The Impact of Teachers Sharing Their Opinions Within a Semi-controversial Class in Japan: A Case Study on a Discussion of Lowering the Age of Candidacy in a Junior High School Social Studies Class.

This paper examines how teachers expressing their political views influence students’ opinion formation and discussions in classrooms regarding controversial issues. We used the methods of Journell (2011) and built on the scholarship of Hess and McAvoy (2015) and Iwasaki (2021). As a case study, we observed a junior high school social studies class and the teacher’s approach to a lesson on lowering the age of candidacy in Japan, especially concerning how and if the teacher’s personal opinions influenced the students. Teachers’ political neutrality is a growing issue of concern in citizenship education. Some Japanese educators and education authorities argue that teachers should avoid expressing their personal views on controversial issues because of how it may impact students. However, we found that teachers’ opinions may have a limited influence on student opinions, thus adding nuance and insight to the existing literature. Namely, the impact of teachers’ expressing political opinions in a classroom should be considered with factors such as their choice of teaching materials and methods

The Role of Museum-Based Education in Creating 9/11 Curriculum

This article is a qualitative investigation of teachers’ pedagogical approaches to the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. The ten participants are regionally diverse in-service teachers who attended workshops conducted by the 9/11 Memorial Museum and Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York during June and July, 2019. Teachers presented their 9/11 lessons at a March 5, 2020 conference in New York City to pre- and in-service teachers. Surveys, interviews, and lessons determined how teachers implemented professional development in their schools. The paper seeks to improve teacher training through the use of primary sources and place-based education to engender student inquiry. The creation of 9/11 digital lesson plans on the Library of Congress’ Teaching with Primary Sources site provides teachers access to ensure that 9/11 receives greater emphasis in the social studies curriculum. Findings indicate that in-situ, place-based experiences increased 9/11 curriculum in classrooms

Towards Evaluating the Model United Nations as Teaching Tool in Morocco

Model United Nations (MUN) has seen dramatic growth in Morocco, both at the university and high school levels. It is a popular and effective teaching tool. This paper aims to test its utility using various methodologies. It shares the results of surveys, both historic and current, conducted at Al Akhawayn University evaluating the activity among students. It also includes interviews with MUN participants, both coaches and students, at Al Akhawayn University and elsewhere. Finally, the paper evaluates whether the tool is trans-cultural or whether it is an expansion of White space

The Future of U.S.-China Relations Lies With a New Generation

The case is made that the future of now-threatened US-China Relations lies with a new generation and preparing it for that future warrants our close attention and thought.  A proof-of-concept experiment is offered in support of this argument

An Emerging Critical Lens: Elementary Teacher Candidates’ Developing Evaluation of Social Studies Resources on Online Sites of Curriculum Sharing

This article shares findings from a qualitative inquiry that explores preservice teachers’ evaluation of social studies curriculum resources found on Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers. Both at the beginning and the end of their elementary social studies methods course at a large university in the southeastern United States, the teacher candidates were asked to identify good and bad examples of social studies resources and justify their choices. Their choices and the justification they provided were analyzed using qualitative coding. Findings indicate that while teacher candidates’ choices and justifications were sometimes further developed by the end of their social studies methods course, their critical evaluation of shared online curriculum resources was incomplete or limited to near-exact examples from the class. The author poses a number of on-going considerations regarding teacher candidate equity literacy skills as they relate to evaluation and usage of online curriculum sharing sites

Preservice Teachers’ Use of Pedagogy to Conceptualize Distortion in World Maps

This research study focuses on preservice teachers’ (n=66) inspection of pedagogical connections between geography and geometrical reasoning. The aim of this study was to empirically investigate the use of mathematical analysis to enrich the social studies topics of the distortion of country sizes on the world map. The analysis of data collected from the 66 participants generated seven specific pedagogical strategies and covered nine identified mathematics and social studies topics during their lesson concepts for introducing the world map to elementary students. Results from this study reveal that after being corrected regarding this misconception, the participating preservice teachers were successful in developing learning activities to address this topic, employing student-centered strategies including technology-based, paper-based, hands-on, and feet-on approaches

Revamping Teacher Community

The school community is made up of different components, including students, teachers, administration, and the community as a whole. In recent times, the teacher community has been impacted by various things such as a lack of support from administrations and the community, the COVID-19 pandemic, education legislation, and more. This lack of teacher community is impacting the number of teachers who choose to stay in the profession and the quality of education that students receive. With this article, I hope to bring more awareness to the importance of teacher community, the ways that it can be improved, and its implications in the field

Deliberating Complicated Conversation in Curriculum Discourse for Social Justice

Taking inspiration from Dewey’s (1998) writing on experience and education and Pinar’s (1981) conception of currere, dealing with autobiographical reflections of individuals regarding their educational experiences, I would like to problematize the curriculum studies as a broad education studies field in Thailand, and social studies education in particular. Locating my own positionality as a curriculum worker, I perceive curriculum as an educational text that opens diverse possibilities for critical-reflective and deliberative thoughts about my educational experiences throughout my life. Shifting the personal conception from curriculum development to curriculum understanding discourse, I have gained insights that curriculum is a hermeneutic journey through one’s lived experiences grounding on the socio-cultural, historical, and political economy of each specific society. The field of curriculum studies and social studies education is still under the various forms of technical-instrumental rationality at all levels of education. I have come to recognize the reason why curriculum development becomes a mainstream educational narrative in curriculum history and theory and is currently still the powerful hegemonic discourse for conceptualizing curriculum in Thailand. Critical reflection on such discourse, therefore, has the potential to cause individuals to change their recurrently entrenched normative beliefs about curriculum and knowledge production as well as educational praxis, and to augment transformative knowledge and deliberative actions