Elementary Social Studies Content Integration in CCLS: An Analysis of Content Integration

While the primary focus of the Common Core Learning Standards is in improving literacy and math, elements of Social Studies topics and skills are emphasized. Primary source analysis and understanding multiple perspectives are just two examples. This article is grounded in a qualitative analysis of integrated instruction in two elementary classrooms. Through content analysis of curriculum and policy documents, I argue that current policy has made gains in elementary Social Studies instruction, but significantly more work must be done to elevate the subject to a true core content area. Data sources for this study were classroom observations, teacher interviews, and document analysis. Classrooms involved in this study utilized resources, as determined by the classroom teacher, to integrate literacy instruction with Social Studies concepts and skills. The purpose of this study was to identify progress made in recent policy toward practical application of Social Studies instruction. I also identify next steps in increasing and improving elementary Social Studies instruction. This study sought to guide the evolution of policy.     

Literacy education,reading engagement,and library use in multilingual classes

The topic of this paper is literacy education and reading engagement in multilingual classes. What facilitates reading engagement in the language of instruction in multilingual classes? In this paper, we analyze reading engagement in a literature-based literacy program in Norway (2007–2011). The design was a research and development project in which teachers, researchers, and librarians collaborated within literacy education. We present pedagogical interventions within the project and analyze subsequent reading engagement among the students, based on a survey. The survey documented that the overwhelming majority of students were engaged readers two years into the project, measured by the students’ amount and frequency of voluntary reading, their attitudes towards reading and library use. The findings indicate that reading engagement in the language of instruction among both first- and second-language learners was facilitated by literature-based literacy education, nonsegregated educational provisions and use of library resources. The study shows that literature-based literacy education may reduce possible negative effects of low socioeconomic status and linguistic minority background on reading engagement in the language of instruction. This requires literacy education, which gives students extensive access to books, voluntary reading of fiction and facts and sharing of literacy events and library use.     

Elementary Preservice Teachers’ and Teacher Educators’ Perceptions of Financial Literacy Education

The authors conducted an online survey of elementary teacher education programs within a large midwestern state to assess preservice teachers’ and teacher educators’ beliefs about and preparedness to teach financial literacy. Very few preservice teachers had meaningful experiences with personal finance in high school, college, or personal decision making. No teacher educators reported ever teaching financial literacy in their higher education roles. Only 13% of teacher educators and 25% of preservice teachers thought that it was very important to teach financial literacy in elementary education. Most teacher education faculty and preservice teachers reported that they were not well qualified to use state economics standards or the JumpStart standards for financial literacy. Preservice teachers were more confident in meeting financial literacy standards than teacher educators. Both preservice teachers and teacher educators expressed openness to collaborating with other faculty members, members of the financial service industry, and parents to teach financial literacy. Follow-up phone interviews affirmed that elementary preservice teachers and teacher educators value social studies education (and financial literacy) less than reading and mathematics education. Qualitative results also suggest that elementary preservice teachers and teacher educators would like more easily accessible resources for teaching financial literacy.     

The Vocabulary Levels of Social Science Magazines

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 instruction, we initiated a collaborative model in our university's middle grades teacher education program with language arts and social studies methods courses. The development of cultural competency not only provides preservice teachers with the knowledge of diverse populations but also enables them to have an increased ability to affirm the cultures of others.     

The American Way

Media consolidation and convergence have increasingly changed the way individuals as both consumers and citizens access, process, and communicate information at the local, national, and global levels. Media industries and institutions influence public perception and occupy our time at work and at home more and more. Media literacy has become recognized as a twenty-first-century skill necessary for civic competence and the development of informed, responsible citizens. Although it has long been established in the curricula of other nations, it is relatively new in the United States. Media literacy is not simply teaching with media—rather, it entails teaching about media. Key frameworks such as the Text, Audience, and Production (TAP) model, which is explained in this article, can be used to help students systematically analyze and evaluate the wide range of media texts they are exposed to on a daily basis. The author discusses how media literacy is also compatible with several of the major strands identified by the National Council for the Social Studies and can be facilitated by the growing range of resources available to teachers.     

Addressing religious plurality – a teacher perspective on minority religion and secular ethics education

The Finnish education system recognizes religious plurality by offering education in pupils’ own religion or in secular ethics. However, little research has been undertaken on how plurality is addressed in classroom practice. This study investigates how 31 minority religion and secular ethics teachers view the task of supporting and including plurality within their classrooms. The findings of this study show how instruction places high demands on teachers due to religious and cultural diversity, as well as age differences in the classroom. Teachers generally made an effort to take diversity into account by considering the different backgrounds of pupils in instruction and engaging pupils in class. However, teachers frequently took a traditional rather than a modern perspective on plurality in religious instruction by assuming pupils’ religious belonging. Confessional elements such as religious family background and religious practice outside school were also commonly seen as vital. Consequently, teachers had at times difficulties in supporting pupils with plural or little religious affiliation. The findings show a need to strengthen the non-confessional character of Finnish religious education so that both modern and traditional plurality among pupils occupy an equal position in the classroom.     

The Tradition of Pioneer Hardships in American History Textbooks

Two middle-school teachers incorporated student creation of historical accounts into their history instruction. During these projects, the teachers instructed their students to (1) summarize information presented during classroom instruction on a topic (e.g., the Great Migration) and (2) explain the significance of that topic to the present day. This second component of the task addressed a curricular standard regarding historical thinking, but students' responses referenced themes from citizenship education (e.g., cultural pluralism, social criticism, and national identification). More than eighty student projects were analyzed and coded for themes. This study presents a portrait of ambitious history teaching and suggests a tactic for a civics-infused history education course.     

Role rehearsal and efficacy: two 15-month evaluations of a ninth-grade alcohol education program.

A ninth-grade alcohol education program aimed at reducing drinking, drinking and driving, and riding with a drinking driver was developed on the basis of problem behavior theory, social cognitive theory and role theory. In Year 1 the program was taught by Social Studies teachers to half of the eighty-four ninth-grade classes in all nine junior high schools in a single school system; the other half served as controls. In Year 2 the program was taught to the ninth-grade students of the same school system by English teachers. Students' knowledge, skills and practices were measured before and four-six weeks and one year after the program. Results indicated significant increases in knowledge and perceived ability to resist pressures to drink among experimental students. No significant differences were noted for the drinking or the drinking and driving practices of either group. One year after the program, significantly fewer students in the experimental classes reported riding with a driver who had been drinking. Results suggested that English teachers were more effective than Social Studies teachers in teaching this program.     

Education for Democracy

Literacy skills taught in the elementary grades establish a good foundation but are not adequate for the demands of secondary content curriculum. In history, preservice teachers must be prepared with a solid content base along with the pedagogy for teaching that content. To better teach and enhance student writing, preservice teachers need to learn how to integrate discipline-specific literacy into their instruction, using instructional strategies that are explicitly taught with scaffold supports. The purpose of this article is to present instructional ideas and strategies designed to help students develop key cognitive skills in history and engage in deeper-level thinking as they learn to write like a historian. Each strategy is research-based and includes sample writing assignments.     

History Does Its Bit

Numeracy is as essential to becoming an active and thoughtful citizen as literacy. Although the concept of numeracy is complex and robust, there are four areas in which teachers can fairly easily begin to incorporate it into social studies curriculum and instruction. The areas include the students' ability to understand raw numeric data in context, to understand percentages in context, to understand the meaning of average, and to interpret and question graphs and charts. The author shares ways to cultivate numeracy in the social studies education classroom related to each of these four basic aspects of numeracy.     

Diverse students and literacy in social work education: pedagogies for a new tertiary landscape

In the Western policy landscape, students from diverse cultural, linguistic, economic and other backgrounds are increasingly represented in an expanded tertiary education system. Structural and technological changes have challenged traditional pedagogies designed for more elite cohorts, and shifted the boundaries of textual practices in both universities and professional worlds. In spite of these momentous trends, university literacies often remain tacit and inaccessible to those new to them, and pedagogies rarely explicitly engage with the complexities of these shifting boundaries. University students unfamiliar with these tacit literacies can become marginalised and ultimately struggle with the literacy demands of their academic and professional worlds. This is problematic in social work education, as professional practice demands complex written and oral communication, with potentially significant social and legal repercussions. This paper reports on pedagogies initiated by action research in a Bachelor of Social Work programme in an Australian University. Pedagogies were introduced to make elite codes explicit, use students’ literacies as assets for learning and encourage ‘code switching’ between literacy practices to resist colonising into more powerful literacies. Students’ capacities in academic and professional literacies were significantly enhanced by these practices, and their cultural inheritances valorised, encouraging their contribution to the social work discipline.     

Effects of a summer emergent literacy intervention for rising kindergarteners

This study examined the effectiveness of a nine-week summer emergent literacy program implemented in a Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) summer program that serves families from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Participants were four- and five-year-old children attending a YMCA summer camp. After being placed in appropriate respective skill-level groups, children received one-hour, daily emergent literacy instruction from their camp counselors, who were trained as novice reading teachers. The teachers used emergent literacy activities to support letter-naming fluency and growth in letter-sound correspondence recognition in addition to mastery of read-aloud texts. The 28 participants experienced positive growth on both dependent measures (letter-naming fluency and letter-sound fluency), indicating the efficiency of the intervention as a tool for improving school readiness for children from low-income families. Additionally, the results suggest that beginning reading teachers may be able to conduct effective emergent literacy instruction, making the intervention replicable. Limitations and associated future research directions are discussed.     

Indo-China: Storm Center of Southeast Asia

The authors report the findings of a survey study in which they investigated high school social studies teachers' current practices, challenges, and needs in relation to instruction of English language learners (ELLs). Thirty-three high school social studies teachers in six English as a second language (ESL)-centered schools in central Virginia participated in the study. Drawing on the findings, three themes demand particular attention: the challenges that social studies teachers face teaching ELLs; the accommodations teachers currently make for ELLs; and the types of support teachers need to teach ELLs social studies more effectively. The authors include findings from the field of second-language education to raise social studies teachers' consciousness about their ELLs' needs and conclude with a number of practical suggestions related to instruction and differentiation that are crucial for social studies teachers to help ELLs learn effectively. Further dialogues are needed, particularly regarding ESL inclusion and teachers' critical awareness of serving this particular group of students.     

Correspondence

Cooperative learning has long been at the disposal of school teachers. However, it is often misunderstood by some teachers as just another form of collaborative group work. This article revisits cooperative learning, including a sampling of its popular variations, with practical approaches toward effectively integrating it into classroom instruction. Moreover, this article highlights the promise that cooperative learning holds for democratic education in the twenty-first century with special attention paid to its social implications.     

Best practice in human rights education: The SHR Sport and Human Rights Olympics

Effective teachers differentiate their instruction to ensure that content is delivered to students in a way that is accessible and engaging. The differentiation of instruction in core classes such as math and English is becoming commonplace in education faculties across the United States. But what does ‘differentiated’ human rights education look like? This summary of a good practice describes the School for Human Rights Olympics that were held at the school in 2006. It was a unique activity—a new approach to teaching youth about human rights and a welcome move away from violation‐centered lessons.     

Rural-Urban Differences and Their Amelioration

South Korean society is in transition toward a multicultural society. Integrating multicultural education into current citizenship education is challenging for the society. Historically, many national tragedies have created the unique characteristics of what being Korean means. South Korean social studies curriculum emphasized that Korea is a monolithic society with one language, one history, and one ethnicity. In recent years, however, the number of foreigners living in South Korea dramatically increases because of work, study, and marriage. As they become be members of Korean society, it is necessary that South Koreans acknowledge diverse groups in the society and revise a long-held belief about who we, as Koreans, are. To this end, the Korean social studies curriculum should include more information about as well as respect and promote ethnic, cultural, and social diversity. Social studies teachers should attempt various activities to promote students’ understanding of current social changes in South Korea.     

The Civil War in Song

Human history is often shaped by the outcomes of arguments, not only in the sense of disputes between people or governments, but in the sense of the more rational pursuit of trying to convince others to accept or do certain things by offering reasons that are presented as compelling for so doing. Yet history teachers have done little to help students learn how to identify arguments in this sense, figure out what the arguments being offered are, and evaluate them. This article shows how a generic instructional technique—infusing direct instruction in skillful thinking into content instruction—can be used in the teaching of American history in ways that help students develop and use these thinking skills and that enhance their deep content understanding of the history being taught. The context is a secondary school classroom studying American history.     

Body and Management Pedagogy

In this article I explore the impact of bodies in management education — why they have been ignored and what possibilities may be created when we understand them better. Bodies — including gestures, stature, posture and voice — shape and constrain how teachers and students act, what they think and what is taken away. The bodies of male and female teachers and students occupy different spaces and carry contrasting significations, resulting in different repertoires of embodied and disembodied pedagogical styles. Drawing on feminist scholarship, organizational research and my own bodily experiences and observations in management teaching, and despite the myth of disembodiment in rational classrooms, I suggest management pedagogy increasingly assumes and celebrates particular bodily performances. Rather than lament the constriction of stereotypical body regimes, I argue that making bodies more visible in management pedagogy has liberating possibilities for teachers and students and their learning.     

‘States of change’? One hundred years of the JUC

ABSTRACT

The Joint University Council for Social Studies (JUCSS) was formed 100 years ago at the end of the First World War in 1918. Its expressed aim was to coordinate and develop the work of social study departments across the UK, as part of the larger project of post-war reconstruction. In October 2018, an event entitled ‘States of Change?’ was held in London to celebrate this history and to explore what, if any, kind of future the JUC (as currently constituted) should have. At the event, I gave a short historical presentation that examined social work education’s history in the context of the JUCSS’s origins and development. This paper picks up some of the key ideas from this presentation in more detail. It will be argued that tensions which existed in the formation of the JUCSS in 1918 still exist today, not least because they are emblematic of the ambivalences and complexities that are at the heart of social work and social work education, then and now. Furthermore, it will be suggested that social work as an academic discipline must pay heed to these tensions if it is to survive—and thrive—in the academy today. (192)     

Moving beyond ‘diversity’ to ‘social justice’: the challenge to re‐conceptualize multicultural education

This is a study of teachers’ conceptualizations of multicultural education (MCE) and their implications for practice in both schools and university courses. Through survey and interview data, the results reveal that teachers associated multicultural education with demographic diversity rather than with social justice, strategies for instruction rather than with theory, and that patterns of communication within the school precluded school‐wide implementation of multicultural education. The implications for bridging the gap between university courses grounded in social justice and school practice are explored.