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The threatened status of social studies instruction in elementary schools demands strong methods instruction to preserve the subject. This threatened status and other factors create issues specific to elementary social studies methods instruction. Moreover, university-level methods instruction can be idiosyncratic due to the various educational and professional backgrounds of the instructors. This study examined individuals serving in the “dual roles” of inservice teacher and elementary social studies methods instructor. While teaching the methods, participants encountered issues related to methods students, the filling of dual roles, and the status of elementary social studies and field placements. In addition, filling these dual roles facilitated their methods instruction through their ability to relate/react to methods students’ experiences and concerns.

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.

This study seeks to understand the factors and orientations that are relevant to preservice teachers' (PSTs) beliefs about their ability to design lessons for inquiry-based K-6 social studies instruction.

Seventy elementary PSTs participated in a series of inquiry-based learning activities in a social studies methods course. The study uses exploratory factor analysis, a quantitative method to explore teacher self-reported efficacy for designing inquiry lessons.

The findings revealed that three capabilities related to design are relevant to elementary social studies PSTs' self-efficacy for designing inquiries: lesson design competence, lesson design disposition and lesson design practices. Most PSTs expressed low self-efficacy in all three capabilities. PSTs with a higher disposition for designing inquiry lessons may show a strong sense of self-efficacy for inquiry-based curricula design and practice in elementary social studies education.

The article discusses the importance of understanding PSTs sense of efficacy and categories of such self-efficacy beliefs at the level of lesson design within the context of teacher education. It discusses the need for teacher educators to facilitate educationally sound critical reflection on lesson design skills, disposition and practices that foster PSTs' sense of ability to teach via inquiry in elementary classrooms.

Using morning meeting, an evidence-based practice that is part of the responsive classroom (RC) approach, the authors (two teacher educators [TEs]) created opportunities for teacher candidates (TCs) to experience representations, decompositions and approximations of practice in multiple iterations of an elementary social studies methods course.

The authors detail how TEs can expose TCs to social studies content (e.g. the National Council for the Social Studies themes) that can be incorporated into structured, daily classroom routines, such as morning meeting.

The authors include TE-created morning meeting facilitation guides with components such as a morning message, greeting, share, group activity and theme justification. Furthermore, the authors outline TCs' reflections on planning and implementing a morning meeting with a partner in addition to their own reflections on the TCs' feedback.

This work has implications related to TEs and TCs in elementary social studies methods courses as well as current and future students in elementary classrooms.

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.

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.

Preparing future elementary teachers to connect social studies content and skills with technology necessitates the integration of technology into teacher preparation methods courses. Such integration hinges on the identification of pre-service teachers’ level of Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK). These three knowledge areas help shape smart uses for educational technology beyond entertainment that utilize technology in educationally profitable ways. The TPACK model is useful for identifying the knowledge required by pre-service teachers for the purpose of wedding instructional technology to social studies content and instruction. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to describe and to analyze the integration of an instructional technology lesson in an elementary social studies methods course in a large Midwestern university. The study, specifically, describes and reports on 25 pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the utilization of a social studies software technology called Timeliner. The study reports on the level of TPACK awareness of the study’s pre-service teachers and offers implications related to instructional technology integration in elementary social studies methods courses.

During field experiences, preservice teachers often are asked plan and teach a lesson and then to reflect on their teaching. The purpose of this paper is to examine the guided reflections of 66 preservice teachers after they planned and implemented a primary source-based lesson in an elementary classroom. The project occurred during the preservice teachers’ enrollment in a social studies methods course.

This qualitative study utilized a fieldwork approach as the methodological framework. This approach provided data that allowed the researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the preservice teachers’ experiences. Data were analyzed using Bogdan and Biklen’s (1998) content unit of analysis. Descriptive and interpretive coding schemes were used to analyze data using a priori categories of successes and challenges.

The preservice teachers were able to engage in technical and practical reflection, considering strategies used in the classroom and their effects on student learning, but they were unable to reflect at the critical level, thinking about moral and ethical decisions. The themes and subthemes that many of the preservice teachers identified as successes, others identified as challenges.

This study highlights the importance of preservice teachers engaging with primary sources, as well as with frequent, meaningful, and ongoing field experiences. Teacher educators need to provide multiple opportunities for teacher candidates to reflect broadly and deeply on their teaching practice and student learning. Additional research needs to be conducted to assess the impact of preservice teachers use of primary sources in the elementary classroom.