Ideology and Teacher Decision Making in Social Studies

• In Event: Culture, Economics, Literacy, and Out-of-Classroom Experiences in Social Studies Education

Abstract

This paper examines teachers’ self-reported ideology and its relationship to their decision-making in social studies teaching. Using a survey, interviews and observations, I argue that curriculum standardization and the prevalent flat, blunted affects of social studies curriculum and subsequent teaching render anxieties surrounding “liberal” or “conservative” teachers moot. I demonstrate the ways in which “conservative” teachers and “liberal” teachers both succeed in perpetuating societal norms and indoctrinating their students according to neoliberal and capitalist values, while also highlighting rare instances of tactical subversion, offering these as possible ways forward towards a way of teaching social studies that is more life-giving and less reductive, concluding by suggesting a renewed focus on what I call “pedagogical affectivity” in classrooms.

Author

• Peter M Nelson, University of British Columbia