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The purpose of the study was to explore and articulate how Socratic seminar might be considered more completely as part of justice-focused social studies classroom disciplinary practices.

The authors reviewed the literature on Socratic seminar and developed a model for its practical use. The authors used the model to demonstrate its use in teaching civil rights history, as an example for implementation.

Socratic seminar is an instructional method that layers several disciplinary literacy skills within social studies that have the combined potential to create a transformative dialogue within the classroom and communities, especially when leveraged in more complex multi-text ways. Through the seminars, students can better understand what the authors name horizontal historical analysis, the perspective on concurrent social justice movements and vertical curricular analysis or how social justice movements experience continuity and change over time.

The authors provided an accessible model for teachers and students to use Socratic seminars as part of transformational social studies practices.

The authors demonstrate how the Socratic seminar model can provide students with the intellectual foundation for considering social action as more critically informed civic agents.

The authors examine and offer a model of how Socratic seminar can engage students in vertical and/or horizontal historical analysis for transformational purposes. Further, the authors identify how Socratic seminar can build the skills and dispositions of social studies, provide space for knowledge creation through critical historical inquiry and help reframe how teachers and students understand learning and human relationships by shifting the classroom power and promoting student agency through dialogue.

In response to the National Leadership Education Agenda, this application brief furthers priority one, addressing the teaching, learning, and curriculum development of leadership education. The ability of students to demonstrate leadership outcome mastery in areas of communication, self-awareness, interpersonal interactions, and civic responsibility (Seemiller, 2014), is valued across disciplines. Socratic Circles provide a structured discussion learning strategy based on Socratic pedagogy (Copeland, 2005), beneficial to the practice of leadership outcomes. Discussed are descriptions of implementation methods; outcomes related to Seemiller’s (2014) Student Leadership Competencies; and practitioner reflections of the use of Socratic Circles in college level leadership courses.

This paper aims to explore the potential for instructional video to build capacity in culturally responsive teaching, and outline an approach developed at NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools (Metro Center) for using inquiry-based, teacher-led teams to study, develop and film culturally responsive teaching in action. The paper explores the use of instructional video in an asset-focused model of professional development that develops culturally responsive teaching through digital videos that can be shared among colleagues, posted online and presented at professional conferences.

The primary aims of the paper are conceptual and include drawing on a review of the literature on instructional video to map onto one model of professional development the learning goals and reflective activities that are most likely to develop the potential of instructional video to change beliefs and develop critical consciousness, and providing anecdotal evidence to explore the potential for using instructional video in an asset-focused, transformative and responsive model of professional development in culturally responsive teaching.

Instructional video can be effective for professional development in culturally responsive teaching because people often need to see transformations in teaching and learning before they can believe such transformations are possible. Instructional videos of effective culturally responsive teaching, in this manner, highlight best practices and provide a way for schools to post an “early win” in their work in addressing achievement gaps.

Instructional video can assist educators in confronting and challenging prevailing deficit-based beliefs about ostensibly “low-achieving” students that limit possibilities for culturally responsive teaching; opening up opportunities for transformative learning and inviting the shift to a culturally responsive mindset; and examining and discussing models of excellent teaching. This model of professional development is asset-focused and transformative because it moves teacher voices from margin to center and empowers teachers as models and stewards of transformative learning.

Although numerous studies have documented the potential of instructional video in asset-focused and transformative models of professional development, only two studies explore the potential of instructional video specifically in the development of culturally responsive teaching (Lopez, 2013; Rosaen, 2015). This paper contributes to this nascent literature through documenting an approach to instructional video that was developed for and with teachers at a K-8 public school in Brooklyn.

Because ethical decisions about what is fair or just are at the heart of most controversial issues in the public sphere, understanding how high school seniors reason ethically about conflicting democratic values is important. Teachers and teacher educators would be assisted in leading discussions if they know the ethical frameworks most often used by students and how the facilitator might encourage consideration of alternative ethical viewpoints. By creating a professional community of practice between four U.S. government teachers, a university researcher, and a political science professor, we asked high school seniors to discuss their position relative to the Supreme Court decision in Texas v. Johnson (1989), which upheld flag burning as an expression of free speech. We were curious to know what ethical frameworks students used in wrestling with the value conflict in freedom of expression. We found all students used Lawrence Kohlberg’s (1976) ethic of justice framework almost exclusively and reasoned primarily in stages four and five on Kohlberg’s hierarchy.

The importance of learning how to disagree constructively has long been valued as a fundamental aspect of democratic life. Yet, while well-known discussion methodologies such as seminars, Structured Academic Controversy (SAC), and discussions of Controversial Public Issues (CPIs) foster essential skills for constructive disagreement, there is little explicit emphasis on connecting constructive disagreement with the concept of a loyal opposition in a democracy. The process of learning how to disagree constructively is also presented as one that is learned solely through intellectual exercises — any exploration of the body’s role in this process is generally ignored. This document argues that by more clearly linking constructive disagreement with the place of a loyal opposition in a democracy and by considering the body as an additional “entry point,” educators would be making a stronger case for the place of constructive disagreement skills in the social studies curriculum.

The purpose of this paper is to present results from three years of a longitudinal “Assessment Attitudes and Practices” survey collected from a large school district in the Southern USA.

This paper focuses on both formative and summative “assessment practices” results from secondary (middle and high school) social studies teachers.

There was no statistically significant difference between secondary social studies teachers’ use of assessments and secondary teachers of other disciplines, nor was there a statistically significant difference in assessment use by year. Data results by assessment type were ranked in order of how often teachers claimed to use various assessment practices, and discussed in terms of assessment practices recommended by NCSS. Social studies teachers in this study were often more likely to report use of assessments of knowledge (including selected-response items) than performance-based assessment techniques (such as authentic assessments).

The lack of statistically significant differences in assessment practices along disciplinary lines indicates homogeneity in the use of assessments that does not do justice to social studies.

Using Common Core standards or not, having a 1:1 technological environment or not, teacher respondents essentially reported using the same assessments, perhaps because high-stakes assessments did not change.

There is a need for professional development that helps teachers see how performance-based assessments can be used to boost student performance on high-stakes assessments.

Studies of actual assessment practices (as opposed to ideas about how teachers should assess) are still quite rare, and provide a helpful window in understanding what is actually happening inside schools.

Engaging with the interconnected dynamics of the classroom, this chapter draws from Audre Lorde's “Uses of Anger” to consider how empathy may be cultivated as a soft skill for stronger interpersonal relationships. Jocelyn E. Marshall highlights the need for mutual vulnerability between instructor and student, where vulnerability is understood to be a mode of resistance in regards to patriarchal and hegemonic higher education institutions and learning standards. By braiding queer feminisms with interdisciplinary approaches, the trauma-informed pedagogy upholds radical empathy as the linchpin to Lorde's advocating of articulating anger with precision, listening intensely, gaining new insight, and enacting change. In creating spaces to practice and further develop empathy, the trauma-informed pedagogical approach aims to empower students with agency and equip them with skills for self-accountability and holding others accountable.

English teacher candidates have limited opportunities to examine classroom-based discussions about LGBTQ-themed texts and heteronormativity in teacher education courses. This chapter presents one effort to address this issue using a video-based field experience in the English Methods course that demonstrated a critical unit of instruction about the play, Angels in America. The chapter provides a description of the project and English teacher candidates’ perspectives about what they learned for English educators interested in devising similar projects for their courses.

The purpose of this paper is to outline arguments for addressing religion in social studies teacher education, including strategies teacher educators might use on how and why pre-service teachers should incorporate teaching about religion in their classes. Topics addressed are: issues surrounding pre-service teachers’ religious identities; teaching pre-service teachers about legal issues associated with religion in public school classrooms (e.g. teaching about religion vs teaching for religion, First Amendment rights and constraints); teacher education’s role in developing religious knowledge and the influence of religion in the disciplines that comprise the social studies; and an overview of strategies and resources that teacher educators can use with their pre-service teachers.

This paper provides a literature review and arguments for addressing religion in social studies teacher education. A lesson plan and resources for teacher educators are also provided.

Teaching and talking about religion can no longer be marginalized or ignored within social studies teacher education. Whether it be the importance of pre-service teachers’ religious identities, legal issues related to public schooling or the influence of religion across the social studies disciplines – religion matters to social studies teacher education. As the current social, political and cultural realities attest, the influence of religion appears to be more and more significant in our interconnected and interdependent world.

Religious literacy is a key part of civic competence and if social studies is viewed as a way to help prepare a more informed citizenry – and a way to teach and promote dialogue across difference – then social studies teacher educators must find a way to include religion in their courses. By doing so, teacher educators encourage pre-service teachers to examine how religious identity may influence their teaching, and also help develop religious literacy and an understanding of how religion is integral to the various social studies disciplines. Ultimately, this important and often ignored work in teacher education may foster cultural understandings that will lead to a more informed and respectful society.

This empirical research was conducted in a medium-sized private university located in the north-eastern region of the USA. The purpose of this paper was to understand whether demographic attributes (age, gender, country of origin and years of stay in the USA) of international students will predict any preferences for specific teaching methods. This study was conducted with international students from October 2012 through May 2013 (fall and spring semesters).

This research paper provides hypotheses to explore whether there is any relationship between demographic factors and preferences for various teaching methods. This study analyzes the results using both Pearson’s correlations and one-way ANOVA to reject or accept the hypotheses.

The results demonstrated that there were no significant correlations between the demographic variables of international students and teaching methods. However, the one-way ANOVA analyses suggested that there are differences among age groups and their preferences for group projects, years of studying in the USA and their preferences for classroom discussions, and gender and their preferences for textbook assignments.

This study suggests that scholars provide orientation or training on the host country’s pedagogies so that international students can assimilate better into their academic communities.

This pioneering paper examines the role between demographic variables of international students and teaching pedagogies. This specific concept has not been examined in this literature before. This understanding could contribute to a richer understanding of this population of students.