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Effective discussion is inextricably linked to democracy. Social studies curriculum and instruction should engage students in practicing democratic skills and habits of mind. This case study provides a microanalysis of one U.S. History teacher’s commitment to fostering discussion in her classroom as a theorized pedagogical practice. A better understanding of what motivates teachers to engage students in classroom discussions paralleled with rich descriptions of how this teacher plans and implements discussion could encourage others to try this approach to teaching and learning.

Educators who teach for social justice connect what and how they teach in the classroom directly to humanity’s critical problems. Teacher education at the elementary level must center such themes of social justice in order to prepare today’s teachers to lead their students in developing an understanding of how to make the world a better place to live. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper presents three case studies of exemplary, pre-service teacher-created lessons that integrate the arts, social studies, and language arts around themes of social justice. Teacher-candidates envisioned, planned and taught effective, engaging, standards-based learning experiences that began with children’s literature and led to artistic expression.

Through lessons like these, teacher-candidates learned to meet arts, social studies, and literacy standards while building the skills and attitudes their students need as “citizens of the world.”

Elementary teacher education programs can help teacher-candidates to prepare for the challenge of teaching for social justice by integrating the arts with core academic areas, including social studies.

This integrated model suitably serves our current, mathematics- and literacy-focused, assessment-saturated school system. Pre-service teachers learn to plan and teach integrated learning activities. They learn practical ways to infuse the arts in both their field experience and future classrooms.

When the arts are central in education, students benefit in numerous important ways, developing critical and creative thinking skills, empathy, self-awareness, and the ability to collaborate with others productively. The arts, essential to humanity since the dawn of civilization, thus serve as a natural focal point for education for social justice.

The innovative methods involved in this study, in which subject areas throughout the elementary teacher education program are integrated in one meaningful, practical, applied lesson on social justice, represent a practical, original, and valuable way to enhance teacher education programs’ focus on social justice.

Research reveals very little about how the supervision of social studies student teachers ought to be enacted. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Based on the broader arguments for the democratic purposes of social studies, the author argues for the development of the democratic capacities of teacher citizens by creating deliberative and dialogic spaces in social studies field-based teacher education.

Four conceptual dimensions of dialogic pedagogy in the supervision of social studies student teachers are explored: questioning, listening, negotiation, and self-critique.

Because supervision of student teachers is a pedagogical interaction, a pedagogy of social studies field-based teacher education must be grounded in dialogue and deliberation.

Teaching about matters of ethnicity, race, and culture in the social studies is controversial in nature, but necessary to ensuring students are leaving the classroom with some multicultural competence. In social studies , discussion of race and racism is typically confined to the master narrative, which is limited to content pertaining to slavery, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movement. What is missed in the discussion about racism in the social studies is the conversation about intraracial racism or discrimination, which may not be a mainstream topic, but a persistent and ever-present issue within Black communities. The purpose of this article is to provide teachers with activities that can elicit discussion about Black intraracial discrimination, a harmful legacy of slavery and colonization. By using various pedagogical tools for discussion of intraracial discrimination, teachers will be incorporating a controversial, but culturally relevant, topic into the curriculum as well as ensuring that students become aware of matters of culture and race that exist beyond the textbook.

Qualitative methodology is used to examine social and dialogic interactions, in a fifth‐grade classroom known as ‘Freedom Falls’. The author discusses social interaction through dialogue as a means of constructing a democratic classroom community for students. In this case study, through descriptive data, classroom dialogue is examined from the collective group to individual members. The author explains how she discovered that meanings about democracy in the classroom were transferred from the collective group to the individual members, and ways of expressing democratic practices in the classroom enhanced students’ participation as active classroom members responsible for their classroom culture.

This paper seeks to intertwine current literature in social studies education with practical suggestions for integrating dialogue and controversy into the practicing teacher’s classroom. The works of John Dewey (1926), Diana Hess (2004), and Walter Parker (2003) will serve as the foundation of this essay; placing an emphasis on their respective arguments advocating for the school as a place where students learn to develop the ability to participate in informed dialogue and understand the foundational elements of a functional democracy. The essay will place emphasis on the necessity for teachers who incorporate controversial social issues into their lessons through various forms of discourse. To that end, a foundational analysis of the benefits of integrating controversial issues into the social studies classroom will be provided and followed by a description of four practical lessons that have effectively fostered dialogue amongst students at the secondary level. The aim of the paper, ultimately, is to provide practicing social studies teachers at the middle and high school level with feasible lessons that are grounded in the theories and philosophies of the leading scholars in social studies education.

This study examines how a social studies methods course, with an emphasis in civic education, is taught and carried through from its original implementation within a teacher education social studies course to practicing teachers’ classrooms. Findings suggest that by implementing social action curriculum projects teachers: 1) effectively integrated emerging curriculum, 2) facilitated student-led instruction in a democratic classroom, 3) increased effective communication and built partnerships beyond the classroom, and 4) used structured reflections as a tool for growth and evaluation.

This qualitative inquiry reports the ways in which three graduate-level preservice elementary teachers conceived of the relationship between diversity and democracy, and explores how their understandings of this relationship informed their planning for democratic citizenship education with young learners. Findings indicate while the participants exhibited a certain measure of variance in their thinking about diversity and democracy, all of them planned their lessons at a lower level of multicultural support than their views suggested they would. This primarily highlights the ongoing lack of understanding regarding what it might mean to teach democratic citizenship through its practice as well as its study.

Current events and citizenship intersect in students’ classrooms in ways both problematic and full of potential. Teachers take a range of approaches, from the passive, weekly regurgitation of news stories to the empowered use of current events to explore broader issues and inform civic engagement. Creating an open classroom climate can help teachers unlock the civic potential of current events, which aids students in building civic knowledge, internal political efficacy, and civic self-efficacy. This article begins by introducing teachers to research on open classroom climates using data from the International Civic and Citizenship Survey (ICCS). We then provide examples of the components of an open classroom climate and a survey created from ICCS items for teachers to assess their own classroom’s climate. Elements of an open classroom climate are applied to current events pedagogy with a lesson plan for young children that explores civic responses to water scarcity and features All the Water in the World, a picture book by George Ella Lyon and Katherine Tillotson.

This paper investigated the possibilities of implementing inclusive education in the tertiary-level language classrooms and suggests new teaching methodologies adhering to the guidelines of multicultural education (MCE) framework. It explored how Indian teachers fostered social inclusivity in ESP (English for Specific Purposes) classrooms and documented the methods used by the language teachers to sustain a socially inclusive environment in the classroom.

This qualitative study undertaken with 17 faculty members using online interviews and surveys as tools revealed the challenges faced by the teachers.

The results have implications towards teacher training as there is a clear dearth of teacher strategies to foster an equitable and inclusive learning environment inside the classroom.

Classrooms are the sources of values and perspectives, and teachers are responsible for providing equal opportunities to students who are otherwise marginalised in society.

Inclusive education aims at providing equal opportunities to people despite the differences in terms of race, class, caste, region, religion, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and disabilities. India being a multilingual and multicultural country, inculcating values in students to enable them to reflect beyond these differences becomes important.