The problem undertaken in this survey was to determine the value of motion pictures in the social-studies program of the elementary school, with special emphasis upon the learning and retention of facts and general information related to the social studies at the sixth-grade level.

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of two methods of teaching the social studies to junior high school pupils. An attempt has been made to ascertain the relative progress in the studying efficiency of a group of children in social studies taught by the basic-study-skills plan, as compared to that of a group of children taught by the assign-study-recite-test plan so commonly employed.

The problem of this study is to determine, if possible, whether any significant difference in achievement existed when the eighth-grade social studies were taught by two methods; namely, the textual method and the textual method supplemented by audio-visual aids.

The major purpose of this study was to compare the progress made by a group of children taught by the experience method of teaching with a group taught by the old textbook method, to determine whether the experimental group would show as much gain in academic knowledge as the control group, and in turn gain the other desired traits of the present-day personal and social needs.

The problem of this study is to determine whether or not superior reading ability in a given reading skill is significantly related to successful achievement in each of the three areas of arithmetic, social studies, and science, and to determine whether or not the different reading skills are related to areas of achievement in different ways.

The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to read and analyze professional literature to determine criteria for an adequate social-studies program in an elementary grade, and (2) to evaluate a selected number of courses of study of large-city school systems and state departments of education to determine the extent to which they meet criteria.

Reading deficits in students in Grades 4 to 12 are evident in American schools. Informational text is particularly difficult for students. This quasi-experimental study (N=138) investigated sixth-grade students' achievement in social studies using the Reciprocal Mapping instructional routine, compared to sixth-grade students' achievement taught with a traditional approach. The Reciprocal Mapping instructional routine incorporated explicit instruction in text structure using graphic organizers. Students created their own graphic organizers and used them to write about social studies content. The comparison group used a traditional approach, students' reading the textbook and answering questions. Students for this study included sixth-graders in the seven sixth-grade classrooms in two public schools in a small, rural south Florida school district. A focus of this study was to determine the helpfulness of the intervention for at-risk readers. To determine students considered to be at-risk, the researcher used data from the reading portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), 2011-2012, that considers Level 1 and 2 as at-risk readers. The quasi-experimental study used a pretest-posttest control group design, with students assigned to treatment groups by class. Two teachers at the two rural sites were trained on the Reciprocal Mapping instructional routine and taught students in both the experimental and control groups for an equivalent amount of time over a 5-week period. Results of the 3 x 2 factorial ANCOVA found a significant positive difference favoring the experimental group's social studies achievement as compared to that of the comparison group as measured by the pre/post unit test from the social studies series (McGraw-Hill, 2013), when controlling for initial differences in students' reading FCAT scores. Interactions for high-risk struggling readers were investigated using the significance level p < .05. Due to no significant interaction the main effects of treatment were interpreted. The pretest was used as a covariate and the multivariate analysis was found to be significant. Therefore, analysis of covariance was run on each of the dependent variable as a follow-up. Reciprocal Mapping was found to be significant in posttest scores, independent of gender and level of risk, and while holding the pretest scores constant. Findings showed there was a significant difference in the performance of the high-risk reading students taught with the Reciprocal Mapping intervention who scored statistically better than students in the control group. Further study findings showed that teacher fidelity of implementation of the treatment had a statistically significant relationship in predicting posttest scores when controlling for pretest scores. Study results indicated that improving students’ use of text structure through the Reciprocal Mapping instructional routine positively supported sixth-grade students’ social studies achievement.

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.

Social-studies is introduced to the students in first grade and is found in the childrens curriculum up to the ninth grade. The elementary school includes the subject as part of the SO- subjects, which includes geography, religion and history. The students knowledge that they get from the elementary school form the basis for future studies in upper secondary school. The teaching that is designed in the upper secondary school should be based on the students 'prior knowledge and the students' perceptions of the subject. The purpose of this study is to investigate the students' perceptions of the subject social- studies. The purpose is to create an understanding of how high-school students look at social- studies, that later can be used in the design of teaching in high school. Twenty-five students attending grade 9 in elementary school have been interviewed trough semi-structured interviews. The perceptions of social literacy as a subject have been analyzed on the basis of Lindmark's (2013) subject conceptions that have been adapted to suit students and their subject views. The subject concepts are facts and conceptual orientation, citizen skills orientation, fundamental values and societal analytics. The results show that students generally have a difficulty in defining what the subject of social science is and its content. Students believe that the subject is important and especially important for the future of adulthood and for future studies. Only two of the four subject concepts were represented in the students. The interviews show that the students have a fact and conceptual subject perception and a citizen skills oriented subject concept. This is in support of previous research which shows that teaching in the subject of social science often has a character of being factual and conceptual. / Ämnet samhällskunskap i grundskolan introduceras för eleverna i årskurs 1 och återfinns i elevernas kursplan till dess att de går i årskurs 9. I grundskolan ingår ämnet som en del av de så kallade SO- ämnena där ämnena geografi, religion och historia ingår. Den kunskap som eleverna får med sig från grundskolan ska ligga till grund för kommande studier under gymnasietiden. Detta innebär att den undervisning som utformas i gymnasiet grundar sig utifrån elevernas tidigare kunskap och elevernas uppfattningar av ämnet. Studien har som syfte att undersöka högstadieelevers uppfattningar av ämnet samhällskunskap. Syftet är att skapa en förståelse för hur högstadieelever ser på ämnet samhällskunskap som senare kan användas i utformandet av undervisning på gymnasiet. 25 elever som går i årskurs 9 i grundskolan har intervjuats via semistrukturerade intervjuer. Uppfattningarna av samhällskunskap som ämne har analyserats utifrån Lindmark (2013) ämneskonceptioner som har anpassats för att passa elever och deras ämnesuppfattningar. Ämneskonceptionerna är fakta och begreppsinriktning, medborgarfärdighetsinriktning, värdegrundsinriktning och samhällsanalytisk inriktning. Resultatet visar att eleverna generellt har svårt att precisera vad ämnet samhällskunskap är och dess innehåll. Eleverna anser att ämnet är viktigt och att det är speciellt viktigt för framtida vuxenliv och för framtida studier. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att det endast var två av de fyra ämneskonceptionerna som fanns representerade hos eleverna. Intervjuerna visar att eleverna har till större del fakta och begreppsinriktad ämnesuppfattning och en medborgarfärdighetsinriktad ämnesuppfattning. Detta ligger till stöd för tidigare forskning som visar att undervisningen inom ämnet samhällskunskap ofta har en karaktär av att vara fakta och begrepps inriktad.