Keywords in the Social Studies

Keywords in the Social Studies Synopsis

Keywords in the Social Studies takes words commonly used in social studies education and unsettles them in ways that will redefine the field for years to come. Throughout the book, leading and emerging scholars in social studies education experiment with keywords central to the field seen as either taken for granted (such as family and technology) or perennially contested (such as terrorism and freedom), offering readers new positions, approaches, and orientations to what is possible to teach in the social studies. Focusing on democratic ways of living and being in the world as citizens, this innovative collection offers chapters organized around twenty-six keywords and ten invited responses to survey the unsettled terrain we call "the social studies." Each chapter attends to a specific keyword selected for both its contemporary applicability to different aspects of K–12 social studies education and to its dominant presence in the curriculum thought that structures social studies education in classrooms, museums, and beyond. Drawing inspiration from Raymond Williams’ work on keywords in culture, over fifty authors discuss complex and contested components of each keyword by way of offering diverse accounts that range from autobiographical narratives to historical genealogies, from critical implications of specific curriculum texts to offering vignettes of classroom teaching that deploy a keyword concept in practice. Keywords in the Social Studies is timely and essential reading for graduate students and faculty in social studies education and curriculum studies; students and teacher candidates in undergraduate and graduate education courses; and practitioners teaching in schools, museums, and other spaces of learning.

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