Sketching the Landscape of Core Practices in Social Studies Education

• In Event: Core Practices in Social Studies Teacher Education: Promises and Pitfalls

Abstract

Purpose
In the last decade an influential group of teacher education researchers and teacher educators have called for the field to take up these conceptual tools to develop and study various pedagogies of practice that provide opportunities for teacher candidates to learn teaching by leveraging “core practices” of teaching (see Grossman & McDonald, 2008). Core practices are defined as “identifiable components (fundamental to teaching and grounded in disciplinary goals) that teachers enact to support learning. Core practices consist of strategies, routines, and moves that can be unpacked and learned by teachers” (Grossman, Kavanagh, & Pupik Dean, 2018, p. 4).

Methods
In this presentation, I will draw on takeaways from a review of literature, which asked, How are teacher educators supporting teacher candidates to learn about and enact core practices of teaching? I will offer general findings from a core practices literature review and include a particular focus on social studies efforts as core practices-oriented teacher education. Using a definition of core practices noted above, I included only those articles written after what is arguably a seminal piece (Grossman, Hammerness, and McDonald, 2009) for core practices research. I further limited inclusion to peer reviewed articles that provided a description of a core-practice approach and a description of how that approach was actually used in teacher education, not just a description of the approach. To inform this presentation, I returned to the social studies-focused articles within this inclusion criteria.

Findings
In general, my review found key differences across the dozens of articles that left important language undefined and important details of practice unclear for the reader.​​ The ambiguity of language and reporting on practice was particularly acute in social studies core practice teacher education literature, with some notable exceptions. Social Studies core practices, teacher education practice and scholarship furthermore face a set of questions that map back to long-standing tensions in the field. Whether core practices of teaching can emerge as a promising way to improve the study and practice of social studies teacher education remains to be seen.

Moreover, social studies teacher education that focuses on core practices share some common ground with English Language Arts in the sense that what counts as ‘core’ teaching practices are contested. Disagreement exists in terms of what teaching practices are core to social studies education because there is controversy over exactly what students ought to be doing in social studies classrooms. Articulating what core practices of teaching are, or ought to be, is grounded in particular visions of social studies and directly connected to the student practices that are valued in these visions of social studies classroom (Evans, 2004; Parker, 2010).

Significance
The language of practice that has long eluded teaching and teacher education will only be accomplished by the transparent reporting of teacher education context, rationale, relevant description of practice, and concurrent empirical investigations into the results of such practice. Such transparency and ambitious investigation into core practice-oriented social studies teacher education can serve teacher educators, teachers, and ultimately students in social studies classrooms.

Author

• Michael A. Neel, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author