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This article explores practical avenues for making global connections within the social studies classroom. Drawing from my classroom experiences and utilizing the basic principles of global education outlined by Toni Fuss Kirkwood-Tucker (2009) as a conceptual frame, I attempt to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Such an endeavor aims to provide social studies teachers with five practical strategies for making global connections that can be readily employed in their middle and secondary social studies classrooms. These strategies discussed here include structured academic controversy, globalizing physical place, reading visual fine arts, incorporating the natural world, and sampling.

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.

This study reflects an examination of four teachers and their approaches to teaching the Holocaust and comparative genocide. The purpose was to address four succinct research questions that followed a conceptual framework which emerged around these teachers’ rationale, methodology, preparation, and characteristics. Analysis of the results allowed for the emergence of six themes: (a) citizenship, (b) curriculum and design, (c) teaching pedagogy, (d) influence of modeling, (e) neoteny, and (f) life-altering experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to engage readers with Unity Productions Foundation (UPF) films, which provide a powerful, inspirational digital tool for teachers. The organization's mission is to create documentaries, films and educational materials that contribute to bringing to light compelling stories of Muslim engagement through history and culture. UPF films and educational projects aim to promote peace and understanding to increase cultural pluralism and counter bigotry in our world.

Teachers will be able to utilize the resources provided in this paper to harness the power of media in their classrooms. Outlining the process by which teachers can follow the C3 inquiry using the film Prince Among Slaves will prepare teachers to see the alignment of the C3 Framework with their teaching. The “best practice” classroom strategies in structuring deliberations are ones that encourage students to fully participate and emphasize their voice.

This paper will unpack the practice methods that address the film Prince Among Slaves to be of benefit when sharing narratives through digital film and engage students in critical thinking through the C3 Framework. UPF films are the product of scholarly research and innovative production teams as the films provide the opportunity to visualize and explore multiple perspectives to understand historical content by providing a context for inquiry teaching and learning that is inclusive through deliberative discussions in the classroom.

The author certifies that this manuscript submission is original work and that all authors were involved in the intellectual elaboration of the manuscript and all parties have been acknowledged.

This work explores the creation and purposes of an inquiry about Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipino revolutionary and sometimes United States ally, as a means to discuss the value of both inquiry and historical empathy in bridging history instruction and civic life. Though history is often identified as a means to foster democratic dispositions, learning can often feel disconnected from students' lived experiences, let alone directly connect to their out-of-classroom circumstances. Teaching with historical empathy allows students to affectively engage with content, resulting in complex reasoning and content acquisition.

The authors explain an original inquiry that uses the Inquiry Design Model (IDM) and historical empathy to help students complicate Emilio Aguinaldo and his legacy. By combining historical empathy and the inquiry model, the authors structured their work for practitioner use but also as a way to draw on rarely emphasized content in US or World history courses.

In using this model, students will be able to apply their learning in a civic engagement task related to modern questions of US geopolitics.

The authors offer and explore the process of an original inquiry as a way to help practitioners and scholars consider how to create other such rigorous opportunities for students to practice global citizenship.

The purpose of this paper is to mitigate the dearth in the library literature of large‐class, active learning pedagogies, by providing examples of these instructional approaches used in mega‐classes within the science, humanities, and education fields, for application within the library environment, specifically in large information literacy instruction sessions.

The author surveys both the library and science and education literatures, comparing coverage of active learning approaches in the professional literatures of each.

Although the library literature enthusiastically supports active learning approaches to teaching information literacy in theory, there are statistically few librarians who employ these learning modalities in their teaching. There are hardly any examples in the library literature of librarians using large‐class, active‐learning pedagogies. This article discusses some of the reasons behind librarians' reluctance to use active learning techniques and offers pragmatic suggestions from the literature of the sciences and education to alleviate this reticence.

This paper helps fill in the gap in the library literature discussing large‐class, active pedagogies for information literacy instruction. It offers some practical solutions from within the non‐library literature to some of the pedagogical obstacles inherent in mass classes, making explicit applications to information literacy instruction.

The purpose of this paper is to provide teachers with research and methodological findings for planning, facilitating and assessing classroom discussions around difficult, political issues.

This paper focuses on navigating political polarization in classroom discussions. The research supported three teaching interns in developing classroom cultures where such discussions could and did happen.

Findings include the importance of having difficult discussions, the methods for doing so successfully and the introduction of a new activity, Daily Independent Listening.

In a climate of heightened partisanship, this research and these teaching examples provide models for all teachers engaging in such important work.

Teaching pre-service social studies students how to engage their future students in powerful classroom discussions is an important and challenging goal for teacher educators. This chapter presents a rationale for creating discussion-rich social studies courses, explains why it is so challenging for teacher education students to learn how to teach with discussion, and describes an approach involving videotaped discussions that helps meet those challenges.

This study contributes to existing scholarship on democratic education by focusing explicitly on the affective dynamics of teaching with and for discussion. More specifically, the purpose of this research is to critically analyze the first author’s efforts to address the role of emotion in democratic dialogue within the context of classroom-based discussions and the work of preparing future social studies educators for their role as discussion facilitators. We found that despite the instructor’s stated goals and her efforts to teach about the constructive role of emotion in learning to communicate across difference, overall, students continued to judge dispassionate and disembodied speech acts as appropriate, while expressions of anger, frustration, or exaspe-ration were judged inappropriate. More specifically, if a female student spoke with anger or frustration during class discussions, her concerns, ideas, and questions tended to be ridiculed, ignored, or dismissed, while the same emotional rule did not apply to male students. If our intent is to facilitate communication across difference, we must actively attend to the ways in which social hierarchies inform discussion by carefully considering how emotional expression and experiences are positioned.

This manuscript describes the findings of an examination of 21 pre-service teachers and one literacy course instructor within the context of a program focused on urban teacher preparation. Using inductive thematic analysis of multiple data sources, the research team identified three themes. First, general agreement existed amongst the pre-service teachers that Barack Obama’s 2008 election was a critical, important moment in U.S. history with consistent rationales for why they should include information about President Obama’s life and work as part of the curriculum, especially for African American students. This theme comprised three trends: the importance of teaching civics, the historical importance of the first African American president, and the importance of President Obama as a role model. Second, pre-service teachers enacted and responded to barriers to teaching critical literacy about the Obama presidency. This second theme also comprised three trends: a reluctance to detract from President Obama’s positive image, an unease in teaching politics, and the references to developmental issues related to the ages of the kindergarten children they taught. Third, inconsistencies occurred amongst pre-service teachers’ understandings of critical literacy.