Here the author shares his attempt to add, without financial cost, substantive and dynamic international experiences to the secondary social studies teacher education program he facilitates. He provides thick descriptions of (1) the overarching goals of a collaborative, online, international learning project, (2) the curriculum materials he helped…

The absence of social studies curriculum is a problem because it undermines the essential purposes of schooling: to prepare participatory, contributing members of a democratic society. In this article, we argue that integrating the literacy and social studies curricula is one meaningful way to support such civic-minded social studies instruction…

The Junior Knight Camp is an annual summer program that specifically supports elementary school students in an effort to increase knowledge of social studies using an interdisciplinary thematic approach. This interdisciplinary approach includes STEM, the arts, literacy, and physical education. The camp operates on multiple campuses of the…

Oral history research projects are assignments that can foster student engagement and learning in undergraduate survey history courses. However, existing scholarship indicates that these assignments are seldom used in undergraduate survey courses. Since the aims of undergraduate survey history courses are to satisfy graduation requirements, foster…

This study was designed to explore preservice elementary teacher understanding of The First Amendment and religious freedom in public schools in the Southeastern United States. Participants of the study were 160 preservice elementary teachers enrolled in the teacher preparation programs of 3 universities across 2 states located in a region…

This qualitative interview study explores the perceptions five USC Shoah Foundation Master Teachers who integrate Holocaust survivor and witness testimony via IWitness, a web resource from the USC Shoah Foundation, on students' development of empathy. Findings of this study suggest that the personalized nature of engaging with testimony in…

This manuscript, written with the educator in mind, describes the Youth Historians in Harlem (YHH) program, a twenty-week after-school history program that engaged urban students in history by immersing them in aspects of the historical process. Throughout the program, a group of Black male high school students were apprenticed as historical…

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…

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…