The Elephant in the (Class)room: Investigating Social Studies Teacher Conception and Enactment of Instructional Rigor

• In Event: Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Complexities of Teachers' Practices in Social Studies Classrooms

Abstract

This study investigates how teachers define and enact rigor in United States History classrooms across diverse contexts. Beginning with an analysis of 32 teacher interviews, a rigor typology was developed and five teachers from the original interviews that most closely matched each of the typologies were observed for one semester. Each of the five teachers was also interviewed three additional times and various artifacts (readings, assignments, and assessments) were collected and examined over the course of the semester. The results are a cross case analysis that explores how teachers articulate and enact rigor in social studies classrooms across contexts during a time of national focus and rhetoric on raising the level of instructional rigor in schools.

Author

• Brian Gibbs, University of Wisconsin - Madison