Beyond the Common Core: A Framework for Teaching Social Studies and Literacy for Social Justice

• In Event: Studying Diversity in Teacher Education: A Focus on Teacher Educators

Abstract

Objectives:
The framework presented in this paper is designed for educators to see concretely how we can teach Social Studies for social justice in the context of Language Arts given the marginalization of Social Studies in our schools today. Two essential questions will be addressed: (1) How do education reform initiatives influence social justice teaching with pre and inservice teachers? (2) What resources, perspectives, and skills do teacher educators need to support teachers to be effective in constrained teaching environments?
Perspectives:
In order to teach Social Studies for social justice, teachers work to build curriculum that connects to their students’ lives and prior learning. Moreover, teachers challenge normative thought by integrating multiple perspectives into the curriculum, especially the voices of those often traditionally excluded in texts. Students tie the stories of struggle and resistance to contemporary social justice issues and make connections between historical events and present-day circumstances. In addition, teachers and students work collaboratively to make change in their school and community.

Methods, Data Sources, and Results:
As a teacher educator, I found many of my students struggling to understand how social justice-oriented Social Studies content could be taught in their schools. I read across multiple multicultural education, social justice-oriented journal articles and books to document strategies that would support teachers in restructuring and reshaping prescribed curriculum. I grouped multiple strategies together to develop a framework that could help teachers strategically navigate curricular structures to plan and enact social justice-oriented Social Studies curricula and meet Language Arts Common Core Standards.
I used the framework as a scaffold for teaching my students how to build social justice-oriented Social Studies unit given their curricular constraints. In class, I discussed each tenet of the framework and modeled for students what the tenet looked like in practice. I taught a unit consisting of five lesson plans, each lesson plan focusing on a different tenet. After students observed a lesson, we discussed how Social Studies was integrated with Language Arts content. At the end of the semester, students developed their own units using the framework as their guide and presented the unit to the class. I draw from the students teachers’ lessons and my research with beginning teachers to provide examples of social justice-oriented Social Studies lessons throughout the paper.

Scholarly Significance:
The framework provided in this paper not only guides teachers step-by-step into constructing social justice-oriented Social Studies curriculum, but also integrates case studies of teachers enacting Social Studies content when constraints such as mandated curriculum and pressures related to content coverage in Language Arts and Math makes teaching Social Studies for social justice appear impossible. This is especially significant given the marginalization of Social Studies in our schools today. This conceptual piece provides teacher educators and teachers with a resource that may help them in creating and enacting social justice-oriented Social Studies curriculum in a context of Language Arts and thus make teaching Social Studies for social justice a more feasible endeavor.

Author

• Ruchi Agarwal-Rangnath, San Francisco State University