Shifting to an inquiry-based practice can be challenging. How should teachers get started? How many times should teachers plan for inquiry? What do teachers do when students struggle with inquiry? How long does it take for students to buy in to the inquiry process? These kinds of questions, and the concerns that underlie them, can create an…

This study examines world history teachers' attitudes regarding teaching U.S. presidential elections. During interviews with nine teachers, participants emphasized that the competing demands of their classrooms negatively influenced their willingness to teach about the U.S. presidential elections generally, and the 2016 Election specifically. The…

The purpose of this qualitative case study is to explore to get an understanding of a social studies teacher's approach to media literacy including factors that inform her teaching and the students' understanding of her instructional practices. The participants of the study were one social studies' teacher and six students from her U.S. History…

This qualitative case study explores how an African American woman social studies teacher made sense of the construct of citizenship utilizing historical and experiential knowledge. The multiple intersections of the participant's identity affected the ways in which she understood and taught citizenship to her high school students. She chose to…

It is difficult to overstate the power of visual images, particularly historical primary source photos, to provide a window into the past. Here, the authors outline how educators can utilize historic photos to provide students with a deeper understanding of the past. When students do not see their heritage and culture represented in images, the…

Analytical reading and writing are embedded in a disciplinary approach to history instruction and present opportunities to extend students' literacy practices. U.S. educators and researchers have come to rely on the Document-Based Question (DBQ) to assess and develop students' historical knowledge and argument writing. However, this task has been…

The purpose of this qualitative, single case study is to investigate how teacher-created curricula addresses key Native American events in early U.S. history and to determine if such curricula provided students with accurate representations of Native American content. To do this, we used discourse analysis to consider the meanings of words and…

In this interpretative case study, the researcher examined the beliefs and practices of three self-identifying culturally relevant social studies teachers related to their teaching of U.S. history at a racially and ethnically diverse urban high school. The teachers displayed beliefs and practices that were aligned with the core criteria of…

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,…

Teachers often respond to the perils of teaching about religion by simply avoiding the subject. An investigation of secondary lesson plans on three prominent Martin Luther King, Jr. websites reveals little attention to the ideology of the civil rights movement, especially those touching on religious ideas. Ignoring King's religious views risks…

In this study we examine early career social studies teachers' use and understanding of critical simulations. We began work with participants as teacher candidates in their pre-service programs and formally studied them as they began their in-service teaching. We were particularly interested in teacher efforts to use simulation to facilitate a…

This qualitative case study examines how fifth graders and their teachers participated in critical literacy instruction grounded in systems thinking on the topic of slavery. Systems thinking seeks to discover relationships and patterns in diverse underlying systems; critical literacy examines everyday texts, focuses on social justice and change,…

Problem: Educators struggle with how to include the attacks of September 11th, 2001 in the nation's social studies classrooms. This study investigates how teachers engage in instruction about these events and the messages students take away from that instruction. Much of the research to date on the instruction of 9/11 focuses on resources and…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore how long term, focused, and embedded professional development influenced teachers' self-efficacy and preparedness to implement the Common Core State Standards in a large urban school district in northern Nevada. The sample was 17 7th-12th grade social studies teachers that participated in a…

Infusing content about elections has not been an issue for social studies teachers, but rather contextualizing race discourse in discussions of elections has served as a curricular cessation for social studies teachers. This is especially concerning given that teachers' attempts to remain neutral with regards to race consequently results in a lack…