This mixed methods study explores secondary teacher conceptualizations of citizenship education in one Midwestern state in the USA. First, the authors situate the study within the teacher belief and citizenship education literature. They then analyze statewide survey responses and interview transcripts that describe teacher beliefs and classroom goals and the degree to which teachers believe these goals are met. The authors advance the typology of personally responsible, participatory and justice-oriented citizenship aims by thickly describing the profiles of teachers within these paradigms. Finally, the authors address the implications of this typology for problematizing citizenship education within preservice and in-service professional development.
In a national context of standards and high-stakes testing, concerns are emerging about challenges to the already tenuous position of the citizenship mission in the social studies curriculum. In this qualitative study, the authors administered a survey to social studies teachers in Ohio and conducted follow-up interviews focusing on the present purposes of social studies and the ways in which standards and testing are affecting instructional practice. The findings reveal a perception of standards as being of high quality, yet ultimately undermined through changes in scope and se-quence, narrowing of the curriculum, and a paucity of time to enact them. In addition, respondents indicated that high-stakes testing has become the primary curricular focus, which impacts instructional strategy decision making and frustrates citizenship education.
This study examined the actual use of computer technology by four beginning social studies teachers in their history courses during their first year in the classroom. Specifically, it involved an assessment of their efforts to use computer technology to teach their students about historical thinking and historical inquiry, in particular the concepts of perspective taking and historical empathy. The findings suggest that the beliefs the beginning social studies teachers in this study brought to the classroom profoundly impacted their students' appreciation of history. During their induction into the profession, these teachers focused on professional concerns, including the lack of effective support for the successful integration of technology in their classroom. Regardless of the resources that were available, each teacher's sense of selfefficacy and their students' dispositions created unique personal responses to the challenges posed by their particular school's technology infrastructure and culture. These teachers also often had difficulty using computers to engage their students in historical inquiry, especially when they tried to help their students grasp the concepts of historical thinking and historical empathy. The experiences they had in their teacher preparation program profoundly impacted these teachers' beliefs about using technology in the classroom as well as their efforts to integrate technology into their curriculum. As they attempted to integrate technology into their curriculum, they developed their own pedagogical content knowledge about teaching with computers.
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