in this article, author Neil Shanks writes about a "people's economics" approach to teaching K-graduate economics, an approach he argues should replace the more traditional and pervasive neoclassical approach. Similar to the shift from 'great white men and wars' history to social and 'bottom up' history, Shanks believes a people's…

The current challenges facing the electoral system could undermine the peaceful transfer of power and the integrity of elections, two cornerstones of democratic governance. Thus, it is vital to help young people understand how the electoral system works, including the processes in place to ensure accuracy and fairness as well as the real…

Project-based learning (PBL) is well known for engaging students enthusiastically and for supporting strong experiential learning. Less well known is that rigorous PBL also excels at fostering rich civic engagement--of key importance now, at a time of heightened concern about civics education. In this article, the authors will illuminate how…

In a recent study of the impact of the "College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards," at least 32 states cited, endorsed, framed, modeled, or adopted the C3 Framework in their social studies standards. Consequently, the expectation for almost 30 million students is that social studies teachers…

The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework continues the long tradition of inquiry-based learning in the social studies by merging disciplinary and critical inquiry approaches. Using the Inquiry Design Model (IDM), an instructional design tool, teachers guide students through a series of formative tasks to address supporting questions. By…

Deliberation and inquiry can go hand-in-hand. Inquiry-based learning calls on teachers to facilitate student-led discovery, something that can only happen when students ask questions and weigh possible answers before settling on a plausible and evidentiary answer. Teaching through inquiry is about setting students up to wrestle with the issue at…

Teaching students to make an effective claim is a critical step in establishing a culture of inquiry in the social studies education. After the "College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards" was published in 2013, Ryan Lewis was interested on the phrase "compelling question" and reorganize…

Teachers introduced to the Inquiry Design Model (IDM) are often relieved to learn that inquiry isn't a fuzzy ideal, but rather is a curricular approach with a defined vernacular--questions, tasks, and sources. The inquiry blueprint is a one-page visual representation of the questions, tasks, and sources that define an inquiry. In the blueprint,…

When the author tells people that her research focuses on how people teach and learn with historic places, the first response is usually "Oh, I love field trips." This sensibility, that field trips are required to teach about a place, is the single greatest barrier to understanding what can be learned from Place. Every Place is an…

When the pandemic shut schools down in the spring, teachers mobilized the educational home front and taught themselves how to navigate familiar and unfamiliar instructional challenges in the virtual classroom using the online platform Zoom. Now, teachers and students are in a new school year, amidst a raging pandemic, and witnessing some of the…

A full year after the COVID-19 crisis began, most schools are still offering instruction completely online or via hybrid models. As educators were forced to quickly adjust to the new digital environment of education, the nation faced an unprecedented series of social crises, including rising unemployment and economic disparities, racial…

In the United States, people have long had a tendency to see the immediate, personal benefits of new technologies as contributing to human progress well before understanding their long-term social consequences. Facebook offers an instructive (and destructive) example. Facebook has failed to build infrastructural safeguards or accept the ethical…

Project-based learning (PBL) is a powerful way to make learning meaningful to students and to promote student questions and ownership of the inquiry process. It is a useful way to design and deliver curriculum that is similar in many ways to the Inquiry Design Model (IDM). Although PBL and IDM both value inquiry and student questioning, PBL…

Social studies teachers often have a love-hate relationship with inquiry. The possibilities of a dynamic and engaging approach to learning labor against time constraints imposed by a content-heavy curriculum. In that scenario, how can professional development (PD) on inquiry inform educators and encourage skeptical teachers to implement this…

Successful inquiries using the C3 Framework depend on compelling questions that structure an inquiry and supporting questions that allow the inquiry to unfold coherently. The Inquiry Design Model (IDM) reflects the three elements common in inquiry teaching and learning. Those elements--questions, tasks, and sources--are represented in a one-page…