Socially relevant curriculum and the importance of opening up spaces for negotiation and 'meaning making' to occur are increasingly common ideas in my academic writing. In this article, I argue that cultural otherness, anti-racism, spirituality and religion are fundamental to contemporary socially relevant curricula. In it, I report how student…

The present study aimed to determine the viewpoints of student teachers at a state university in Turkey about the most important social, environmental, and global problems. For this purpose, one of the qualitative research methods, the art-based research method was adopted. The participants' cartoon drawings were utilized as the data collecting…

The manifestation of Campbell's Law is examined in light of the current era in American public schools of high stakes testing inclusive of narrowed curriculums and teaching to the test. The decades-long practice of reducing instructional time of non-tested subjects, which includes social studies fundamentals, has resulted in a less informed…

This qualitative study explored administrative responses to local and sociopolitical events challenging campus climates at public research universities. Using critical discourse analysis, we examined the use of language as a form of power in publicly available documents addressing campus climate for diversity and inclusion at 31 U.S. institutions.…

The study of current events can take several forms, and the right current event to study as a class depends on the educational purposes, the curricular standards the authors want to address, and the resources they have available to meet them, and what the needs and abilities are of the students present in the class. In this article, they focus on…

The call to promote social justice sets the social work profession in a political context. In an effort to enhance social workers' preparedness to engage in political advocacy, this article calls on educators to integrate a broad theoretical understanding of power into social policy curricula. We suggest the use of a multidimensional…

This study investigates the Jewish history engagement for middle school students "playing" in the Jewish Court of All Time (JCAT), an online simulation of a current events court case with historical roots (http://jcat.icsmich.org). Through an online platform across several schools, students research and play historical and current…

Students who experience a transcendent moment as they vicariously walk in the shoes of another person demonstrate the utilization of sociological imagination. Even though the concept of sociological imagination was advanced more than 50 years ago by sociologist C. Wright Mills, there is high value to revisit this concept and for its application to…

Have you ever avoided discussing controversial issues in the classroom? Teachers report often avoiding these types of discussions due to concerns about the unpredictability of student reactions, accusations of trying to push a political agenda, and insufficient knowledge or skills to work through complex issues. Debates, however, have been shown…

This article examines the social and political struggles out of which emerged the proposal to expand the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC). Situating the proposal in the contexts of the 1992 presidential campaign and the aftermath of the Los Angeles Uprising, the article discusses how particular struggles and debates structured the…

In the early 1980s, it was not sub-prime mortgages and toxic assets, bank failures and factory closures that crowded the pages of the business section of the daily newspapers. It was something called "stagflation," a noxious combination of inflationary pressures on currency and stagnating levels of production. Still, the effects were…

Social Security is a contemporary topic that exemplifies a social issue-centered approach to social studies, one that allows students to get beyond the school walls to analyze a contemporary topic that ultimately affects virtually everyone. In this article, the authors provide a brief history of Social Security, describe how it is funded and…

Presented are the highlights of a press conference featuring biomedical ethicist LeRoy Walters of Georgetown University and attorney Andrew Kimbrell of the Foundation on Economic Trends. The opposing points of view of these two speakers serve to outline the pros and cons of the gene therapy issue. (CW)

This document compiles materials and bibliographic references to assist national high school debaters in researching the 1989-1990 topic, "How Can the Federal Government Reform Prisons and Jails in the United States?" Materials are organized into a section of general materials and around each of three official debate propositions within…

Describes a three-part midterm exercise designed to demonstrate how using general semantics as an analytical tool can increase awareness and improve critical thinking about an issue. Explains each phase of the assignment in detail. Concludes with student responses to the exercise, indicating that the exercise is indeed helpful in analyzing current…