Purpose Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr is a timeless book well-known among K-6 teachers, students, librarians and book-lovers throughout the USA. This multi-award winning picture book provides readers with insight into Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s life and the...

Purpose Research reveals very little about how the supervision of social studies student teachers ought to be enacted. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach Based on the broader arguments for the democratic purposes of social studies, the author argues for the...

Purpose The College, Career, and Civic Life Framework and recently revised social studies standards in a number of states have placed renewed emphasis on inquiry-based instruction rooted in rigorous and relevant questions, which necessitates a better understanding of how teachers develop...

Purpose Over the last 40 years, K-12 education has seen a continuous and significant increase in the amount of mandated standardized testing. This rise in standardized testing has led many in the field to question the extent to which these tests are affecting students, teachers and schools. The...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which an intervention lesson could help with elementary pre-service teachers’ critical racial knowledge around school segregation. Design/methodology/approach The author, an Elementary Social Studies Methods Instructor, developed...

Purpose The concept of an American Dream was interrogated during a service-learning partnership between university students and a multilingual, racially diverse class of sixth graders. The one-on-one service-learning partnerships were at the heart of the semester-long project and sought...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of angry political rhetoric employed by George Wallace and Donald Trump. The authors start by discussing the civic thinking skills stressed within the C3 Framework, specifically the ability to analyze politicians’ arguments. Then, the...

Purpose The increase of Islamophobia-inspired hate crimes toward Sikh Americans led the Sikh Coalition of America and the National Council for the Social Studies to request social studies educators to conduct a content analysis on the presentation of Sikhism in social studies textbooks. The Sikh...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine three high school teachers’ beliefs about how their understanding of historiography influences their teaching. Design/methodology/approach The authors engaged in a qualitative multiple-case study based on semi-structured interviews and artifact...

Purpose This early grades lesson set for ages 4-7 uses the book We Came to America as a resource to guide students’ thinking through US core values relating to diversity and tolerance of diversity. The lesson set builds on students’ knowledge to examine the historical development of...