Increasing reading achievement has become a nationwide priority resulting from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2005 (Dole, 2004). Due to this emphasis, coupled with the fact that an elementary school’s success is generally not correlated with test scores in social studies,...

This study is a result of working with a first-grade teacher, Ellen Stubblefield, who plans, implements, and evaluates a modified Reggio Emilia approach. She documents students’ learning through visual means. In tandem with a kindergarten teacher, Glenda Watson, early childhood learners...

This article begins with a discussion of the need to integrate technology into K-12 social studies classrooms and continues by introducing and providing social studies-based examples of the Moersch Levels of Technology Integration (LoTi) framework. The authors argue that LoTi levels do not...

This article presents the findings of a study that sought to gain an insight into social studies preservice teachers’ reported reasons for selecting a primary source document they believe will be at the heart of their curriculum. Their selections included founding documents, historical...

The threatened status of social studies instruction in elementary schools demands strong methods instruction to preserve the subject. This threatened status and other factors create issues specific to elementary social studies methods instruction. Moreover, university-level methods instruction...

To improve social studies teaching and learning, teachers must engage in quality professional development experiences to deepen their pedagogical content knowledge. This article describes a Master of Education for Experienced Teachers (M.Ed.) program that reconcepulatized graduate study for...

The increased demands for access to and accountability for mastery of social studies curriculum by all students, including students with disabilities (SWDs) and diverse learning needs, is a current reality within secondary schools. Research has suggested classroom implementation of...

During the late twentieth century in the field of social studies education, Donald Oliver, Fred Newmann, and James Shaver were prominent leaders. Their work on the Harvard Social Studies Project was part of the New Social Studies movement popular in the 1960s and 1970s that attempted to...

For many students, studying history is a boring and irrelevant endeavor. Traditional, teacher-centered teaching strategies contribute to this unfortunate reality. While the lecture method and textbook readings can and should be used in the teaching of history, these methods should not be used to...

This article describes an action research investigation in which I examined the effects that a six-week, historical, inquiry-based unit on the American Revolution had on 119 fifth-graders’ interest in studying history. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from pre- and post-survey...