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The Common Core Standards (CCS) for English Language Arts and College, Career, and Civic Life Framework (C3) require social studies educators to reconsider connections between literacy and history teaching. In this article we examine three perspectives on literacy teaching: content area literacy, disciplinary literacy, and critical literacy. While some scholars see these perspectives as contradictory or in competition, we demonstrate how content, disciplinary, and critical literacy teaching can complement each other and facilitate teaching to and beyond the CCS standards and C3 framework in intermediate, middle school, and high school history instruction. Our article includes teaching examples as well as appendices of teacher resources.

The purpose of this paper is to engage readers with Unity Productions Foundation (UPF) films, which provide a powerful, inspirational digital tool for teachers. The organization's mission is to create documentaries, films and educational materials that contribute to bringing to light compelling stories of Muslim engagement through history and culture. UPF films and educational projects aim to promote peace and understanding to increase cultural pluralism and counter bigotry in our world.

Teachers will be able to utilize the resources provided in this paper to harness the power of media in their classrooms. Outlining the process by which teachers can follow the C3 inquiry using the film Prince Among Slaves will prepare teachers to see the alignment of the C3 Framework with their teaching. The “best practice” classroom strategies in structuring deliberations are ones that encourage students to fully participate and emphasize their voice.

This paper will unpack the practice methods that address the film Prince Among Slaves to be of benefit when sharing narratives through digital film and engage students in critical thinking through the C3 Framework. UPF films are the product of scholarly research and innovative production teams as the films provide the opportunity to visualize and explore multiple perspectives to understand historical content by providing a context for inquiry teaching and learning that is inclusive through deliberative discussions in the classroom.

The author certifies that this manuscript submission is original work and that all authors were involved in the intellectual elaboration of the manuscript and all parties have been acknowledged.

This study analyzed gender balance in the texts and illustrations of three recently published, high school US history textbooks and one alternate volume of American history. In all of the American history texts analyzed there were significantly more males than females in text content and illustrations. These textbooks focused on the contributions of those famous Americans who have been a part of the historical record. The record is skewed with regard to gender, leaving teachers and students with the arduous task of acknowledging the absence of women while attempting to fill in the gaps through their own research and resources. Standards committees and textbook publishers should change their focus and teachers and students should confront gender imbalance by integrating high quality women’s history resources into the classroom with web-based resources, family and community history projects, young adult literature, history textbook analysis, and the vision of the C3 Framework.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of angry political rhetoric employed by George Wallace and Donald Trump. The authors start by discussing the civic thinking skills stressed within the C3 Framework, specifically the ability to analyze politicians’ arguments. Then, the focus shifts to look at angry political rhetoric within the US history. Next, the authors discuss the parallels of the angry political rhetoric employed by both Wallace and Trump. Finally, two activities are provided that enable students to grasp the convergences with the angry political rhetoric utilized by both Wallace and Trump.

In this paper, the authors explore angry rhetoric in American politics. The authors designed two classroom-ready activities by drawing on the best teaching practices advocated for in the C3 Framework. To elaborate, both activities allow students to research and analyze arguments made by George Wallace and Donald Trump. This enables students to engage in the four dimensions of the Inquiry Arc in the C3 Framework.

The authors provide two activities that can be utilized in the high school social studies classroom to enable students to dissect American politicians’ messages. These two activities can be adapted and utilized to enable students to examine a political candidate’s messages, especially those that draw on angry rhetoric. By completing the steps of these two activities, students are better prepared to be critical consumers of political media messages.

In this paper, the authors explore the role of angry political rhetoric in American politics. The authors examine the parallels of political style between George Wallace and Donald Trump. Two activities are provided to help students break down the angry political rhetoric employed by these two controversial figures.

Preservice teachers (PSTs) typically have few opportunities to observe social studies instruction in PSTs' elementary field placements. To practice effective integration as a pathway to include more social studies instruction, PSTs developed a unit plan based on inquiry during an undergraduate methods course. The purpose of this study was to explore what scaffolds were effective in PSTs' development of social studies inquiry projects.

The author used a multiple case study approach, examining initial submissions, feedback and resubmissions as PSTs developed PSTs' inquiry projects. The data were analyzed with an eye on PSTs' ability to plan a unit according to the four dimensions of the C3 Framework's inquiry arc (National Council for the Social Studies [NCSS], 2013).

The author analyzed data related to PSTs’ area of highest need from PSTs' initial submissions: staging the task, formative tasks and resources. PSTs were able to develop inquiry projects after being supported in their (1) organization, (2) clarity, (3) alignment and (4) developmental appropriateness.

This study shows that novice teachers can create high-quality social studies learning experiences in elementary school when provided appropriate supports (in this case, feedback about organization, clarity, alignment and developmental appropriateness). With the tools to develop such projects, new teachers may be able to increase the amount of social studies taught in elementary classrooms.

Development of economic understandings fosters the growth of democratic citizenship competencies. Elements of popular culture should be recognized for the influence they have on children’s economic decisions. Children should learn of the concept of popular culture to regulate its effect on their habits and understand how it has shaped the lives of people throughout history. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Using a C3 inquiry investigation, this study explored if students from fifth grade to kindergarten could be engaged in higher-level thinking about economic concepts through the analysis of elements of popular culture in historical primary sources and then continue that analysis into popular culture of their own lives. Analyses of students’ discussions during each stage of the study provide descriptive statistics and themes to reveal understandings.

Results imply that children can successfully engage in document analysis and creation of accurate present-day popular culture artifacts and that children in second grade and above were subsequently influenced in their economic understandings about spending and saving money from popular culture analyses. Children in first grade and kindergarten were not successfully able to express these deeper connections, which may be explained by cognitive theory offered for this age range.

This research offers a unique way of combining the analysis of historic and present-day primary sources in order to understand the influences popular culture can have on economic-based behaviors. Novel approaches, which use the C3 framework to engage students in higher-order thinking of social studies disciplines, will help build stronger democratic citizenship competencies in children.

Advanced Placement Human Geography continues to grow in popularity at the secondary level, but not without its supporters and critics. The purpose of this paper is to examine one critique, the lack of critical geography and then give two examples how teachers could incorporate it using inquiry.

Critical geography examines the praxis between space, place and identity, exposing power imbalances constructed within space and place. Critical geographers also consider how to transform space and place to be more equitable. This paper provides two examples of how critical geography can be infused into content covered in AP Human Geography using the C3 Framework and the Inquiry Design Model. By infusing critical geographic perspectives into AP Human Geography students practice asking questions about inequities in space and place with an opportunity to become agents of transformation.

There is a gap in AP Human Geography when it comes to incorporating critical geography. This paper looks to redress that by providing two examples on how critical geography could be used in an AP Human Geography curriculum.

This collection of two inquiries is given as ways that AP Human Geography instructors could incorporate critical geography into their classrooms.

White nationalist groups have recently been at the forefront of American sociopolitical life, as demonstrated by the events in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. The purpose of this paper is to explore the historical roots and various waves of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

This paper offers high school teachers age-appropriate, evocative texts and disciplinary-specific, engaging tasks organized in a guided inquiry on the KKK, America’s most prominent hate organization.

Students are positioned to utilize newly-constructed understandings to take informed action on the local, state and national level.

Recently-published research has explored late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century manifestations of the Klan, but not mid-twentieth and twenty-first century outbursts.

Standards and policy changes in K-12 education have created the unintended consequence of reducing instructional time spent on social studies content. This limited time devoted to social studies presumably has led to more integrated social studies and literacy instruction. The purpose of this paper is to document the types of high-quality social studies children’s books found in classroom libraries across five states.

In the present mixed methods study, the researchers utilized a database of 60 classroom libraries across five states to identify which high-quality trade books, defined by the National Council for the Social Studies, were present. The researchers document trends in both frequencies of books and social studies content across decades, classrooms, grade levels and states from 1972 to 2015.

The findings indicate that National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Notable Trade Books for Young People texts are largely missing from the elementary classroom libraries the researchers sampled. Of the 5,544 unique titles included on the NCSS lists from 1972 to 2015, 453 were located in the US classroom libraries database, representing 8.17 percent of books found on the notable lists.

Before teachers can take steps toward integrating social studies and literacy, they need easy access to high-quality social studies texts. Many high-quality trade books are recommended each year for exposing students to social studies content; however, the researchers found limited numbers of these books in classroom libraries. The researchers recommend the lists be circulated to a wider audience to inform more teachers about these texts.

The C3 Framework is a recent example in a long history within the field of social studies education of efforts to engage teachers and students in inquiry-oriented teaching and learning. While there is some research regarding the efficacy of the inquiry design model (IDM) of the C3 Framework, few studies have sought to engage social studies teachers as coresearchers as they integrate the framework. This study addressed a persistent divide between the theory and practice of integrating inquiry in the social studies.

In this study, a classroom teacher and a university-based researcher conducted a hybrid action research study to understand the instructional shifts that occur as the C3 Framework is fully implemented into instruction.

Based on the findings, the authors present a theory of action to highlight key opportunities to shift instruction, while also acknowledging the factors that might mitigate those shifts. In particular, the authors focus on teacher decision-making and contextual factors that allow for and hinder the full integration of inquiry.

This study is unique in developing a hybrid action research/qualitative case study that provides insider knowledge related to improving social studies teaching and learning.