Current Teaching Methods in Social Studies

Over the course of the 1990s, the social-studies discipline underwent significant shifts in curricular and pedagogical emphasis. In 1994, the National Council for the Social Studies, the major umbrella organization serving the field, promulgated curriculum standards that were designed to foster "integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence" (White, 1997). The operative word in that definition of social studies is integrated, and it covers a whole range of pedagogical resources and learning techniques associated with the use of technology in general and telecommunications in particular. Accordingly, in addition to traditional media such as textbooks and classroom lecture, designed to transmit social-studies content, instructors would be encouraged and would encourage their students to use the World Wide Web, commercial software, and multimedia packages as information resources in order to obtain information and in

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the scope of civic competence, social awareness, and critical thinking among students, and it is consistent with the concept of constructing individual and community knowledge bases. Thus an important objective of a constructivist social-studies curriculum is to foster information and media literacy as a strategy of civic competence. Risinger (2001, p. 426) quotes a statement by one teacher that "this is a great time to be a social studies teacher," a reference to the abundance of technology-driven information resources that can help students understand the events of September 11, 2001. However, Risinger is skeptical of such a blanket statement, and Hobbs explains that it is important for students using Internet resources to learn how to "ask critical questions about what you watch, see, listen to, and read and . . . identify[] message's author, purpose, and point of view" (2001, p. 406). Implementation of the constructivist pedagogical approach in today's classroom is facilitated by the availability of high technology, which may involve everything from Internet- and presentation-software (PowerPoint)-ready computers to television-VCR-DVD-camera apparatus to multimedia packages. More and more classrooms are wired to the Internet,
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Approximate Word count = 2014
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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