Citizenship Education and Social

Studies in the Elementary Classroom

EDU 555
October 15, 2015

A Spin on Learning

Creating an engaging and

effective social studies
curriculum for elementary
students is a critical
element of citizenship
education.

What is Citizenship
Education?

Summary Points
Contrarians believe that students do not know or understand enough
about U.S history, geography, government, or economy.
Tensions include the emphasis on the heritage of the dominant society
vs. the development of critical thinking; and citizenship for social
reproduction or social reconstruction.
Informed social criticism is citizenship education that is directed
toward social transformation and is guided by justice and equality for
the purpose of determining social change. The ultimate goal is to
support students in coming to understand the world and to have agency
as citizens.
Brian Fay states that human beings are, broadly intelligent, curious,
reflective and willful beings and that we decide how to be and what to
do through deliberation but that one should not assume that all citizens
within a community agree on all things.
Social studies educators much strive not to simply reproduce the
image of democratic citizens but to prepare those citizens to actively
participating in what should be.
Critique Points
Deweys Democracy and Education education has no definite
meaning until we define the kind of society we have in mind.
To be rational is to have good reasons for ones beliefs, together with
an openness to reconsider alternatives and a willingness to revise ones
beliefs
We must ask ourselves what kind of society we want to live in ...in
order to construct meaning for social studies as citizenship education
and relate this question to our experiences and professional practice.

Social Studies for the 21st Century

What problems do young children encounter as they enter
school?
Are kindergarten students being taught how to accept and
appreciate ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic diversity?
Kindergarteners should understand how to make and obey
rules.
In order to make personally and socially productive decisions,
students need the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of social
studies introduced at an earlier age.
What should be the definition of and rationale for social
studies for early childhood/elementary children?
Social studies provides lifelong skills such as problem solving
and helps students integrate them into their lives.
A social studies program should allow children to formulate,
reassess, and affirm their beliefs.
It is essential that children first learn to become effective
participators in their current school and groups by
understanding the concepts and skills of a democratic society

What are the goals for early childhood/elementary social studies that no
other subject in the elementary curriculum can achieve?
For children to develop knowledge about the history and heritage of this country,
and concepts from geography, anthropology, and sociology in order to gain a
better understanding of the spatial relationships of their environment and how
the world has developed.
For children to develop skills such as decision making and communication.
Children can develop positive attitudes toward knowledge and learning through
the context of social studies.
What are the developmental characteristics of children that should be
considered in planning a social studies program?
Children are interested in games that allow them to develop concepts and use
problem solving skills.
By the age of 9 or 10, children have well-established racial and ethnic prejudices
that are difficult to change.
Older children should be given abstract and analytical concepts to allow them to
develop political and democratic attitudes.
What is the research base for elementary school social studies?
It is believed that young students are more capable of learning difficult and
abstract concepts and that if early learning does not occur, the optimum time for
teaching the concepts may pass, making it more difficult to teach them in the
future.
Research indicates that reluctance to teach concepts of time and space could be
unfounded.
Children as young as kindergarten engage in citizenship education, covertly and
overtly.

 What is the current status of social studies in the elementary

school?
Overall elementary social studies instruction needs improvement.
Instructional time averages from 20 minutes (lower elementary) to 34
minutes (upper elementary), with some schools having no instructional
times in K-3.
Though thinking and decision-making skills are often listed as student
goals, students are rarely given opportunities to use those skills in the
classroom.
How should we prepare teachers of early childhood and
elementary social studies?
Teachers future teachers how to TEACH social studies is critical in
changing how it will be taught in elementary schools in the future.
Teachers must be knowledgeable about learning and motivation
theories and be able to integrate all subjects together and to actually
work with the their students.
Teachers must be well grounded in and comfortable with multicultural
education as the number of minority students is growing while minority
teachers are declining.
What type of continued professional development is needed for
early childhood/elementary social studies teachers?
Teachers must remain knowledgeable about changing student
demographics.
Professional development should be shaped by evolving research in

Powerful and Purposeful Social

Studies
Students should be provided with
purposeful and meaningful instruction
and experiences that are challenging
and developmentally appropriate.
Denying students the opportunity to
build social studies vocabulary and
background knowledge can lead to
lower literacy levels and, ironically,
increases the achievement gap.

 A variety of instructional methodologies such as

role playing and project based learning should
be used to provide diverse, differentiated, and
meaningful instruction.
Concepts of social studies should be integrated
throughout the curriculum on a daily basis.
Allowing students to participate in learning
experiences that involve core values of
democracy, including freedom of speech and
thought, equality of opportunity, justice, and
diversity.

Historical Thinking
Given a photograph, groups of 5 th graders
will examine the photograph and identify
at least 2 details that show the photo is
from a different time than the present.
I would support this learning by using this
activity as an introduction before delving
into a more significant historical event.
Students will be more prepared to pull
evidence from photographs and use them
to see the events from the subjects
perspective.

Intro to Taking Historical

Perspectives
Teacher will bring in a photos of
people from various points in the past.
She will model analyzing the photo for
the class, noticing how the clothing
and background may be different from
the present time and what someone
that age might look like today.
Students will be separated into center
groups and given one photo per
group. They will be asked to analyze
the photo as the teacher modeled and
to write down the analysis in their
social studies journals.

Using Media
Discussing local topics that effected the area and
community in which our school is located and the
students live. For example if I was teaching in a Troy
school I would teach the cause and consequence that
the end of the Civil War had on steel production and
prosperity in Troy.
http://study.com/academy/lesson/bloody-kansas-causes-e
ffects-and-summary-ofevents.html
Conflict and violence brought to Kansas by sides
representing anti and pro slavery.
Abolitionists and Southerners alike crossed into the
state to vote for or against the slave movement, leading
to numerous cases of extreme violence.

Closing Thoughts (1)

I like this approach to learning because
it allowed me to move at my own pace
and revisit aspects of the assignment if I
needed clarity or more time. At the
same time, though I completed the
assignment to the best of my ability, I
do not truly feel like I learned anything,
rather I acquired broad concepts that I
do not know how to use.