Complicating Patriotism in the Elementary Grades: An Examination of Rugg and Krueger's Overlooked Textbooks

In the late 1930s several prominent self-described patriotic groups attacked social studies pioneer Harold Rugg as “un-American.” The largest instance of textbook censorship in American history unfolded. Yet little attention was given (and continues to be given by scholars) to Rugg's elementary textbooks that he wrote with Louise Krueger. This article examines Rugg and Krueger's complete “Elementary Series” in light of the un-American criticisms levied at Rugg. It documents how, despite critics’ claims, the books were immediately celebratory of the United States and its people, teaching a traditional patriotism that casts the nation as the supreme level of social analysis through an unquestioning, best-story approach. Furthermore, it shows how the books lack Rugg's justice-oriented philosophy of the “American Problem.” The article concludes by charging elementary social studies teachers, teacher educators, and researchers to consider critical questions related to the teaching of patriotism in the elementary grades.     

Recent Happenings in the Social Studies

This article details the “journey box” project process enacted by two elementary preservice teacher cohorts. Engaging in activities and projects that promote a sense of investment in not only consuming but producing historical narratives, preservice teachers potentially become interested in sharing this type of learning with their students.     

Children of Divorce

This mixed methods study identified six elementary teachers, who, despite the widespread marginalization of elementary social studies, spent considerable time on the subject. These six outliers from a sample of forty-six Michigan elementary teachers were interviewed, and their teaching was observed to better understand how and why they deviate from the norm. An autonomy-versus-control continuum is used to frame how teachers decide what, when, and how to teach. Challenging existing literature that suggests that additional attention to elementary social studies comes from testing pressure or by providing teachers with autonomy, findings of this study reveal that five of the six teachers taught social studies frequently and extensively because their schedules were externally controlled to designate specific time for social studies instruction.     

Social Work Textbooks on Human Behavior and the Social Environment

SUMMARY

This analysis of fourteen foundation frequently used Human Behavior and Social Environment (HB&SE) textbooks is based on the Council on Social Work Education's (2001) guidelines for HB&SE and a framework for integrating content related to the social environment. Specific criteria for assessment included how well the textbook reflected the reciprocal nature of human behavior and the social environment, presented a strengths perspective, incorporated diversity content, and covered material related to families, groups, organizations, communities and political economy. Three types of HB&SE textbooks were identified (life cycle, systems, and theory), and results are presented by textbook type. The findings suggest that increased attention to content related to the macro social environment and to the inter-relationships of macro, meso, and micro forces would strengthen HB&SE texts.     

Sociology

The authors describe how three elementary teachers working in very different parts of the United States teach about Mexico. These teachers' practices allow them to enhance the traditional social studies curriculum, help children learn about themselves and other people, and increase children's capacities for global citizenship.     

Literature as the Guide to History

The author presents a content integration that focuses on social studies and science knowledge and skills. The idea of using folk crafts to help elementary students learn social studies extends from John Dewey's laboratory school to the twenty-first century. Meaningful content is applied to skills, such as blacksmithing, found in the community, and students make connections between school knowledge and their lives outside of school. In this activity, blacksmithing helped students integrate ideas from multiple academic subjects, incorporating content from the social sciences and humanities. The guest content expert with a specialized knowledge base played a large role in making this experience occur for the students and teachers.     

Developing a Vision for the Common Core Classroom: What Does Elementary Social Studies Look Like?

In each edition of their book Doing History: Investigating with Children in Elementary and Middle Schools, Levstik and Barton (2011) encourage us to take a mental journey to imagine classrooms where students regularly “do history” (xi). The social studies experiences that many educators envision for elementary classrooms include teaching students to frame questions, read for information, and organize primary and secondary sources to share their knowledge with classmates. NCSS provides an infrastructure for social studies goals in which knowledge, skills and attitudes are developed in meaningful social studies lessons. When viewed through the lens of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (CCSS ELA), we recognize the fundamental nature of aligning social studies standards with literacy strategies for elementary teaching and learning. The purpose of this article is to examine the usefulness of CCSS ELA for teaching elementary social studies. The authors share a vision for the “common core classroom” that includes a range of literacy strategies for teaching standards-based social studies.     

Teaching Elementary School Social Studies Methods under edTPA

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 compounds my work of teaching future elementary teachers for social studies for social justice. I discuss challenges associated with my teaching and the ways that I have grappled with these challenges. Implications for teacher educators are discussed, because we all must deal with important issues in the current era of accountability and testing.     

Revised Historical Viewpoints

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 more deeply about social studies content within texts. Students can compare different perspectives on the same historical event, such as the encounter between Columbus and the Taino, and reasons for including and omitting important ideas. Students can also note similarities and differences among cultures and current and historical events through literature circle discussions. However, teachers must carefully select texts which focus on powerful social studies ideas, emphasize the goal of thoughtful discussions when introducing literature circles, and be ready to raise significant issues ignored in the literature circle discussions during follow-up class discussions.     

A United States History Card Game

Learning social studies curriculum can present challenges for English-language learners (ELLs). The language used to present concepts is often decontextualized and abstract, making it difficult for these students to understand the content and have successful learning experiences. In this article, the authors describe strategies elementary teachers can use to make social studies content more comprehensible to ELLs and engage them to become active participants in their learning. They discuss three strategies in-depth and explain particular teaching techniques, such as the use of graphic organizers. Teaching vignettes illustrate ways these strategies can be implemented in the classroom to help ELLs be successful in acquiring social studies knowledge and inquiry skills while developing critical English language arts proficiencies.     

Correspondence

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 the additional efforts needed to encourage students to examine maps critically and identify distortions and biases. Teachers may introduce critical map reading by having students create and analyze their own maps of familiar places and create a safe classroom environment for questioning maps. The article suggests teachers encourage critical thinking with maps by using a variety of projections, such as conformal, equal area, and “upside down” maps which portray different perspectives, distortions, and biases, ask students to compare land areas on different maps, and determine the value of different maps. Finally, the article describes the effectiveness of several strategies the author uses with preservice elementary teachers in a social studies methods course to help them consider the cartographer's influence on maps, the distortions and biases in maps, and the strengths and weaknesses of various maps they might use in elementary classrooms.     

The Thread That Binds: Building on the Stories of Adolescent English Language Learners in Mainstream Social Studies Classrooms

This article draws on current research in the areas of storytelling and social studies to present a practical, culturally responsive storytelling model for Grades 7–9 social studies teachers to use to better engage English Language Learners (ELLs). Integrating the proven effectiveness of storytelling from a scientific and social perspective, with common themes explored in a typical social studies classroom, this model provides teachers with a concrete strategy to weave the rich, personal stories of ELLs into their classrooms. Based on a holistic understanding of storytelling, this model serves as a way for teachers to supplement traditional teaching methods used in the social studies classroom with personal stories shared by students, teachers, and experts during the introduction of key concepts. Future research potential exists to examine the effectiveness of this model if put into practice.     

A Transdisciplinary Approach to Teacher Preparation: Providing Equitable Access for All Students to Learn Social Studies Content,Skills, and Processes

Abstract

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 disrupt the social reproduction of empowering privileged students and disempowering marginalized ones in the public schools. An earlier study indicated that our TCs did not transfer or generalize the UDL framework from foundation courses to subsequent classes or in practice. This case study describes how and in what ways elementary education faculty used a transdisciplinary approach, integrating the UDL framework taught in the foundation’s course into a social studies methods course to facilitate TCs’ continued learning and application of theory into practice. The results of this case study suggest that TCs that TCs had not yet internalized the UDL framework or critical consciousness and that these must be intentionally transferred and generalized to new coursework by the faculty on a consistent, ongoing basis.     

What is a Vote Worth? A Focused Inquiry to Scaffold Elementary Historical Thinking

Abstract

Meaningful source work is at the heart of social studies learning, but often a tall order for elementary-aged students. In this article, the authors describe the construction and implementation of a fifth grade inquiry on the Suffrage Movement using a focused version of the Inquiry Design Model (IDM) Blueprint. Using source analysis scaffolds coupled with discussion and organizational tasks, students used primary and secondary sources to create complex evidence-based claims showing the intersection between First Amendment rights, civic engagement, and the Suffrage Movement. This focused inquiry supported meaningful application of learning to an informed civic action project.     

“We're All Kids!” Picture Books and Cultural Awareness

Picture books engage young learners across the elementary curriculum and can effectively help teach about a variety of social studies topics. Social studies may be a neglected subject in many elementary schools, but purposefully incorporating it through children's literature provides an effective means of advancing both literacy skills and social studies understanding. In this study, first graders from two different schools were each provided with five books related to social studies ideas as part of a summer reading program. A picture-sorting activity with six of the students as they began second grade found variations in cultural awareness. Students were found to display chauvinism and presentism more with images relating to a country they had not read about (China) than with one that was included in the books (Tanzania). This study found that providing students with opportunities to read picture books with text and images that accurately reflect contemporary life in different countries can help young students become attuned to cultural similarities and differences, which promotes cultural awareness.     

The Use of Local Statistics in High School Courses in Sociology and Social Problems

Since the inception of mandated testing in reading and mathematics, social studies instruction has been marginalized in elementary and middle schools. After the genesis of several state-mandated testing programs and nearly a decade after the launch of the No Child Left Behind legislation, the effects of limited K–8 social studies instruction are being recognized at the high school level, specifically in high school test score data. This article reveals the obstacles generated by marginalizing social studies in the elementary and middle schools and offers a model for helping teachers understand their role in offsetting the problems associated with early social studies marginalization. The article also provides a way to help teachers collaboratively fill the social studies content gaps.     

Visual and Other Aids

One way that people learn, remember and communicate is visually. We combine past experiences with new visual information to construct meaning. In this study, elementary teachers introduced their students to the peoples and places of the ancient silk routes using illustrations from two children's picture books, Marco Polo, written by Gian Paolo Cesaerani and illustrated by Piero Ventura (1977), and We're Riding on a Caravan: An Adventure on the Silk Road (2005), written by Laurie Krebs and illustrated by Helen Cann. Students in the lower elementary grades were more literal than students in the higher grades in their observations of the books' illustrations. The older students had more knowledge of China and were able to construct more meaning from the illustrations than younger students. They were also able to recognize the illustrators' intent and manner of representation. Additionally the elementary teachers suggested contextualizing the activity within a study of China.     

English Language Proficiency of Immigrants and Refugees in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area

Studies of the determinants of English language ability have generally focused on the largest immigrant groups in the United States. Much less is known about smaller, but significant regional concentrations of immigrants and refugees. This article presents data on four very distinct and understudied groups: Russians, Somalis, Hmong, and Mexicans in the Midwest. We found large differences in English language proficiency across the different national origin groups, even after controlling for background variables. These differences were not attributable to refugee status or to linguistic distance from English. Being Somali, migrating to the United States at a young age and having a college diploma were the best predictors of both spoken and written proficiency. The returns to higher education were particularly noteworthy — respondents with college diplomas were more than 29 times more likely than non‐high school graduates to speak English well, and more than 20 times as likely to read well. Women appear to have benefited more than men from completing college in terms of spoken English proficiency since the male‐female gap narrows among the highly educated. Length of time in the United States was a good predictor of whether an individual speaks English at home, regardless of age of entry to the country.     

An Integration Project in Civics and English

The intent of this article is to examine the significance of Carter G. Woodson to the historical development of the fields of curriculum and social studies, particularly as they relate to the evolution of the modern multicultural movement. The authors focus on Woodson's contributions through his curriculum and his pedagogical efforts in establishing a more rigorous and historically accurate social studies framework through his community education initiatives, the Negro History Bulletin, and his textbooks. They conclude the article with a discussion of how Woodson's efforts can have direct implications for social studies educators.