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This article examines the literature related to the marginalization of social studies through the lens of elementary social studies teacher education. This study presents the case of two different states wherein one state, Virginia, tests social studies in elementary schools and another state, North Carolina, where social studies is not tested until middle school. The data gathered from both states were originally analyzed to shed light on the question of testing's effect on teacher preparation and subsequent curriculum enactment. Data collected from the study suggest that factors such as field experiences, programs of study, and methods instruction impact teacher education in elementary social studies in more important ways than student testing.

The teaching of environmental sustainability was explored in five sections of an elementary social studies methods course with pre-service teachers. Using surveys and structured discussions, we identified pre-service teachers’ beliefs about environmental sustainability in response to prior experiences, course readings, films, guest lecture, and group activities (e.g., simulations). Findings suggest the subjects’ knowledge of environmental sustainability increased as a result of the course. They believed environmental sustainability is a significant global issue meriting attention in the elementary classroom; however, they felt ill prepared to teach sustainability issues to young children in developmentally appropriate ways. Finally, pre-service teachers expressed caring about improving their own consumer behaviors and sought concrete solutions from others in order to do so. Implications for elementary social studies education are discussed.

In both elementary schools and elementary teacher education programs, social studies is marginalized while standards require increasingly more ambitious reasoning, reading, and writing in social studies than has historically been documented in American elementary schools. The purpose of this paper is to explain the challenges that elementary social studies teacher educators face in preparing elementary school teachers to facilitate the kind of ambitious social studies envisioned in the NCSS’s C3 Framework and advocate an approach to successfully address these challenges.

This paper articulates a targeted and ambitious approach to elementary social studies teacher education. The authors describe five recommendations from the teacher education literature for supporting preservice teachers in learning disciplinary-oriented social studies teaching, recommendations that guided the redesign of the social studies methods course. The authors then highlight key aspects of the redesigned methods course and demonstrate how the authors engaged the challenges inherent in the work of elementary social studies teacher education.

Although this paper is not arranged in such a way as to substantiate empirical findings, the purpose of the paper is to demonstrate an approach to elementary social studies education aligned with extant literature on preparing teachers to engage in reform teaching practices, specifically those disciplinary oriented practices suggested in NCSS’s C3 Framework. As such, the paper should be read as a perspective on practice.

The type of disciplinary-oriented approach described here is increasingly under investigation in secondary teacher education research and similar approaches are under investigation in elementary math and science education research. To the authors’ knowledge, the approach is novel in elementary social studies education. Furthermore, the authors believe it offers a direction for researchers interested in gaps in the literature related to practice based teacher education and disciplinary-oriented social studies teacher education.

The approach described here offers specific guidance and resources for teacher educators who are struggling with the challenges of the contemporary social studies education landscape and/or who wish to focus methods courses in disciplinary ways.

Research in social studied education has demonstrated that when students are exposed to disciplinary practices in social studies, their literacy skills improve and they learn analytical skills that support their development as citizens (consumption of media, participation in public discourse, ability to discern arguments).

As noted above, the approach described here is novel in elementary social studies education. Combining a disciplinary approach with a practice-based frame in elementary social studies represents an opportunity for empirical research and offers new approaches to the practice of teacher education and early career professional development.

The purpose of this study is to ascertain perspectives from pre-service and in-service elementary teachers about challenges they face when teaching social studies, and how their participation in a content-based professional development opportunity can support their preparedness for social studies instruction. Five speakers who were experts in topics such as Native American history, historical preservation, women's history and the Constitution were featured at this workshop.

Case study methodology with both descriptive and explanatory data collection and analysis methods, which were inclusive of surveys and focus group sessions, was implemented. The National Council for the Social Studies (2017) Powerful and Authentic Social Studies framework was applied in order to examine whether elementary in-service and pre-service teachers participation in this content-focused professional development impacted their preparedness to teach social studies.

Major findings show that content-specific professional development can support pre-service and in-service elementary teachers' preparation to teach social studies through analysis of historical topics and contemporary issues, as well as mitigate challenges with regard to limited time dedicated to social studies instruction.

In light of the Senate's debate on passing the Educating for Democracy Act concerning funding for civics and history education, the originality of this study highlights the continued need for scholarship on how partnerships between colleges of education, school districts and local educational agencies to provide content-focused professional development can support elementary teachers' ambitious social studies instruction, which can foster greater understandings of historical content and civic participation in democratic society.

The paper critically examines the program on Education for All (EFA) in India, namely Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) in a financing and development framework. In doing so, the paper identifies a number of policy and implementation gaps in the program. A fine-tuning of the existing matching shares by discriminating the matching shares in terms of need for, ability to provide matching shares and to strengthen the absorptive capacity could go a long way in attaining the horizontal equity in terms of every child completing elementary schooling in India. This would also ensure the other desirable principles of intergovernmental transfers such as predictability, transparency, and incentive mechanism besides improving utilization.

Further, it clearly emerges that only after ensuring the basic minimum levels in terms of physical and human infrastructure, and ensuring equal access to all the child population of age group of 6–14, quality is given priority. Thus, the challenge is both improving the qualitative and quantitative targets of UEE with enhanced resource allocation to education. Hence, Center is to ensure release of funding for SSA through special efforts as the program requires enormous funding and serious commitment of both central and state governments.

On the developmental aspects, the scheme not only widens social inequity but also perpetuates the declining quality of public provision by encouraging alternate schools and para teachers, besides the financing norms. These low-cost options will result in serious ramifications on equity, quality, balance, and sustainability of the basic education structure.

The purpose of this paper is to examine resource allocation under the centrally sponsored scheme Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and its impact on development of elementary education in India. First, the author describes the current educational disparity across states in terms of state funding. Second, the author shows that interstate disparities in education resources have more to do with capacity of states to finance elementary education. For this, the author examines funding mechanism under SSA, focusing on principles of adequacy and absorptive rates. Third, the author analyzes the impact of additional funding on the progress of elementary education across states. Fourth, the author demonstrates how funding under SSA reinforces rather than reduces interstate disparity in school funding. Finally, the author concludes with certain policy implications for reforming federal transfers in Right to Education (RTE)-SSA, which can easily be extended to Rashtria Madhya Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) to be more responsive to educational inadequacy, effort and capacity across states.

The author uses box plots for illustrating interstate disparity across various indicators on financing and growth of elementary education. Box plots are good at portraying extreme values and illustrate differences between distributions. Because the thrust of the paper is examining difference in distribution across and within states, box plots appropriately portray the distribution of both. Further, coefficient of variation is estimated in education funding and its impact variables.

Interstate disparity in additional to the funding of SSA through discretionary transfers is examined by looking at two principles of inter-governmental transfers, viz., adequacy and absorptive rates. In a way, it appears that the educationally backward states getting the highest shares and also as per the requirement of the child population, but not necessarily so in terms of their relative proportions of enrolment, schools and teachers. Yet another revelation is that actual absorptive rates are much less than apparent absorptive rates. Unambiguously, additional resources coming from the Center for Development of Education can have a positive influence only after states have achieved a certain threshold level of absorptive capacities. As evidenced, fiscal disability is not compensated by transfers via SSA, as matching shares are uniform across states.

One significant limitations of the study is its use of administrative data. Often, administrative data from developing countries especially on social sector like education report inflated figures. The study uses primarily such but published secondary data sources.

Finally, the author suggests certain policy implications for reforming federal role in the current RTE-SSA, which can easily be extended to RMSA, a CSS in secondary education, to be more responsive to state effort and capacity.

Though SSA attempts to address regional imbalance, the accumulated initial advantage of better-off states with uniform norms under SSA funding widens the interstate disparity rather than reduce it. It is, hence, mandated to look at building capacities and enable states for a level-playing field.

It adds value to existing studies in two ways: rarely studies examine SSA expenditures and its impact on development and financing of elementary education, and examine a question on horizontal equalization mechanism whether additional allocation under SSA induce or reduce interstate disparity.

Place-based, social studies teaching and learning has the potential to foster engaged citizens connected and committed to improving their communities. This study explored the research question, “In what ways do classroom and field-based experiences prepare teacher candidates (TCs) to make connections between place-based education and elementary social studies education?”

This qualitative case study examined how elementary TCs learned about, researched, curated and created place-based social studies educational resources related to community sites. Data collection included TCs’ Pre- and Post-Course Reflections as well as Self-Evaluations, which were analyzed using an inductive approach and multiple rounds of concept coding. Several themes emerged through data analysis.

The authors organized their findings around three themes: connections (i.e. place becomes personal), immersion (i.e. learning about place to learning in place) and bridge building (i.e. local as classroom). The classroom and field-based experiences in the elementary social studies methods course informed the ways in which TCs learned about and connected to the concept of place, experienced place in a specific place (i.e. downtown Statesboro, Georgia), and reflected upon the myriad ways that they could utilize place in their future elementary social studies classrooms.

TCs (as well as in-service teachers and teacher educators) must become more informed, connected and committed to places within their local communities in order to consider them as resources for elementary social studies teaching and learning.

Film has long been an instructional tool in social studies education; however, most research and methods for using film to teach social studies are situated at the secondary level. As such, the purpose of this study was to extend and expand what is known about using film in elementary social studies classrooms. More specifically, this qualitative content analysis study explored how and why elementary pre-service teachers (PSTs) used film clips from Molly of Denali to design critical Indigenous studies lessons. The data offer insight into the possibilities of using film as a strategy to teach anti-oppressive elementary social studies education.

The authors used qualitative content analysis in this study. Data for this study included 17 lesson planning assignments and corresponding written rationales completed by PSTs in an elementary social studies methods course. Data collected as a result of convenience sampling, given both the authors were the instructors of the methods course. To analyze the data, the authors used a multi-step coding process and a combination of inductive and deductive coding.

Grounded in a framework of anti-oppressive and anti-colonial education, PSTs designed elementary social studies lessons that used film clips from Molly of Denali to increase representation, center a counter-narrative and serve as a motivator. PSTs also infused other sources into their lesson plans, thus extending their lessons beyond the film.

Given the lack of research on how film can be used in elementary social studies classrooms, this study fills a void in the literature. Results of this study suggest that similar to the benefits of using film in secondary classrooms, film can be an engaging and motivating source of information for elementary students. Moreover, when used within a critical pedagogical framework like Sabzalian's (2019) critical orientations of Indigenous studies, film can increase representation and teach anti-oppressive counter-narratives in the elementary classroom.

This paper reports on the ways in which a group of middle school students who received character education in elementary school define and experience character. The research was designed to improve our understanding of the meanings that the children ascribe to their character lessons in the long term, and to determine whether they see connections between these lessons and their experiences with character in middle school. The data come from interviews with 24 children who attended five different elementary schools in one town that used the Character Counts! curriculum at the time of the study. The students were questioned about their understanding of the curriculum and their own personal experiences with character-related issues in middle school. The results demonstrate that the elementary school character lessons are carried forward. Children are able to recall the formal meaning of many of the character traits that they studied. As they graduate to middle school, however, peer culture assumes an increasingly important role and their lived experience of character become more complex. Thus, the preteens studied here are actively working to reconcile the differences between character as a “learned,” and then a “lived” experience. While maturation and character lessons received beyond school may confound these findings, the results presented here suggest the need to bridge, and then perhaps adapt character programming to empower adolescent input and embrace the role of peer culture in defining and then redefining character.