This quantitative study was conducted at a large four year, high undergraduate, public university (for this article, called Midwest University) to compare and assess the perceived benefit of traditional study abroad and short-term, faculty-led study abroad on participants’ employability skills, cultural competency and global citizenship. Participants reported their education abroad experience enhanced their understanding of course content as well as their views about global citizenship. The survey collected data about participants’ perceptions about social responsibility, global competency, and global civic engagement. In addition, the survey collected data about career competency skills such as teamwork, interpersonal communication, networking ability, leadership, problem solving and foreign language skills. The study defined education abroad at Midwest University and determined how well the program delivered on the Midwest University promise of social and economic mobility. Given that the resources devoted to a short-term, faculty-led experience are significantly lower than in a traditional study abroad program, the authors argue that this type of experience is more accessible to the students and participants at Midwest University.
Although developing of the 21 st Century skills of Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking and Creativity or the 4Cs has been seen as an important foundation of 21 st century teaching and learning, there have been difficulties identified in 4Cs implementation in schools. Primarily, issues associated with an overcrowded and disjointed curriculum (Lamb, Maire, & Doecke, 2017); a continued focus on teacher centred teaching (Adarlo & Jackson, 2015); and lack of encouragement of independent student inquiry (Poon et al., 2017) have been identified. However, initial studies have identified Project Based Learning (PBL) in extracurricular activities as a promising approach to incorporating the 4Cs in an authentic and sustainable manner. This investigation of a Global PBL approach in Indonesia and an African country as part of the 2013 Indonesian curriculum, clarifies some key teaching focuses within the 4Cs teaching strategies to enhance teacher planning. Additionally, it identifies teacher and student perspectives on key functions of Global PBL in augmenting the 4Cs. Although working closely together in pursuing a successful Global PBL project, teachers and students had different views of their level of attainment of the skills of the 4Cs. However, it was evident that learner-centred, constructivist and reflective approaches to teaching and learning (Chi-Syan, Jung-Tsan, Kuo, & Chien-Tzu, 2015) did promote all the 4Cs in one project. An understanding of the challenges and opportunities based on the findings of this research can serve as a guide for educators who wish to transfer Global PBL activities to classroom activities.
This multi-case study investigated how teaching in an International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP) Individuals and Societies (I & S) classroom influenced teachers’ global citizenship (GC) perceptions and pedagogy. Results demonstrate teachers were informed by their personal experiences and district expectations, utilizing a cosmopolitan global citizenship education (GCE) that aligned with the IB MYP philosophy. A disconnect sometimes existed as teachers’ rationales for global citizenship recognized the need for multiple perspectives and a critical view, but a passive or proactive approach influenced instruction. This research effort furthers the discussion on the role an international education framework can have on a teacher’s pedagogy, where global citizenship education is situated in the curriculum, and what influences a teacher’s thinking and pedagogy. This can be helpful to us in understanding the role curriculum context can have in shaping a teacher’s ideas about global citizenship and how they enact those ideas.
This mixed-methods study examines students’ perspectives on their high school social studies teachers’ views and pedagogy surrounding the issues of immigration, nationalism, and patriotism within the classroom. The article is based within the framework of critical pedagogy, particularly critical nationalism. The sample (N=58) comes from students enrolled in an introductory education course at a university in the American Southeast. The quantitative data revealed students believed their teachers tended towards more inclusive views towards immigration overall, but they were more exclusive towards undocumented immigration. They also tended to have high levels of patriotism and more moderate levels of nationalism. The qualitative data revealed a lack of discussion on immigration, which related to a larger fear of discussing contemporary issues of controversy within the classroom. This study has strong relevance for both educators and teachers educators in critically and thoroughly examining issues such as nationalism and immigration particularly in more conservative settings like the American Southeast where these topics are often given little more than a cursory overview.
This paper describes a mixed-methods investigation into whether an asynchronous, virtual collaboration with Japanese peers helped pre-service social studies teachers in the US demonstrate civic competence as it relates to international and global education. After the collaboration, most students described themselves as better-prepared world citizens; however, analysis of pre- and post-intervention surveys revealed only one statistically significant U-test result concerning participants’ pedagogical thinking. This investigation suggests education programs can better prepare novice teachers to think and act globally by providing international telecollaborative experiences and explicitly emphasizing classroom instruction (practice) informed by civic competence as it relates to international and global education (theory).
This paper reports on a sequential mixed-methods (quan a QUAL) study that explored rural Appalachian teachers' perspectives and pedagogical decisions about Global Citizenship Education (GCE). In phase one, a questionnaire was completed by social studies teachers (n=19) from remote and distant rural high schools located in Central Appalachia across two states. Closed-ended items were analyzed through descriptive statistics. Open-ended items were coded to elicit themes that helped to answer the research questions. In phase two, two participants from the original sample were interviewed to uncover their experiences navigating GCE in their unique community contexts. Findings suggest social studies teachers in rural Appalachia, while not using the exact terminology of global citizenship, support multiple types of global citizenship aims. They tend to perceive their communities as homogenous, isolated, and conservative, which presented both challenges to and stimuli for teaching global curricula. Participants tend to perceive much of their global curricula as contrarian in their communities and, therefore, relied on professional tact and community-based knowledge as rural natives to inform their pedagogical decisions.
In an effort to increase students’ preparation for and participation in civic life, teachers and schools across the United States have incorporated action civics programs into their social studies courses. These programs resemble many of the key characteristics of the public policy analysis process. However, there is little evidence suggesting that civic leaders use this process when engaging a civic issue. This study explores the processes that civic leaders in one community use when thinking aloud about two hypothetical civic action scenarios, comparing their processes with the public policy analysis process. Qualitative analysis demonstrates that civic leaders engage in the public policy analysis process but also include the crucial initial step of seeking community deliberation . This initial step makes the whole process community-based, especially in the Research, Planning, and Action phases. These findings indicate that action civics programs should consider incorporating more community awareness and involvement into the early parts of their curricula, enabling youth to work with community members rather than isolating action civics work to K-12 classrooms.
This paper aims to investigate the mediation role of fear of negative evaluation (FNE) in the relationship between perceived autonomy support (PAS) and academic risk-taking (ART) in the context of social studies course. A total of 339 middle school students from Turkey participated in the study. Data were collected through the Learning Climate Scale, Fear of Negative Evaluation in Academic Environments Scale, and Social Studies-Oriented Academic Risk-Taking Scale. Correlation results showed that PAS was negatively correlated with FNE and positively with ART. There was a negative correlation between FNE and ART. Structural equation model analyses showed that PAS predicted FNE negatively and ART positively. In addition, FNE predicted ART negatively. The partial mediation effect of FNE on the relationship between PAS and ART was significant. These results provide empirical evidence for the effect of self-determination theory (SDT) on affective characteristics such as ART and FNE. Keywords: self-determination theory, perceived autonomy support, academic risk-taking, fear of negative evaluation, social studies, mediation
COVID-19 quickly upended life in many ways, presenting teachers with the opportunity to confront the issue with their students or forge ahead in the midst of a societal crisis. Teachers can harness such current events with youth in ways that foster active democratic citizenship, but they must be prepared to implement such pedagogy. This article illuminates how preservice teachers in an elementary social studies methods course explored the global pandemic of COVID-19 to become more informed citizens and to plan for powerful inquiry-based learning of the current pandemic with young learners.
The coronavirus pandemic has presented an opportunity to rethink how social studies education is framed. Using global citizenship education to teach about the pandemic properly places global health within the purview of all people and builds an onramp for teachers and students to make this kind of theoretical framing a mainstream part of social studies instruction. Drawing on the practice of one experienced secondary social studies teacher, this paper discusses the potential of issues-centered dialogue about the pandemic to narrow the gap between what people know about global health issues and what they do about them.
The coronavirus has unleashed another pandemic - xenophobia. This article aims to counter the xenophobic narrative that affects many Asians and people of Asian descent due to COVID-19 pandemic. To counter this narrative, we offer an anti-racist digital citizenship framework in social studies. This illustrates a critical triad of self-regulation, empathy, and compassion. Self-regulation is the ability to develop cognitive control of emotional reactivity to facilitate self-directed change. Empathy is the understanding of another person’s emotional state and the projection of oneself into the other’s situation. Compassion is taking a mindful action to alleviate the struggles and sufferings of others.
In 2019, Wayne Journell published a book, which is called unpacking fake news that gives an overview of the issue of fake news, and how teachers can teach students to handle such fake news. This book started by showing how the fake news work and impact people's beliefs, especially in the political field. This book also gives a reader an overview of historical events of fake news and why teenagers are more susceptible to fake news. This book provides readers with assessment tools that help students to evaluate and distinguish between fake and real news and includes educational approaches and strategies that teachers can use to help their students be more critical thinkers.
This paper explores secondary history teachers’ reasoning regarding historical objectivity and if their reasoning resonates with their classroom practices. Data was collected through in-depth interviews and lesson observations with 24 history teachers from 15 public senior high schools the Central Region of Ghana. Data was thematically analysed, with three themes forming the main lines of argument in this paper. Findings show that participants hold constructionist perspectives of historical objectivity. They recognise evidence as playing an important role in accessing an existing past reality and regard the interpretive intervention of historians as constructive in the study of the past. Classroom practices reveal minimal attention to the problematisation of historical knowledge as most participants taught history as grand narratives. A postmodernist re-orientation of the History curriculum as well as continuous professional development of teachers could help improve classroom practice.
While the use of primary sources in education has long been an object of interest, their adoption is still lacking in social studies courses in Turkey. This work presents the results of a qualitative study conducted with the participation of 37 students and a social studies teacher with the aim to reveal 7 th- grade students’ and teachers’ opinions on primary source-based activities used to teach a social studies unit. Semi-structured interviews, field observation notes, and primary source analysis handouts were used. We find that primary source-based activities helped participants to better understand the lessons, increased interest, motivation, and participation in the course, supported empathy development, and gave students the opportunity to express themselves. Some of the issues that emerged in the use of primary sources were the difficult readability of some of the sources, challenges in managing time effectively, and difficulty for some of the students to work in groups efficiently. Key Words: Primary source, social studies education, social studies education in Turkey
This essay expatiates and expounds on the merits and the demerits of two social studies instructional strategies (peer or collaborative learning and discussions) through virtual means in the current Covid-19 global pandemic, and offers eight helpful guidelines in addressing the demerits, for social studies instructors. The merits of virtual collaborative learning and discussions include distance learning, elicitation and extraction, introduction to new virtual technological tools, appreciation of diversity and diverse opinions, and sharing of external resources. The demerits include the fear of large class size, the disconnect in classroom interactions, cultural and socio-cultural differentiations, non-constructive discourses, the preferential syndrome, classroom discussion tardiness, and verbose posts. Eight recommendations are made for instructors which include the use of Voice Threads for audio and video discussions, a synchronous class introduction, responding to peers with minimal or no responses to their posts, assigning chapters of reading to students to present, balancing complimentary remarks with analytical critiques to posts, instructors to work with students to plan alternatives during technological challenges, and a formative and summative assessment of students’ engagement, discussion, and learning experiences.
The special issue of JISS Social Studies Classroom in the Time of Pandemic: Experience, Practice, and Advice aims to help social studies professional to b etter prepare for the challenges of COVID-19. Eleven essays in this special issue involve helpful advice on how to design an online class, develop electronic social studies content materials, establish relations with students in online classrooms, and use the pandemic as a way to educate responsible citizens. The authors of the essays are classroom teachers and university instructors.
Two broad ideas emerge from reflections on my career in global and international education: first, that my ‘lived experience’ offers both intelligence and ignorance in terms or how I view the world; and second, that the essence of my humanity is enhanced through my identification with, and sense of responsibility for, fellow humans. The latter idea is encapsulated in the African philosophy of ubuntu. These two ideas prompt my contention that the global education movement has failed to adequately convey through its literature and practice the complexity and interrelatedness of global systems, including the inextricable connections between humans and their environments. The nature of contemporary global challenges, such as climate change, demands that we understand how global systems are intertwined and adjust our actions accordingly. The social studies need to be at the forefront of nurturing systems level thinking and innovation, particularly to counter the tendency arising from advances in information technology to develop cultures of conformity. Young people around the world have the potential to bring about system-wide change through their ordinary voices of dissent, a collective commitment to decision-making based on recognizing the needs of all humanity, rather than just assessing the benefits to individuals or nations.
COVID-19 shut down our university and sent us into remote learning. My elementary social studies methods’ teacher candidates and I sought to make sense of the ensuing chaos. Fueled by the threat of COVID-19 and growing issues of racism, I designed a focused, inquiry-based lesson using the Inquiry Design Generator of the C3 Framework (NCSS, 2013) to revisit our work in Takaki’s (2012) A Different Mirror for Young People: A History of Multicultural America . The inquiry invited the teacher candidates to grasp the significance of the past in shaping the present, and to engage in informed action using children’s literature.
