Category Archives: Social Studies

Research seminar at UWE Education and Childhood Research Group

I was delighted to have the opportunity to lead a research seminar with the Education and Childhood Research Group at the University of the West of England in Bristol this week.

The seminar was titled “Critical Social Education: Insurgent Pedagogies & Dangerous Citizenship” and explored how social studies education in the Americas is being used to contribute in significant ways to creating a society where individuals have the power and resources to realize their own potential and free themselves from the obstacles of classism, racism, sexism, and other inequalities often encouraged by schools, the state, and oppressive ideologies.

The seminar also framed the role and nature of social studies education in the Americas, with an emphasis on critical perspectives in the field, drawing on my recently published edited collection, The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems, and Possibilities (5th Edition, SUNY Press) as well other critical scholars including contributors to the book Insurgent Social Studies: Scholar-Educators Disrupting Erasure and Marginality (2022, Myers Education Press), edited by Natasha Hakimali Merchant, Sarah B. Shear and Wayne Au.

I also touched on related research on social studies in the Latin American context based on the book Social Studies Education in Latin America: Critical Perspectives from the Global South, which I edited with Sebastián Plá.

The ECRG is led by Alpesh Maisuria, Professor of Education Policy in Critical Education at UWE Bristol, who I thank for the opportunity.

I also want to thank UWE Bristol education Professor Jane Andrews for the chance to participate in their monthly reading group which discussed a recent chapter of mine titled “Society, Democracy, and Economics: Challenges for Social Studies and Citizenship Education in a Neoliberal World”. I enjoyed the lively and diverse discussion.

New online cohort M.Ed. in Social Studies Education at UBC: Curriculum, Historical inquiry, & Pedagogy (CHiP)

Master of Education: Curriculum, Historical inquiry, & Pedagogy (CHiP)

Issues of equity, diversity, and social justice serve as foundational lenses for interrogating social studies curriculum and pedagogy.

This graduate program delves into key aspects of social studies curricula with connections to historical thinking, historical consciousness, visual culture, anti-oppressive and anti-racism education, gender studies, moral education, and the history and politics of curriculum.

The cohort-based model invites you to work through the program in a collaborative community of practice. Students in this program will construct strong, foundational knowledge about teaching and learning in social studies. Building on that base, you will investigate the ways in which inquiry, inter-culturalism, and 21st century teaching and learning are central to social studies education.

By the end of the 26-month program, students will have a wealth of knowledge to share. During the first semester of the program, incoming students will have a chance to learn from graduating students though a mini conference where they will share what they have learned and consider how it can help other Social Studies teachers in their contexts.

This program is offered by the Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia

Start Date: July 2025
Length: 2.5 years | Part-Time
Format: Online

Objectives

Through the program, students will consider theories, principles, and practices in social studies education related to:

Critical analysis of dominant and alternative theories of learning, teaching, and assessment in Social Studies,
Improvement of practice through the study of educational theory, philosophy, and practice in Social Studies,
Analysis of different approaches to curriculum development and implementation and their impact on social studies teaching and learning,
The place of curriculum and pedagogy for social studies education in historical context, understanding the social, political, economic, and cultural factors that direct past, present, and future decision making, and
Using an inquiry stance toward your professional practice as an educator in a variety of settings.

Additionally, students will continually reflect on what they are learning and consider how it can help them understand the aims and purposes underlying social studies curricula in their contexts. This knowledge can then be used to inform new practices in their educational contexts.

More information here.

Video Interview: “Desafios e possibilidades para a educação histórica em um mundo neoliberal” / “Challenges and possibilities for history education in a neoliberal world”

In November 2022, I had the honour giving the keynote address at the National Meeting of Researchers in History Teaching (XIII Encontro Nacional de Pesquisadores do Ensino de História – XIII-ENPEH) organized by the Brazilian Association of History Teaching (Associação de Ensino de História – ABEH).

Subsequently, the talk — “Desafios e possibilidades para a educação histórica em um mundo neoliberal” / “Challenges and possibilities for historical education in a neoliberal world” — was published as a chapter in the book Os presentes do Ensino de História: (re)construções em novas bases / The gifts of History Teaching: (re)constructions on new bases, edited by Luis Cerri (State University of Ponta Grossa) and Juliana Alves Andrade (Federal University of Pernambuco).

Below is a a link to a video interview that was conducted last month with my Brazilian colleagues including professors Cerri and Andrade and the president of ABEH, Prof. Maria Lima (Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul). The interview covers quite a bit of territory including the politics of history and social studies education and their role in construction of a more democratic society, critical teaching and the dangers it entails, plus organizing and action for educational and social change.

The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems and Possibilities (5th Edition) — discount code

The fifth edition of The Social Studies Curriculum: Purposes, Problems, and Possibilities will be published later this year by State University of New York Press.

The Social Studies Curriculum, Fifth Edition updates the definitive overview of the issues teachers face when creating learning experiences for students in social studies. The book connects diverse elements of the social studies curriculum – social issues, history, cultural studies – offering a unique and critical perspective that separates it from other texts. The social studies curriculum is contested terrain both epistemologically and politically and this completely updated book includes new chapters on politics of social studies curriculum, historical perspective, critical historical inquiry, Black education and critical race theory, whiteness and anti-racism, decolonial literacy and decolonizing the curriculum, gender and sexuality, Islamophobia, critical media literacy, evil in social studies, economics education, anarchism, children’s rights and Earth democracy, and citizenship education. Readers are encouraged to reconsider their assumptions and understandings of purposes, nature, and possibilities of the social studies curriculum.

Here’s a preview of the Table of Contents as as well as a a PDF of the book’s preface and introduction:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction: Curriculum Ideologies, Social Studies Traditions, and the Teacher-Curriculum Encounter
E. Wayne Ross

Part 1: Purposes of the Social Studies Curriculum

1. It is All Indoctrination: Power and the Impossibility of Apolitical Social Studies Curriculum
Wayne Au

2. A Curricular Reading of Historical Perspective, Agency, and Viral Futures in Social Education
Kent den Heyer

3. A Critical Media Literacy Analysis of Social Studies Education
Emil Marmol

Part II: Social Issues and the Social Studies Curriculum

4. Beyond the Nation-State: A Foundational and Black Diasporic Examination of the Politics of Black Educational Curriculum
Christopher Busey & Tianna Dowie-Chin

5. The Politics of Black History in the United States: Black History Mandates and Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws
LaGarrett J. King, Brianne Pitts & Daniel Tulino

6. Does Social Studies Want to be Anti-Racist? Thoughts on Decentering Whiteness in Curriculum
Andrea M. Hawkman

7. Social Studies as a site for Building Decolonial Literacy
Shannon Leddy

8.Settler Social Studies: On Disappointment and Hope for the Future
Sarah Shear & Leilani Sabzalian

9. A Queer Agenda for Gender<>Sexuality and Social Education
Sandra J. Schmidt

10. Responding to Islamophobia in the Classroom
Özlem Sensoy

Part III: The Social Studies Curriculum in Practice

11. Critical Historical Inquiry: Disrupting the Dominant Narrative
Cinthia Salinas & Brooke Blevins

12.Studying Evil in Social Studies
Cathryn van Kessel

13. Does She Even Go Here? Economics and its Place in Social Studies Education
Erin C. Adams

14.An Eco-Anarchic Social Studies: Teaching for Children’s Rights and Earth Democracy
Brandon Edwards-Schuth & John Lupinacci

15.Teaching for Critically Engaged Denizenship: Lessons from Morocco on Teaching for an Empowered Other Civic Status
Jennice McCafferty Wright

16.Dangerous Citizenship
E. Wayne Ross

Part IV: Afterword

17. What is the Future of Social Studies Curriculum?
E. Wayne Ross

Keep the Israeli Government out of BC schools!

Via Teachers for Palestine BC:

BC parents and allies are coming together to demand that the BC Ministry of Education and the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) take action to protect BC’s education system from encroachment by the the Israeli government and their lobby groups in Canada.

Join the action by sending a letter through this campaign and sharing it in your networks!

For context:

In the past few weeks BC teachers, schools, and the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) have been unjustly smeared in the Globe & Mail and Vancouver Sun. The contents of these articles are mostly taken from a press release from CIJA (the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs), a lobby group with goals to ‘increase support for Israel’ and to ‘strengthen the Canada-Israel friendship’. They contend that:

1. That the BC Curriculum does NOT cover the Holocaust.

2. That unionized BC Teachers as part of the BCTF are refusing to teach about the Holocaust.

3. That the Ministry of Education should sideline existing working groups developing the next BC Curriculum – and let CIJA affiliated groups help develop curriculum for children in BC public schools instead.

While Holocaust education is important and new resources, which are in the process of being developed through the ministry, are always welcome, this is already a longstanding part of the BC curriculum and that BC teachers have been teaching about it across grade levels. The raising of this issue by CIJA in this specific moment largely plays the role of redirecting the conversation away from Israeli war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories. They are also about trying to push the controversial IHRA definition of anti-semitism, which is contested in Jewish communities for being vague and silencing of criticism of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian people.

To date, the BCTF and the Ministry of Education have done nothing to defend BC teachers, the system of education, or the BCTF’s internal democratic processes from CIJA’s smears and interference. Our students deserve better from our education leaders! Be part of demanding that they take appropriate action by:

1. Calling out allegations made by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) against BC public schools as false.

2. Sending a letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail demanding the retraction of an inflammatory and egregiously false article about the BC curriculum.

3. Affirming that no prejudice, including Anti-Palestinian Racism has any place in BC Schools, public media, or our society.

4. Commiting to the public that no more private meetings and negotiations between the Ministry of Education or BCTF and CIJA will take place without the presence of Canadian groups that represent other Jewish voices, such as Independent Jewish Voices or the Jewish Faculty Network.

Thank you for demanding better from our education leaders by sending a letter through this campaign or sending your own personalized message!

Socio-economic and political education in schools and universities

Economy, society and politics: Socio-economic and political education in schools and universities, edited by Christian Fridrich, Udo Hagedorn, Reinhold Hedtke, Philipp Mittnik, Georg Tafner is a new English language edition of a book originally published in 2021, Wirtschaft, gesellschaf und politick: Sozioökonomische und politische bildung in schule und hochschule.

The interconnections of economy, society and politics so obviously determine socio-economic and political structures and problem situations, current ways of thinking and acting as well as the collective perception of solution options that their still low attention in university teaching and school education is surprising. Phenomena such as pandemics, climate change, migration or authoritarianism make the close, complex and contradictory connections between economy, society and politics tangible. Against this background, socioeconomic research, teaching and education are urgently needed.

The volume aims to contribute to this by presenting research contributions on problem complexes such as economy and democracy, perspectivity and multiperspectivity, situation, interest and politics, subject and subjectification, and discipline and curriculum.

The book originated from papers presented at a conference sponsored by the Association for Socio-Economic Education and Research [GSÖBW – Gesellschaft für Sozioökonomische Bildung und Wissenschaft] held at University College of Teacher Education Vienna [Pädagogische Hochschule Wien], Austria, in February 2020.

I was honoured to give one of the keynote talks at the GSÖBW in Vienna and my talk appears as one of the chapters in the new English edition (as well as the German edition).

Petition: Demand That the Nakba Be Added to the B.C. Curriculum

Demand That the Nakba Be Added to the B.C. Curriculum

Join us and sign the petition to get the Nakba in the B.C. curriculum!

With the ongoing genocide in Gaza, colonization of Palestine, and widespread misinformation, it is time that the Ministry of Education add the Nakba to the B.C. elementary and secondary Social Studies curricula.

The Nakba, or “catastrophe,” which took place between 1947 and 1949, was the violent dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that led to the creation of the state of Israel. Over 700,000 Palestinians were forcefully expelled from their homes, more than 15,000 were massacred, and over 500 of their villages were destroyed. The Nakba is essential context to the history of Palestine and Israel, yet is seldom talked about in the West.

The B.C. Social Studies curricula focus on historical atrocities including the colonization of Turtle Island (North America), the Holocaust, and the Rwandan genocide, but there is no mention whatsoever of the Nakba. To uphold our commitment to social justice, decolonization, and reconciliation, it is imperative that we ensure students do not leave the education system completely ignorant of the history of Palestine and Israel. We cannot have yet another generation grow up believing it’s “too complicated” or “too sensitive.” It is time we teach about the Nakba.

Demand that the Ministry of Education add the Nakba to the curriculum NOW.

Endorsed by:

Teachers 4 Palestine BC

Independent Jewish Voices Vancouver, Victoria, and UBC

Canada Palestine Association-Vancouver

BDS Vancouver-Coast Salish Territories

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network

Labour for Palestine Vancouver & Victoria

Palestinian Youth Movement Vancouver

Parents for Palestine

Freedom From War Coalition

This program is offered by the Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia

Objectives

Teach Palestine

May 15 at 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm CDT