A quarter of a century has passed since lawmakers enacted the New Jersey Holocaust education mandate, and it seems responsible and timely to ask if it, the original Holocaust education mandate, actually encouraged substantive learning about the Holocaust. Despite repeated fanfare about the mandate and its inclusion in educational curricula…

While historical thinking has a rich literature, civic thinking has been an underdeveloped area of research in social studies education. I discuss in this article three activities designed to strengthen students' civic thinking skills by examining the "political death and resurrection" of Richard Nixon in the 1960s. These three…

In this article the author seeks to present social studies educators with practical means for using Reddit--an emerging social media website--as a tool for providing students with a democratic education grounded in citizenship and multicultural education. The author focuses on ways in which Reddit offers students the opportunity to learn from…

The authors conducted an online survey of elementary teacher education programs within a large midwestern state to assess preservice teachers' and teacher educators' beliefs about and preparedness to teach financial literacy. Very few preservice teachers had meaningful experiences with personal finance in high school, college, or personal decision…

Minimal research has been accumulated in the field of social studies education for Novakian concept mapping, yet there are many benefits from adding this learning tool to a teacher's instructional toolbox. The article defines Novakian concept mapping and invites readers to adopt digital Novakian concept mapping into the social studies classroom as…

Oral histories are a powerful pedagogical tool in developing historical understanding and important learning skills simultaneously. Teachers use firsthand accounts of historical time periods and/or events to help develop students' sense of history. In addition to gaining historical understanding, students are able to bring history alive by…

The authors of this article are two teacher educators who worked collaboratively to co-teach an interdisciplinary English and US history class to eleventh-grade students in an urban high school. They wanted to ensure the methods they were teaching preservice teachers were current and effective. The article discusses the foundational beliefs that…

The integration of dance into K-12 curriculum can help students to learn better, encouraging deeper exploration and active engagement with content knowledge. The purpose of this intervention study was to determine how the integration of dance and social studies with an anthropological framework affects student learning of content knowledge in…

This study uses interview and survey methods to describe the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme's (DP) development of students' "academic civic mindedness" and "model citizenship" at four public schools in California. Results indicate that the DP pedagogy enables students to develop many of the skills that are…

As the development of active, democratic citizens has become, arguably, the primary purpose of social studies education, the model of instruction in citizenship education varies significantly. Although current models of citizenship education typically foster a sense of societal conformity and law-obeyance to the exclusion of social change, this…

"Flipping" the Classroom techniques and the use of Embedded Writing Consultants (EWC) in institutions of higher education have been the subject of scholarly research in recent years. However, it appears that no studies have examined the simultaneous use of both "tools" in an introductory History course at the university level.…

This article evaluates the impact of extending a traditional written research paper into a digital documentary on students' perception and level of comprehension of a global sustainability issue. An adaptation of Moon's (1999) five-stage map of learning was used to assess the written and digital projects students submitted to a statewide…

The authors discuss how high school students participated in a unit in which they learned about African American history in a 1:1 computer classroom--in particular, how they were able to use digital history to learn about a variety of African American leaders who are not frequently covered in the traditional American History textbook. In addition,…

This action research study followed a social studies educator as he developed and implemented screencasts in three ninth-grade world history classes. He focused on ways to increase student-centered learning and meeting the needs of broad ranges of learners. The study revealed an increase in student engagement, instruction in career and college…

This article examines the discourses of preservice and practicing elementary school teachers as they participated in focus group discussions about instructional materials and resources for planning and teaching historical content within their social studies curriculum. The study took place in a professional development school setting in which…