his own professional growth…

Two social studies methods instructors created an assignment that places teacher candidates in leadership roles in partnerships with community organizations to plan and implement projects to increase student learning. This article outlines the project requirements, past project results, and student reflections on the collaborative effort. It…

Social studies teacher educators highlight the importance of oral stories and histories in the social studies classroom, leading social studies learners to seek multiple perspectives and encourage historical thinking in the classroom. However, preservice teachers are given few opportunities to internalize this idea. In this article, the author…

Researchers have been documenting the unfortunate status of social studies in the elementary classroom since the 1980s (J. Stark 1987), and although a lack of teacher interest, poor instructional methods, and the No Child Left Behind Act may be the current contributing factors, these factors should be viewed as just the tip of the iceberg. The…