Here, I address the call for teacher education programs to feature international elements to help pre-service teachers craft powerful classroom instruction and successfully work with students from culturally diverse backgrounds. I share a qualitative investigation of participants' experiences during a short-term study abroad program in Japan that…

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…

World history curriculum in the United States is Eurocentric. By downplaying contributions from non-Western societies, state standards of world history in the modern era create a narrative of the West as a driver of progress and Europe as the primary protagonist of global events. Research further shows social studies teachers rely on such state…

It is known that oral history studies have a positive effect on students' learning, skills, attitudes, and motivations. In this direction, it has an important place in the context of student-centered constructivist practices in teaching different subjects in social studies courses. Social studies teachers should have sufficient knowledge and…

Looking at the effects of globalization from numerous perspectives: economic, spatial, cultural, and environmental, it has become abundantly clear that today's students must possess geographic knowledge and associated skills to be prepared for civic life and informed decision-making. However, the current state of geographic proficiency among U.S.…

Teaching financial literacy represents an important expectation of K-12 public school educators. Financial literacy is usually defined as having the knowledge and ability to function monetarily within the existing economic system. This system can be hierarchical and inequitable, if not oppressive. We argue that stories have been used throughout…

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…

There are many factors that affect the perceptions of students enrolled in the classroom teaching programs of education faculties concerning the concept of social studies teaching. The most important of these factors are the instructors they observed in the faculty and their previous educational lives. In this context, this study aimed to…

A quarter of a century has passed since lawmakers enacted the New Jersey Holocaust education mandate, and it seems responsible and timely to ask if it, the original Holocaust education mandate, actually encouraged substantive learning about the Holocaust. Despite repeated fanfare about the mandate and its inclusion in educational curricula…

Contextualized in the critical pedagogies of universal design for learning (UDL) and social justice education, our study aimed to equip teacher candidates (TCs) to provide students with equitable access to learning social studies content knowledge, skills, and processes as a way to equally empower all students to be civically engaged, and thus to…

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 article introduces the social studies field to Dorothy Heatchote's Mantle of Expert (MOE). MOE is a dramatic inquiry approach used in several subject areas and can work at all levels in the social studies curriculum. The authors go into the development of using this approach in an elementary and middle teacher education program. After sharing…

This article reports a self-study that analyzes my experience as a teacher educator navigating a turbulent educational landscape with the advent of edTPA. The data consist of my journal entries, the syllabi, handouts, work submitted by my students, and course evaluations. Data were analyzed by using an inductive process to describe how the edTPA…

In this article we highlight elements of culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy that prepare teachers to work with English Learners (ELs) from a variety of backgrounds. Specifically, we focus on the learning experiences and practices of one secondary social studies teacher to explore promising practices with ELs and effective teacher…

Using Lani Guinier's notion of "racial literacy" and the findings from a study that analyzed how recent K-12 social studies textbooks portray racial violence against African Americans, I argue in this article that students come to teacher education programs possessing a limited understanding of racism as a historically situated, institutionalized…