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Abstract

The constructivist framework provides elementary school teachers with pedagogical guidance and professional support particularly effective for teaching and learning social studies benefiting both their young learners and their preservice teachers. Research conducted with approximately 100 elementary school teachers produced three key conditions for applying the constructivist framework competently to social studies education. Findings from this research revealed that elementary school teachers believe that foremost they must he cognizant of and proficient in their: (1) knowledge, skills, and attitudes of social studies content and purposes, (2) understanding for developing social studies curriculum and methods for communicating the social studies effectively both independently and integrated across the curriculum, and (3) pedagogical expertise for designing and facilitating meaningful social studies instruction formally and informally. The teachers in this study overwhelmingly reported that, based upon their experiences, none of these areas nor the constructivist framework is highly valued nor adequately supported by their school districts and building administrators, which greatly impacts their success with both their young learners and their preservice teachers.

DOI

10.15760/nwjte.2002.2.1.5

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/25576

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