Research has shown that youth and their communities benefit from civics education, with its aim to prepare citizens for democracy. However, civics education for adolescents in the United States is ...not equitable, and determining how to best measure aspects of civic development in younger adolescents is a challenge. In this qualitative study, we explored how the constructs of action civics and civic purpose might inform teachers, other practitioners, and researchers who are interested in understanding the kinds of educational opportunities that promote civic development in young adolescents. Specifically, we examined how activities characteristic of an action civics approach to civic education in the context of a week-long summer civics camp would influence young adolescents’ thinking across the dimensions of civic purpose. We conducted focus groups with 49 young adolescents (entering 5th-9th grades) as they participated in the civics camp, and we analyzed transcripts using qualitative content analysis. Our findings reveal four key considerations for promoting civic purpose development in young adolescents: the importance of adult guides, the significance of developmentally matched activities, opportunities for growth in educating diverse and marginalized youth in the civics camp setting, and action civics as a curricular mechanism for promoting civic purpose.
The tenuous state of elementary social studies has been explained by scholars who cite lack of time and curriculum resources devoted to social studies; teachers’ emphasis on tested subjects; and ...instruction that distorts, trivializes, or omits social studies content. Integrating social studies with other core subjects has been positioned as a viable approach to address some of these challenges, but not all teachers have a healthy understanding of integration as an avenue for robust social studies instruction. This qualitative study explores 14 elementary teachers’ stances to social studies as a core content area—with particular emphasis on content integration—in public schools. By investigating ways in which practicing teachers talk about social studies in their classrooms, this paper adds to the growing body of scholarship documenting the peripheral status of social studies in early grades. Findings offer theoretical implications for interpreting how and why social studies continues to be marginalized in early grades by focusing on participants’ healthy and unhealthy understandings of content integration.
This qualitative case study reports how 5 first-year kindergarten/primary teachers utilized knowledge and skills from their teacher preparation program as a means of approaching curricular ...decision-making for instructional practice. In many ways, participants drew from university courses, field experiences, or both to help them make sense of their work and to guide their decisions. This was achieved as participants adopted, modified, imitated, or avoided what they learned during their teacher preparation program. While the findings suggest teacher education provides valuable learning opportunities for beginning teachers, they also illuminate areas of concern. Implications for teacher educators are discussed.
PurposeWith connections to history, culture, and religion, many holidays have potential for inclusion in early grade social studies curriculum. However, opportunities for meaningful content are ...frequently passed over in favor of holiday crafts that can trivialize content and promote stereotyping, cultural appropriation, and false information. The purpose of this study was to explore teachers' perspectives about holidays in the curriculum.Design/methodology/approachThrough questionnaires and interviews, 20 teachers identified which holidays they address and explained why and how they attend to these special days.FindingsMost often, participants used holidays to teach history, impart values, and make connections to children's lives. Findings suggest that although holidays may provide avenues for transformative social studies, few early grade teachers may recognize this potential.Originality/valueThis study adds to elementary social studies research by promoting scholarly consideration of meaningful holiday lessons as avenues for robust social studies instruction.
Purpose
In recent years, the field of social studies education has seen renewed interest in using inquiry to teach intradisciplinary concepts and skills. However, prospective primary grade teachers ...may have few (if any) opportunities to observe classroom teachers modeling inquiry during field placements. Methods courses provide fitting contexts in which to introduce preservice teachers (PSTs) to inquiry as a basis for intellectually challenging, meaningful social studies instruction. The purpose of this paper is to utilize a published inquiry curriculum developed for the New York Social Studies Toolkit (NYSST) Project as a tool to explore PSTs’ thinking about teaching first grade economics.
Design/methodology/approach
This qualitative study utilized focus groups with two groups of early childhood PSTs enrolled in a social studies methods course (n=28). Secondary data sources included PSTs’ handwritten comments on hard copies of the inquiry curriculum and the researcher’s analytic memos.
Findings
In the process of critiquing curriculum during focus group interviews, PSTs concentrated on the proposed tasks, evaluated those tasks for their potential to affect children’s understanding, and suggested new activities that would promote more active student engagement. Participants recognized the significance of children’s prior knowledge and were sensitive to students’ family values, although they underestimated young children’s capacity for robust discussion and intellectually challenging content.
Originality/value
This study is unique in its use of a published NYSST Project inquiry to explore how PSTs make sense of new curriculum. Its attention to PST education for primary grades contributes to elementary social studies literature. Additionally, this study addresses a general concern in teacher education about the need for PSTs to develop skills in interpreting and adapting curriculum materials. Findings suggest that engaging PSTs in discussions about social studies curriculum can help teacher educators identify latent learning goals for their courses that may be overlooked or assumed unnecessary.
The age of accountability introduced by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 triggered widespread development of local control-oriented policies in an effort to "leave no child behind." Research ...makes it clear that such policies directly impact instruction. However, primary grade teachers are rarely included in these studies, leaving teacher educators with little empirical data on which to ground their work with preservice teachers as it relates to such policies. This article reports findings from a study of 15 experienced primary grade teachers who work with standardized curriculum materials. Data from these teachers' experiences can inform today's teacher educators as they prepare the next generation of teachers to navigate "one size fits all" curricula. Findings suggest that experienced teachers of young children adapt, augment, and extend the intended curriculum to promote academic proficiency in tested subjects in very specific ways. Implications for preservice teacher education are discussed.
Considerable research suggests that standardizing curricular materials can undermine teachers' ability to facilitate learning. Nonetheless, U.S. school districts' curriculum guides have become ...increasingly standardized, with teachers being required to follow predetermined pacing calendars indicating which standards to teach during specific months, weeks, or days. Pressure to comply with curriculum guides and their associated pacing calendars is a particular concern among beginning teachers. Given these issues, this investigation explored three first-year teachers' experiences with curriculum guides and pacing calendars in the primary grades. Although curriculum guides helped participants learn the curriculum and decide how to sequence the content, rigid campus policies that required participants to follow pacing calendars led to uncomfortable professional dilemmas and teacher resistance. Findings suggest that despite novice teachers' fears of being reprimanded and their lack of professional knowledge, they carry out "principled resistance" to standardized curricular mandates according to their understanding of students' needs and their deeply held convictions about what is best for the children in their classrooms.
Using a framework of conceptual and practical tools (Grossman et al., 2000), this study explores ways in which a social studies methods course affected beginning teachers’ beliefs and pedagogical ...approaches for meaningful social studies instruction in elementary grades. Participants included 75 preservice teachers who completed open-ended questionnaires before and after the course, and again one year later as student teachers. Three participants were observed teaching social studies lessons during student teaching to determine how the methods course impacted their nascent instructional practices. The study adds to our understanding about “what sticks” in teacher education and offers insights to researchers and to teacher educators who aim to equip future teachers for “powerful and purposeful” (NCSS, 2009) social studies instruction.
•Preservice teachers’ beliefs that social studies instruction should be integrative and meaningful increased dramatically at the end of the methods course and were sustained over time.•One year after completing the methods course, few participants maintained their beliefs that social studies lessons should be challenging, developmentally appropriate, value-based, and connected to big ideas.•The methods course influenced pedagogical decisions among all three participants who were observed teaching one year after taking the course. They reported intentionally planning lessons that would be meaningful to students, and they utilized a variety of materials and pedagogical approaches intending to promote student learning.
Research on preservice teachers’ beliefs about professional teaching capabilities indicates strong attention to the relational dimension; these studies have contributed to a portrayal of preservice ...teachers as simplistic and overly optimistic about the teaching profession. In this article, I position preservice teachers’ attention to teacher–student relationships as a form of professional knowledge. Drawing from findings of a qualitative study of U.S. elementary (prekindergarten-Grade 4) preservice teachers who were asked to describe professional characteristics of effective teachers, I suggest their beliefs reveal surprisingly nuanced understandings about the complex nature of teaching.
Introducing patriotic holidays such as Veterans Day with historical photographs and other primary sources in classrooms can not only spark children's interest, but also promote critical thinking and ...historical comprehension. Meaningful, hands-on historical lessons can also motivate children to take informed action about issues they care about. We begin this article with a brief history of Veterans Day, followed by a description of two lessons in which first grade teacher and co-author Lisa May used historical photographs to introduce students to Veterans Day. Next, we describe a student-directed school-wide Veterans Day program that resulted from lessons that involved students in the analysis of primary sources.
