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Students in all content areas are almost exclusively presented with text-based instruction that starkly contrasts their experiences outside a classroom. With the advent of sophisticated technologies unknown to earlier generations, modern students are evermore immersed in visual data such as photographs, videos, games, apps. Visual media comprise many of the resources that adolescents use to negotiate understandings of the world. Many teachers and teacher-educators suggest that civic competence requires meeting powerful media with equally powerful analysis tools. In this, the first of two coupled articles — the second to be published in the July issue of Social Studies Research and Practice — I describe the educative potential of employing visual documents, especially historical photographs, in social studies instruction and refer to implications drawn from recent research studies. I also introduce an original lesson demonstrating wise practice teaching strategies for implementing historical photographs in classroom instruction to promote students’ civic competence. The second coupled article will extend the wise practice teaching strategies and feature all of the resources needed to enact the lesson and provide closure to the ideas posited throughout both articles.

In this space I complement an article published earlier in Social Studies Research and Practice 8(1), 2012 by providing a wise practice lesson and its ancillary materials. As sophisticated technologies continue to immerse modern students in potent visual data, teachers should help students develop equally potent visual literacy skills. Students who are more visually literate are better prepared to evaluate the visual messages surrounding them and act, not in rote-response visual stimuli, but rather according to their well-informed conscience. The lesson shared here demonstrates the educative potential of employing visual documents, historical photographs, in an inquiry-based approach to social studies instruction. Together, the coupled articles present a pragmatic example of academic research informing classroom practice in meaningful ways to promote students’ civic competence.

Visual documents (e.g. maps, editorial cartoons, historical photographs, portraits, documentary films, historically-based movies, etc.) are common curriculum resources within social studies classrooms; however, only recently scholars have begun to systematically research ways to more authentically and powerfully center instruction around visual documents. Here, the purpose of this paper is to synthesize relevant lines of inquiry into research-based, wise-practices for selecting and designing visual curriculum materials to help social studies students and teachers think about social phenomenon deeply and in more disciplinary-specific ways.

The authors share recent scholarship that has posited explanations for why visual data tend to afford learners especially powerful opportunities to think critically about the world around them. Throughout the discussion, the authors integrate applicable research-based principles that can guide the selection and design of visual curriculum materials.

Scholars have suggested that visual documents are rarely introduced in educational settings as a means to develop the thinking skills of decoding, interpreting and evaluating pictorial information. The authors argue that these skills are vital civic competencies because the creation and critique of non-written information often mediates modern public issues and social identities.

Informed by strong, consistent research into multimodal learning, visual literacy and the cognitive sciences, the wise-practice scaffolding suggestions the authors provide may help professionals with an interest in social studies education to synthesize theory-based suggestions with practice-based implementations as it concerns visual documents. The authors hope the guidance shared here helps teachers, teacher educators and curriculum designers produce high-quality resources that will engage contemporary students and help them develop civic competence.

First, the authors posit a research-based template, or planning checklist, of wise-practice suggestions to help social studies teachers, teacher educators and curriculum designers select visual documents. The authors then share several digital collection archives that teachers can visit to locate powerful visuals and describe research-based suggestions for designing them for dynamic implementation. Finally, the authors argue for more deliberative space in the social studies curriculum and classroom time for teachers to explore the educative power of centering inquiry-based instruction around visual information.

Arguments surrounding public issues are not always expressed in writing; they often take visual and auditory forms. In recent years, scholarship encouraging teachers and students to think deeply about songs—music and lyrics—has increased. Historical analysis of songs from the past can help students develop critical listening habits useful for interpreting contemporary songs. We share an inquiry-based, research-into-practice lesson centered around the following question: Was the US justified in pursuing nuclear weapons following the conclusion of World War II? We highlight a public issues approach where students use historical content and analysis as evidence to defend a chosen public policy.

The recent motion picture Selma infused fresh interest – and controversy – into the political and emotional peak of America’s modern Civil Rights Movement. Ava DuVernay, the film’s director, faced criticism for her exclusion of the Jewish presence from the movie’s portrayal of the March 21, 1965 Voting Rights March. The recent attention presents a teachable moment and new energy for thinking deeply about this pivotal event in America’s past. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors provide valuable historical domain knowledge surrounding the 1965 Voting Rights March, present the requisite plans and curriculum resources for implementing wise-practice instructional strategies, and explore the rationale underpinning the inquiry-based activities.

The authors share innovative approaches, at the secondary and elementary levels, integrating historical domain knowledge with renewed interest in the 1965 Voting Rights March to create powerful teaching-and-learning experiences. The approaches are innovative because they contain dynamic curriculum materials and reflect wise-practice use of historical photographs within the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards.

The approaches shared here are centered around questioning, a key to student learning. The lessons feature the development of questions, both from teachers and students, as classes work collaboratively to interpret a potentially powerful historical photograph and use historical events to practice thinking deeply about important topics.

Social studies classrooms are ideal educational spaces to develop and practice the analytical skills and dispositions students need to meet the challenge of critiquing visual information that concerns complex public issues, such as the role of religion in society.

Here the authors thoroughly explore a field-tested exchange of ideas, a discussion. The authors share a robust discussion script that models a wise-practice pedagogical approach for promoting civic competence [problem-based historical inquiry (PBHI)] and then describe precisely how the discussion is an exemplar of that approach.

Scores of teachers and teacher educators have participated in this discussion in real-world classroom settings. This was first experienced during a professional development seminar at the University of Prishtina in Kosovo when the first author, working with Kosovar colleagues including the second author, led this seemingly impromptu discussion of major values in conflict over the issue of whether Kosovo's government should make tobacco use illegal. This has since been implemented in several undergraduate and graduate education courses in the United States of America.

The discussion script contains two types of text: (1) traditional text – default formatting – which constitutes the semi-structured wording a discussion leader would say aloud and (2) supplementary text – italicized formatting – that provides educative suggestions for professional development.

Finally, the authors share suggestions for revising this discussion for future iterations and ways teachers and teacher educators can further develop the skills for facilitating discussions.

In order to comply with the new Common Core standards, it is imperative teachers, particularly those at the elementary levels, incorporate English/Language Arts (ELA) in their social studies classes. These reading, writing, speaking, and listening foci, through the use of informational texts, necessitate strategies to help students meet these standards. They also help students learn social studies content and gain historical understanding. Teachers can meet these standards through an adapted Jigsaw strategy using primary source materials. We review a modified Jigsaw strategy; we call a “Source-Focused Jigsaw.” An aspect of this type of Jigsaw is its allowance of students to focus on the similarities and differences between multiple documents, which is a specific emphasis of the Common Core Standards. This strategy allows young learners to think like a historian and to understand various sources often contain different information. They also learn multiple sources may be necessary to for decision-making. The authors provide lesson examples of its use with social studies informational texts and ELA.

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the ways in which the Supreme Court of Canada has shifted away from transcendent/religious to nonreligious conceptualizations of assisted dying.

A discourse analysis of a Supreme Court of Canada case on assisted dying and the facta of the 26 associated interveners.

The research points to a shift away from religious to nonreligious understandings in the way the Court conceptualizes suffering, pain, illness and assisted dying.

This paper contributes to the understanding of nonreligion as a social phenomenon.

The topic of whistleblowing is achieving prominence as a question of social policy. Some influential voices are suggesting that far from whistleblowing — informing on organisations —, being socially undesirable, it may in certain circumstances be an activity deserving high praise. Inevitably it entails huge risks to the activist, and these risks need to be personally and carefully considered. John Banham, Director General of the Confederation of British Industry, wrote in support of the Social Audit report on the subject (Winfield 1990), and a committee established by the Speaker of the House of Commons has suggested the possibility of honouring whistleblowers in the British Honours system for their good corporate citizenship. There have also been landmark reports in America, Australia and Canada (Leahy 1978, Electoral and Administrative Review Commission 1990, Ontario Law Reform Commission 1986).