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…

As preservice teachers navigate the emotional and physical stress that teaching demands, they face new pressures ranging from curriculum disputes to a revolving door of political and social policies that attempt to redefine social studies. As such, social studies educators and methods instructors have struggled to develop a common language and set…

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…

The landscape of education is dynamically evolving with the infusion of technology into classrooms, but it is not just math or science disciplines that are getting a digital makeover. Social studies education has entered a transformative phase as well. The "Computer Science for Social Studies" project, funded by the National Science…

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…

Authenticity is critical to meaningful civic learning, from understanding history and exploring current issues to discovering how government works and engaging with diverse forms of civic participation. This article explores authenticity in student-led civics through three dimensions: (1) being authentically connected to the self (culturally…

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…

This article argues that the best way to increase inquiry-based instruction is paradoxically to pay more attention to direct instruction because excessive attention to practices like close reading of texts and facilitating text-based discussions has led to neglect of content knowledge explanation as a core instructional practice. This article…

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…

In this article, the authors examine one approach to teaching hard history using an Inquiry Design Model (IDM) curricular loop. A curricular loop allows students to build a deeper understanding of a complex idea and develop a greater facility with the tools of inquiry over a course of study by regularly engaging in an inquiry. The curricular loop…