This Critical Discourse Analysis examined the classroom discourse of six secondary social studies teachers during lessons dedicated to the study of Africa and the Middle East. The study focused on the phenomenon of otherness and the ways in which teachers contribute to or challenge the depiction of various African and Middle Eastern populations as the other. The study found that no normative discourse existed within or across classrooms whereby teachers consistently portrayed African or Middle Eastern populations as the other. Teacher employed multiple contending discourses that both promoted perceptions of otherness while also explicitly challenging and deconstructing such notions. The study found that teachers tend to frame the study of Africa and the Middle East around narratives of conflict. These narratives restrict the classifications available for understanding certain communities and reinforce associations of violence, radicalism, and terrorism with Africa and the Middle East.

With the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and subsequent high-stakes tests, including the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), literacy has become top priority in the field of education (Florida Department of Education [FDOE], no date a; NCLB, 2002). Though social studies was not mentioned in NCLB, nor is it tested by the FCAT, social studies teachers are expected to teach literacy skills in their classrooms. Social studies teachers' accountability for literacy enhancement is evidenced by the fact that some states, including Florida, now require social studies teachers to complete a course in reading integration to qualify for teaching certification in that state (Stilwell, 1999). Integrating reading into the content areas is commonly referred to as content area reading. By using content area reading, social studies teachers implement teaching strategies, methods, and techniques that foster their students' comprehension of the texts and other materials used in their course (Alvermann & Phelps, 2002; Billmeyer & Barton, 2002; Tovani, 2000). Though there are many benefits to content area reading, social studies teachers have resisted implementing content area reading for decades (Carnine, 2000; Daisey & Shroyer, 1993; Jacobs & Wade, 1981; Moore, 1983; Nourie & Lenski, 1998; Ratekin, Simpson, Alvermann, & Dishner, 1985; Richardson, Anders, Tidwell, & Lloyd, 1991; Stewart & O'Brien, 1989; Vaughan, 1977). Furthermore, research suggests that content area reading courses are often associated with heightened resistance to implementing content area reading (Nourie & Lenski, 1998; Stewart & O'Brien, 1989). In order for a content area reading course to impact the classroom practices social studies teacher in the intended ways, the course instructor must be sensitive to the process of change that the student is engaged in and recognize the causes of resistance to change. The Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) is a framework that provides tools by which the process of change and resistance to change can be evaluated and better understood. This study was designed to examine the characteristics surrounding the process of change as social studies teachers learned about and implemented content area reading into the social studies curriculum.

This research supports the on-going national research that has accompanied the development and implementation of the New Zealand Ministry of Education's social studies curriculum exemplars (2004). A social studies exemplar is a sample of authentic student work annotated to illustrate learning, achievement and quality in relation to levels 1- 5 of Social Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum (SSNZC, 1997). The aim of the research was to support teachers to implement the social studies curriculum exemplars in informed ways by encouraging and promoting the use of the social studies exemplars as models of quality social studies teaching. This small scale qualitative research was undertaken by a syndicate of four Years 5/6 teachers and the researcher. The four primary teachers assumed roles of teacher-researchers and worked together collegially with the researcher within a community of practice to co-construct the research process. The research involved incorporating aspects of the exemplars into their social studies programmes during 2006. The community of practice engaged in regular collegial conversations relating to the exemplars. Three of these narratives were taped semi-structured conversations captured in situ. Transcripts of student-teacher conversations were collected, analysed and commented upon to provide some information about student learning outcomes in relation to the exemplars. The notion of reciprocity underpinned this research, since it involved the researcher being willing to contribute to the research in return for the teachers' time and involvement in the study. The support and guidance provided by the researcher was provided as an outcome of her experience in teaching social studies for the School of Education. The research takes into account contemporary ideas about learning and teaching theory, as well as the nature of social studies pedagogy. It examines the implications of sociocultural processes for learning with its emphasis on interaction and collaborative learning iv environments. The research context and the methodology were informed by new understandings about the empowerment of teachers implementing their own professional development and conducting research into their own practice. This research makes a contribution to the field of social studies curriculum and wider professional contexts by informing pre-service teachers' understandings of the intent and use of the New Zealand Ministry of Education's social studies curriculum exemplars. Additionally, it supports in-service social studies professional development, illustrates processes around communities of practice and exemplifies social studies pedagogy.

For decades, researchers have noted that the representation of women within the social studies curriculum and historical narratives has seriously neglected meaningful contributions made by women (Crocco, 1997; Lerner, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1993, 2004; Minnich, 1990; Noddings, 2001; Sincero & Woyshner, 2003). When women have received acknowledgement within traditional history, or the “great men” of history approach (Goldberg, Brattin, & Engel, 1993), it has mostly occurred in relationship to how men define women which leads to an unknowing acceptance of a dominant patriarchal tradition of knowledge and understanding (Minnich, 1990). Using a liberal feminist perspective, this interpretive inquiry examined the decision-making processes of one experienced social studies teacher as she attempted to integrate women into a high school United States history curriculum. The initial guiding question for this study was: How does a teacher intentionally include women in meaningful contexts in a high school U.S. history class? Additional sub-questions relevant to this study were: (1) How does a teacher decide the historical contexts in which women are to be included or not included? (2) What specific challenges does the teacher face when working to implement women into the U.S. history curriculum? (3) What positive factors have shaped the teacher’s abilities or willingness to integrate women into the curriculum? Data sources included interviews, observations, field notes, the participant’s journal reflections, and other documents used during lessons. Data analysis occurred by using a constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to document any themes or patterns as they emerged. Credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability helped enhance the trustworthiness and rigor of the study (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The findings of the study suggest that the teacher’s personal experiences helped to shape her goal to show her students that women were more than secondary characters in history. The findings also indicate that even though the teacher faced many challenges as she was attempting to transform her curriculum, when she drew upon the more positive influences from her past and the positive experiences she was encountering during the study, she became much more encouraged that she could move past any obstacles confronting her.

The school subjects of history and social science are expected to contribute with historical and social scientific knowledge, skills and abilities: that is, subject knowledge. The subject knowledge that students achieve during their schooling is not only meant for future studies, but is also expected to inform a life as democratic citizens. However, the curriculum and syllabus have not always been explicit about this aim, and the relationship between subject knowledge and citizenship education is only vaguely explained. This thesis investigates this relationship within the context of history and social science education in Swedish upper secondary school. The educational dimensions of Biesta – socialisation, qualification and subjectification – are used as an approach to this investigation. The aim of the study is to explore, analyse and discuss the role of history and social science teaching for students’ citizenship education. This is done by investigating curricula, teaching and educational discourses and by using both empirical methods and content analysis. The thesis is a compilation of five articles, all exploring subject knowledge and its connection to students’ citizenship education. The first two articles investigate possible second-order concepts in social science education, which are described and discussed using theories and concepts from history didactics. The findings in these articles work as a basis for further study in following articles, where the subject knowledge and its connections to citizenship education are explored in more depth. Taken together, the articles present a rich picture of the complex reality of teaching and provide a basis for understanding better how teachers, students and curricula express subject knowledge and how this is related, or not, to citizen education. The contribution of the thesis is a more developed theoretical and conceptual understanding of history and social science education, especially through concepts that can be used in practical teaching in order to strengthen and develop citizenship education.

Recent scholarship on the impact of neoliberalism in education centers on the creation of policies, curricula, and programming, positioning education as a system that produces marketable, entrepreneurially-minded, global workers (DeLissovoy, 2015; Peters, 2017). What is less known are the ways in which economic principles and mechanisms work in school systems, and how these changes affect teachers and social studies disciplines. Through a critical discourse analysis of policy and other official education documents, interviews, and focus groups with experienced administrators and social studies teachers in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada, I argue that changes in education policy between 1994-2016 have altered the purpose of public education, entangling schooling with economic and accountability goals of the province. The purpose of this qualitative study is threefold: first, using Foucault’s (2008), and later Stephen Ball’s (2013a) theorization, I investigate the extent to which neoliberal governmentality shaped education policy changes in Nova Scotia between 1994-2016. Second, I examine how these changes implicate educators in practice, including the ways teachers perceive changes to their jobs over the last decade. Lastly, I explore the state of high school social studies in Nova Scotia as a site to test the micro-effects of neoliberalism and governmentality in changing policies and practices in education. I conclude that neoliberal governmentality has emerged in distinct patterns in Nova Scotia, which articulate with specific policy technologies and practices in education. Such patterns include the strategic use of economic and educational crises to forward neoliberal policy reform, the expansion of governmental mechanisms to track student and teacher performance, and the dis-articulation of social studies disciplines from the education system.

This dissertation provides an ethnographic account of a popular education-fieldwork project carried on with a group of Puerto Rican women (puertorriqueñas ) residing in a small Western Massachusetts city. The project, intended to examine the processes of individual and collective identity formation, affirmation, and representation in the context of the diaspora, was conducted from November, 1995 through June, 1997. At a theoretical level, this dissertation manages to contextualize the macro-structural approaches prevalent in the literature on nondominant identities produced within both postcolonial scholarship and Cultural Studies in Communication. Its focus on the experiences and histories of the diasporic puertorriqueña allows this work to engage with the complex debates on identity and nationality that have enthralled generations of scholars and critics committed to inscribing Puerto Ricans as a distinct pueblo (people) despite their lacking a nation-state; and to challenge the de-gendered character of the national fictions that have been written by Puerto Rican intellectual and political elites during the past two centuries. By wedding ethnographic fieldwork to popular education—defined as a political praxis that entails both reflection upon the world and concerted action toward transforming it (Freire, 1974)—this investigation renders a program of scholarly research capable of redistributing the privilege of education and cultural interpretation, via fostering reciprocal collaborations between the researcher and those conventionally thought of as her “research subjects.” Las Luchadoras, as the (puertorriqueñas) on whom this work is based came to name themselves, provide a portentous example of how research participants can become themselves researchers of their own culture and histories, thus turning the fieldwork process into a forum for effecting social transformations. Finally, at an ethical and political level, this dissertation discusses the usefulness of testimonial practice—the collective process of eliciting, listening to and responding to oral histories—as a means for challenging and subverting the colonizing dichotomies of traditional ethnographic methods, namely: observer/observed, reader/writer, self/other. In so doing, it provides a model for both generating popular histories that advance a rooted understanding of the intersections of class, gender, capitalist and colonial ideologies, and for making academic work accountable to marginalized group’s own struggles for political enfranchisement and self-representation.

Internalized racism is a contributing factor to the inability of African Americans to overcome racism. (Speight, 2007) Because this is a cognitive phenomenon over which individuals can have agency, it is important to study, understand, and seek out ways that African Americans are able to gain a liberatory perspective in the midst of a racist society. By using colonization psychology and post-traumatic slave psychology to define the phenomenon, and Jackson's Black identity development model theory to ground and analyze participants' process of liberation, this study used phenomenological in-depth interviewing to understand the experiences of African American and Black women who have gained more consciousness of their internalized racism. The researcher interviewed 11 U.S. Born African American and Black women for an hour and a half to gain their understanding of internalized racism and liberation. The study found that Black and African American women in a process of liberation (1) move from experiencing lack of control to an experience of having agency; (2) gain agency from developing greater knowledge and pride of a positive black identity; (3) replace negative socialization with a knowledge of self; and 4) are supported in their liberation by a systemic analysis of racism. The study also found that (1) internalized racism and liberation are complexly defined phenomena, (2) participants continued to practice manifestations of internalized racism while practicing a liberatory consciousness, which confirms the theories of the cyclical nature of identity, and (3) racial identity development models offer a framework for understanding a transition from internalized racism towards liberation but lack clarity about how transformation actually occurs.

This study was designed to identify what, if any, communications occurred between working-class mothers, who had experience as sole supporters of families, and their adolescent daughters to socialize the daughters to the role of education in the daughters' lives. Additionally, this study was designed to determine whether there was an intergenerational transmission of educational values between working-class mothers and their daughters, and to determine if mothers are their daughters' first educational role models or mentors. The participants were a homogeneous sampling of seven Caucasian working-class mother and daughter pairs from two rural western Massachusetts mill towns. After an initial questionnaire which helped to identify prospective participants, semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with the pairs and a topical guide was used to gather comparable data from all participants. Thematic analysis was conducted to analyze the data. Participants in this study provided insights into both multigenerational and intergenerational messages transmitted across generations and the mechanisms by which those messages were transmitted. They also provided insights into how messages from their working-class work ethic both shaped and contradicted their aspirations for success. The intersection of social class and the mothers' experiences as sole supporters revealed specific messages about working-class values and what it meant for the participants to be successful or not. The mothers in this study used these messages to purposefully push their daughters toward success, which they believed began with a four-year college degree. Finally, this study revealed that these working-class mothers were their daughters' first educational role models and mentors. However, due to gaps in procedural knowledge and the mothers' passivity in assisting daughters in obtaining information that would help them prepare for college, there became a point where most mothers became ineffective mentors, thus highlighting the need for positive role models and mentors, for both mothers and daughters. Additionally, several unarticulated contradictions emerged between the messages and with regard to the participants' desire for success. The paper concludes with a discussion about implications for future research and practice.

In this episode, we explore the central professional organization for the social studies, the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). We review their history and beginning, learn about definitions and purposes for social studies, take a look at key NCSS curriculum standards and frameworks, and explore related NCSS publications and resources for teachers and classrooms. / https://dc.etsu.edu/social-studies-education-oer/1000/thumbnail.jpg