Teaching Article III: Analyzing Representations of Supreme Court Cases in Secondary Social Studies Standards

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 5:10 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Intersecting Histories, Ideologies, and Identities: Unpacking Curriculum Representations in Social Studies Education (Table 9)

Abstract

Though the U.S. public has paid increasing attention to the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) recently, social studies education research has not broadly attended to what is taught about the Court in K-12 schools. In this study, we drew on Eisner’s (1985) explicit, implicit, and null curricula to analyze the secondary social studies standards about SCOTUS cases for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Findings suggest the specific cases named in standards imply a teleological narrative of progress and paint the Court as an objective, apolitical expander of civil rights and liberties. This paper marks the first extensive examination of SCOTUS cases in state standards in decades, and illuminates misunderstandings about the Court which may arise from these standards.

Authors

• Rebecca Cooper Geller, University of Georgia

• Joseph Adam Schultz, University of Georgia