Prepositional, Pedagogical, and Polarizing Troubling with/in the “Social” of the Social Studies classroom

• In Event: Emancipatory Social Studies Pedagogies

Abstract

Concerted aims and efforts toward justice-oriented, diverse, and critical scholarship, while simultaneously hoping for a re/engagement with K-12 institutions and practitioners addresses the research/ practice/ policy divide and higher education’s distant understanding of on-ground educational realities (Vaughan & Nuñez, 2020). In keeping with the conference theme, this paper seeks to trouble the function of “with” – as a relationship-creating preposition and its role with/in the “Social” of the American Social Studies classroom and one South Carolina-based Social Studies teacher’s subjectivity (Kate) amid deepening polarization. We engage with what it means to teach and be(come) with the “Social” of “Social Studies” in the hopes of re/engaging with the relational “social” with/in, between, and beyond the Social Studies and K-12 and higher educational institutions (Kuby, 2019).

Authors

• Angela Kraemer-Holland, Kansas State University

• Kate Dodd, Kansas State University