This dissertation study explored the literacies and socialization practices that middle school youth used while engaging in a school-wide Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) class. The primary aims of the dissertation were to contribute to literature on YPAR and to examine the literacy and socialization practices that young people drew upon as resources in developing agentive identities. Relying on what is named as an agentive ecological approach, this study built upon sociocultural theories of literacy and learning to emphasize young people’s development of agency through their shared participation in a YPAR class that was shaped not only by the multiple identities they carried with them into the classroom, but also by factors such as the pedagogy of the teacher, the philosophies of school administrators, and the sociopolitical context of school. This study also relied on the ongoing traditions of critical literacy and critical pedagogy to highlight the ways that YPAR served as a mediator of important critical literacies that allowed students to learn about and directly respond to the social, historical, and cultural contexts of inequality that they encountered. Situated in one of New York City’s most ethnically diverse middle schools, this critical ethnographic study used multimodal and ethnographic methodologies to excavate the experiences of 7th and 8th grade students enrolled in a newly implemented YPAR course at their school. In this year-long course, students were apprenticed as critical social researchers of educational issues while simultaneously provided with opportunities to utilize digital media tools toward civic ends. Methods for this study included 112 hours of participant observation where the researcher captured field notes, weekly memos, and photographs of classroom life across six months of the course; three semi-structured interviews each with six randomly selected students enrolled in 13 sections of YPAR; and multimodal literacy artifacts that included YPAR film materials, Google Classroom assignments, photographs, and digital stories. Three focus group interviews were also conducted with a group of students selected for enrollment in a “YPAR filmmaking course”, where they were tasked with creating a film about the impact of YPAR on the school. This group had a unique vantage point in that that they participated in iterations of YPAR across all three years of their middle school experiences, affording a much needed phenomenological perspective. Finally, two semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teacher of the course, who also provided curriculum and planning documents for analysis. Constant comparative method and Critical Discourse Analysis were the primary methodological tools used to analyze the data in the study. Major findings revealed how the cultivation of critical literacies in the YPAR course afforded youth the opportunity to identify and respond to barriers in their educational contexts, allowing them to assert more humanizing portraits of themselves and their communities. Moreover, students’ leveraging of digital media tools toward civic ends permitted them space to offer perspectives concerning issues like Islamophobia and global violence, assisting them in the brokering of sociopolitical identities that changed the way they saw themselves, others, and the world surrounding them. Findings from the YPAR filmmaking class revealed the ways that youth constructed stories about imagined futures and their perceived role in shaping those futures, signaling new ways that critical digital literacy practices might be cultivated in service of healthy social, civic, and academic identities.

Enduring misconceptions exist regarding the value of learning history. Many history teachers are engaged in lecture- and recitation-based forms of instruction that seem to be at odds with the goal of helping students to develop skills and dispositions important for democratic citizenship. This study asked whether history teachers’ most ubiquitous core teaching practice, the explanation of historical content, had the potential to support civic ends. The study analyzed transcriptions of 43 classroom observations and interviews of ten U.S. history teachers. Findings pointed to five forms of historical explanation that have the potential to make explanation meaningful for preparing students for democratic citizenship. Findings also revealed factors that influenced teachers to make decisions to explain historical content in particular ways. The study has implications for improving teacher education and professional development with the goal of helping history teachers to make explanation meaningful and contributory toward their students’ preparation for democratic citizenship.

This dissertation study documented and analyzed the key curricular and pedagogical features of three secondary social studies teachers who center issues of race and racism in their classrooms by examining their decision-making processes and the impact of relevant lived experiences on their practice. I utilized portraiture methodology, which included ethnographic field notes, document analysis, interviews, and impressionistic records to document and analyze the key curricular and pedagogical features of each teacher. Data were collected during the 2016-2017 school year across three racially diverse social studies classrooms located in southern New England. My findings were that each teacher treated race and racism as central objects of historical inquiry and enacted a set of curricular and pedagogical moves that were guided by a combination of what they know (technical pedagogy) and who they are (relational pedagogy). I refer to the relevant lived experiences that give shape and form to each teacher’s practice as their pedagogical origin stories. This study has implications for teacher education and underscores the importance of focusing on technical and relational curricular and pedagogical development in novice and veteran social studies teachers. Teacher education programs need to focus on preparing preservice teachers to recognize and, at times, reconcile the relationships between our respective origin stories and the curricular and pedagogical decisions and moves that we make in classrooms when we teach about issues of race and racism.

Recent problems in global affairs have prompted social scientists to note that Americans' awareness of foreign culture and civilization is drastically underdeveloped. order to promote greater world understanding, especially the United States focal position in an expanding globalinterdependent society, educators are advocating a broader global education curriculum in the secondary schools.It was the intent of this research to provide secondary school teachers of the social studies a more balanced curricular approach to the teaching of global history. In an effort to assist social studies teachers of history, the study presented behaviorally stated objectives providing for cognitive and affective learning and psychomotor skills. The study also presented a narrative outline of the history of African and Asian civilizations, with student activities, term identification and textbook cross referencing. The activities included and those listed under selected resource materials were designed to promote higher level thinking, while providing motivating activities for developing student interest.This study would provide educators with the opportunity to effect a more balanced global perspective in the social studies classroom. In order to accomplish the goal of understanding the United States' membership in a growing global interdependent community, American youth must learn and acquire a knowledge of the varied cultures and civilizations that compose world society.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

The study examined student perceptions of global issues when introduced through their Logarithms unit in the Principles of Math 12 course and student opinions regarding the suitability of the issues within the course. Through journal books, the students expressed thoughts, ideas, and concerns related to the mathematics and the global issues. With our global environment being threatened in numerous ways, a need to educate through 'responsibility' is essential. In mathematics, students require relevancy when expected to learn increasingly difficult material. The study addresses the questions of: do students concerns for global issues increase when viewed through a mathematical lens and do the students believe that the global issues have a place in the math class? The findings were varied based on individual experiences of students within the study. In summary, the majority of the students gave positive feedback towards the use of the global issues within the math class. However, there were concerns from weak and strong students and from students currently studying similar topics in Geography. As well, several ESL students expressed concerns surrounding their difficulties with the written language, and anxiety regarding their emergent academic standing. The students favoured global exposures in the math class when they were able to actively participate with a solution, and when direct links to the mathematics being studied at the time was relevant to the global issue. Conclusively, more accessible resources are required for instructors, and more time is needed in the classroom to effectively implement, for all learners, global issues in the mathematics course.

My creative project is the construction of a local history handbook to be used by third grade teachers in the Youngstown City Schools to teach their students the history of Youngstown as a part of their social studies curriculum. The local history handbook that I have constructed has two main parts; a teacher's edition and a student's edition. The teacher's edition is detailed history of Youngstown, written to an adult level of comprehension, and is meant to prepare the teacher with the information needed to answer students' questions. The student's edition is based on the teacher's edition. The student's edition is written to a student's level of understanding and is highlighted with numerous images and activities to further the students' learning of the subject matter.The local history handbook is one component of a larger program, Getting to Know my Downtown in the 3rd Grade, aimed at teaching local third graders the history of their town. Other parts of the program include local history experts and local government leaders coming to speak with the students; traveling activity resource packets; a three — dimensional, interactive map of the downtown; and a culminating field trip to the downtown where students visit many locations important to local history and government. One objective of this project is to establish and strengthen the students' "pride of place" and to prepare them to be better stewards of their local history and built environment in the future. A second objective is to give students a better understanding of how local government operates and the numerous ways for them to make a positive impact on their community. / Department of Architecture

The purpose of the study was to determine if social studies achievement and positive attitudes about social studies would increase when the traditional single textbook approach was supplemented by a related work of children's literature. Two intact classes were randomly assigned to the treatment group which received instruction based on the regularly adopted textbook and the trade book My Brother Sam Is Dead, by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier. Two randomly assigned classes composed the control group and received instruction based on the textbook only.The participants in the study were filth grade students at an urban magnet school. Each of two teachers served as instructors working with one control class and one treatment class. The instruments used were the Attitudes Toward Social Studies instrument and the Macmillan test written for the unit of instruction entitled The Colonies Become a Nation. Pretests and posttests were administered to students in each group to assess differences in mean gain scores between groups in both attitude and achievement. In order to determine if the difference between mean gains between the two groups was significant, t-tests were used. An analysis of variance and the Tukey HSD multiple comparison procedure were used to determine how the four sections differed in attitude toward social studies and which differences were significant.There was no significant difference in mean social studies achievement gains between the treatment group and the control group. A significant difference in mean attitude gains between control and treatment groups was found. The results of the t test showed a significant mean gain in positive attitudes about social studies favoring the control group. Evidence from the analysis of variance and the Tukey HSD multiple comparison procedure indicated that the positive attitude gain was linked to the Hawthorne Effect. / Department of Elementary Education

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of teaching a study strategy on the ability of fifth-grade students to read a social studies textbook. The specific strategy was survey, question, read, recite, and review (SQ3R) (Robinson, 1961). It was taught as an integral part of the social studies lesson. The effect of gender and reading level on the SQ3R strategy was studied.The subjects were 72 students enrolled in four intact fifth-grade classrooms of two schools in an urban, midwestern school district. The classes were randomly assigned to a control group consisting of 37 subjects and an experimental group consisting of 35 subjects.The instrument used was the Sequential Tests of Educational Progress III (STEP III). The ability to read a social studies textbook was measured by the social studies subtest during pre- and posttesting procedures. The reading grade level indicator was determined by the reading subtest during the pretesting procedures.An inservice session conducted by the researcher trained the teachers of the experimental group in the SQ3R strategy. Traditional teaching procedures were followed by the control group teachers for the 9-week period.An analysis of covariance was used to examine the results at the p<.05 level of significance. The pretest score of the social studies subtest of the STEP III was used as the covariant.Statistical analysis of data generated the following results:1. There was a significant difference in the preinstructional knowledge of social studies between the experimental and control groups.2. There was no significant difference in the mean scores of the social studies subtest of the STEP III of fifth-grade students taught the SQ3R strategy and those taught the traditional way.3. There was no significant difference in the mean scores of the social studies subtest of the STEP III of males and females taught the SQ3R strategy and those taught the traditional way.4. There was no significant difference in the mean scores of the social studies subtest of the STEP III of above-average, average, and below-average readers taught the SQ3R strategy and those taught the traditional way.5. There was no interaction among the mean scores of the social studies subtest of the STEP III, the gender, and the reading level of fifth-grade students taught the SQ3R strategy and those taught the traditional way.

Thesis (MEd)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of the study was to investigate primary school teachers’ experiences of implementing assessment policy in the Social Studies learning area. After adopting the new learner-centred schooling to replace the old teacher-centred education system in Namibian schools in 1990, the Ministry of Education made it mandatory to implement assessment policy in the schools. During the implementation of assessment policy teachers were forced to change their assessment practices from traditional testing and evaluation to continuous assessment. The study employed an interpretive research design to construct data during the exploration of the teachers’ experiences in teaching. Document analysis, lesson observations and in-depth interviews were used to collect the data. One of the main findings of the study is that teachers do not use assessment to inform their own practices, but rather only to record marks. Despite a world trend towards assessment for teaching, assessment, in this case, was only used as an instrument of teaching. It was also found that assessment policies did not take local contextual circumstances of schools and communities into consideration. As a result, of the de-contextualization of these policies, teachers are negatively positioned in the system because they have to adhere to departmental demands and policy prescriptions on the one hand while, on the other, working in contexts that are not conducive to effective teaching. Schools in such contexts therefore, need to be provided with the necessary infrastructure, guidance and support to facilitate the effective implementation of assessment policies. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die doel van hierdie studie was om laerskoolonderwysers se ervarings van die implementering van assesseringsbeleid in die Sosiale Studies leerarea te ondersoek. Na die goedkeuring van die nuwe leerder-gesentreerde onderrig om die ou onderwyser-gesentreerde onderwysstelsel in Namibiese skole in 1990 te vervang, het die Ministerie van Onderwys dit verpligtend gemaak om ʼn nuwe assesseringsbeleid in die skole te implementeer. Onderwysers was dus genoodsaak om hul assesseringspraktyke aan te pas vanaf tradisionele toetsing en evaluering na deurlopende assessering. Die studie het ’n interpretatiewe navorsingsontwerp gebruik om data tydens die verkenning van die onderwysers se ervarings te konstrueer. Dokument-analise, les observasies en in diepteonderhoude is gebruik om data te versamel. Die vernaamste bevindings van die studie is dat opvoeders nie assessering gebruik om hul eie praktyke te informeer nie, maar eerder net op punte op te teken. Ten spyte van ʼn teenoorgestelde wêreld-tendens, was assessering, in hierdie geval, nie aangewend vir onderrig nie, maar slegs van onderrig. Daar is ook bevind dat assesseringsbeleide nie plaaslike teenwerkende kontekstuele omstandighede van skole en gemeenskappe in ag neem nie. As gevolg van die dekontekstualisasie van hierdie beleide, word onderwysers negatief geposisioneer in die stelsel omdat hulle moet uiting gee aan departementele voorskrifte binne kontekste wat nie bevorderlik is vir effektiewe onderrig nie. Daarom moet skole in sodanige kontekste voorsien word van die nodige infrastruktuur asook leiding en ondersteuning ten einde die implementering van assesseringsbeleide meer effektief te maak.