Purpose: This paper aims to describe how engaging in an inquiry-as-stance reflexive approach informed the design of a graduate-level early childhood social studies methods course to support the professional identity development of multilingual/Latinx, Black, Indigenous, people of color (ML/L/BIPOC) teacher candidates. Design/methodology/approach:…

As a social studies teacher educator in the United States, it is crucial that I work to better understand myself and my teaching in regard to anti-racism. As a community, we need to study ourselves both as individuals and as programs to better ourselves as teacher educators who care deeply about racial justice, both for our own students and for…

Teaching in the service of social justice requires an understanding of how our belief structures and identities inform our practice. For that reason, the experience of secondary social studies teachers as they develop and reflect on their critical consciousness was the focus of this study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven…

In this study, the author examined how five white preservice teachers in a secondary social studies teacher education program embodied, wrestled with, and resisted whiteness. Drawing on literature from whiteness studies and antiracism, this study utilized the analogy of a swimming pool to discuss how participants constructed their identities in…

The aim of this study is to determine how cinema movies contribute to students' learning of human rights and democracy in the 2017-2018 Academic Year Fall Semester. The research was modelled according to the pattern of action research from qualitative research methods. Research was conducted for 13 weeks in a public university in Turkey. In the…

This study examines the experiences of 15 Latinx sixth-grade students in Los Angeles who participated in a yearlong journalism-based media literacy program embedded in their social studies classes. Students researched, interviewed, wrote, and published articles on the Internet about social justice themes, like immigration, racism, and LGBTQ…

The United States' social and economic inequities stood in high relief during the COVID-19 pandemic, spotlighting the glaringly disproportionate systemic injustices related to public health and the economic impact on minoritized communities. Realities of structural and institutionalized racism and classism were exposed to greater degrees as we…

Background/Context: Within the United States, wealth disparities are growing and upward social mobility is becoming increasingly difficult to attain. These trends call into question the American Dream ideology that anyone can succeed through hard work. This meritocratic ideal has traditionally been one of the unifying ideologies promoted through…

High school social studies teachers play an important role in fostering the civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions that students need to thrive after graduation. These efforts can also help counter Truth Decay--the diminishing role of facts and analysis in American public life. Although several factors, such as state standards and assessments,…

This study explores the critical consciousness of preservice Social Studies teachers and how their pedagogical content knowledge affects their ability to disrupt dominant discourses when teaching economic concepts.

"Kony 2012," the video by Invisible Children that went viral in March, offers an extraordinary teaching moment, as millions of teens across the country now know and care about a Ugandan warlord named Joseph Kony and the abducted children forced to serve in his militia. Many of these American young people hope to play a role in bringing…

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…

This document presents the proceedings of the 21st Annual Research Forum held June 30, 2016, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included are the following 11 action research papers: The Use of Mexican Folk Art to Develop Oral and Written Language Ability and Cultural Awareness in the Secondary Spanish Classroom (Antonio…

As LGBTQ issues gain prominence in political and social arenas directly related to social studies teaching, the field of social studies can no longer remain silent. The author argues that we need to move beyond marginal programs and an emphasis on anti-bullying measures to examine the heteronormative structures that school students in sexuality.…

The representation of a variety of stakeholders' voices during the deliberation of public issues is vital for the proper functioning of a liberal democracy. This qualitative study examined an activity involving deliberation among children and preservice teachers in the United States. In the activity that we call partner journals, children were…