Grants and Contracts Details
Description
"Teaching, in its best form, should be about learning. Insights from the field of the learning sciences indicate that learning with understanding requires real-world application, mediated inquiry, and opportunities for authentic discussion and sense-making in collaboration with others (e.g., Bransford et al., 2000). Teaching social studies (the study of human behavior, institutions, relationships, resources) so that students learn with understanding in the current political climate of hyper-polarization and in the digital age where misinformation is rampant and partisanship often prevails over reasoned evidence, is therefore a tall order (Journell, 2022; Klein, 2020).
For public education to live up its promise of preparing future citizens for informed and active engagement in American democratic society, K-12 teachers must provide routine and consistent opportunities for high quality civics learning in their classrooms. Unfortunately, the importance assigned to standardized test scores dictates that teachers, especially at the elementary level, spend the majority of their teaching time focused on the prioritized subjects of reading and math, meaning there is little time devoted to social studies, where civic education typically lives. This project is designed to mediate that problem.
In this proposed study, two educational researchers will design and test the integration of a civic inquiry and action learning experience, inclusive of attention to digital/information literacy, into a pre-service teacher (PST) elementary social studies methods course in Kentucky, to examine if and how that experience shifts PST attitudes toward their future practice as elementary teachers.
Our project aims are to provide pre-service teachers with firsthand experience in civic inquiry and action as part of a social studies methods course, to understand what kinds of teacher preparation experiences and opportunities influence future teaching practices, and to explore how engaging in a civic inquiry and action cycle mediates, if at all, pre-service teachers’ imaginations about what is possible with their future students in their future classrooms."
For public education to live up its promise of preparing future citizens for informed and active engagement in American democratic society, K-12 teachers must provide routine and consistent opportunities for high quality civics learning in their classrooms. Unfortunately, the importance assigned to standardized test scores dictates that teachers, especially at the elementary level, spend the majority of their teaching time focused on the prioritized subjects of reading and math, meaning there is little time devoted to social studies, where civic education typically lives. This project is designed to mediate that problem.
In this proposed study, two educational researchers will design and test the integration of a civic inquiry and action learning experience, inclusive of attention to digital/information literacy, into a pre-service teacher (PST) elementary social studies methods course in Kentucky, to examine if and how that experience shifts PST attitudes toward their future practice as elementary teachers.
Our project aims are to provide pre-service teachers with firsthand experience in civic inquiry and action as part of a social studies methods course, to understand what kinds of teacher preparation experiences and opportunities influence future teaching practices, and to explore how engaging in a civic inquiry and action cycle mediates, if at all, pre-service teachers’ imaginations about what is possible with their future students in their future classrooms."
Status | Finished |
---|---|
Effective start/end date | 2/16/24 → 2/15/25 |
Funding
- University of Kentucky UNITE Research Priority Area: $11,900.00
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