Picturebooks offer powerful supports for teaching diverse content across different curriculum areas. Research and curriculum resources document their use in inquiry-based education practices, particularly in relation to science and philosophy. There is, however, little theoretical analysis of this use or cross-curricular comparisons. Applying a…

Teachers value students' close reading of and text-based writing about diverse texts while eliciting their awareness of the world, privilege, and power. Carefully selected literature coupled with primary sources can bridge the classroom and society. To engage modern students in America's racialized past and present, this article guides teachers to…

One of the most effective methods for teaching social studies events, concepts, and issues incorporates the fine arts into lesson plans. The fine arts, such as photography, architecture, paintings, tapestries, and sculptures reflect the core cultural values, political ideals, and religious beliefs of a civilization and offer excellent…

The raising of Henry VIII's warship, the "Mary Rose," from the sea bed set in train an extraordinary programme of interdisciplinary research, relentlessly pursuing the clues to Tudor life and death provided by the remains of the ship, its cargo and crew. In this article Clare Barnes offers fascinating insights into the way in which this…

This article examined the role of environmental interaction in interdisciplinary thinking and the use of different knowledge resource types. The case study was conducted with two classes (N = 40) of 8th-grade students, ages 13 to 14. The outdoor trail aimed to help students synthesize history, geography, and science knowledge. Two groups'…

Using an expanded version of Alexander's (2008) theory of dialogic teaching developed by RojasDrummond, Torreblanca, Pedraza, Vélez, and Guzmán (2013), this case study explored how instructors and students in a hybrid graduate course engaged in the process of dialogic teaching and learning (DTL). In particular, we examined the ways in which…

This manuscript explores the power of using inquiry in a second-grade classroom to make students' understanding of citizenship more complex. It describes an inquiry unit in which students studied primary sources, engaged with fiction and nonfiction children's literature, and participated in interdisciplinary learning to further understand the…

Teachers can successfully integrate student-centered, disciplined inquiry, and technology into their classroom using the three-part approach to monitoring instruction described in this article.

There can be no doubt that mobile technologies are here to stay. Global mobile traffic grew 74 percent in 2015 alone, with 563 million devices and connections added -- most of them tablets and Smartphones. This growth has been 4000-fold in the past 10 years and 400 million-fold in the past 15 years (Cisco, 2016). Mobile technologies permeate the…

What could two dozen middle school students, two teachers, land surveyors, journalists, divers, college professors, lawyers, archaeologists, an author, and an 85-year old retiree possibly have in common? The answer is their insatiable quest to redefine colonial American history. From geodesy to glaciology, from geology to hydrology, from…

In the advent of the development and mass adoption of the common core state standards for English language arts and mathematics, state and local agencies have now expressed a need to the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO or the Council) for assistance as they upgrade existing social studies standards to meet the practical goal of…

Many educational researchers across the United States have found that inquiry-based learning (IBL) supports the development of deep, meaningful content knowledge. However, integrating IBL into classroom practice has been challenging, in part because of contrasting conceptualizations and practices across educational fields. In this article, we (a)…

To address the disparity in the skills of entering students and the goals of the first-year learning community (LC) program, the authors created a series of scaffolded, or tiered, writing assignments around the concept of kingship to move students from summary to analysis to synthesis. For each assignment, the authors incorporate informal…

When teachers ask upper middle school and high school students what they know about the Westward movement, the students usually draw on their experiences with simulation games. Rather than rely on simulation games or texts to help students understand that era, these authors advocate moving middle or high school students from a simplistic to a…

Fifteen interdisciplinary social studies units intended for 10th grade students but applicable to eighth and ninth grade students, dealing with universal issues in the hope that students gain insight into the behavior of man, are analyzed. (SM)