A Position Statement of National Council for the Social Studies Approved 2013 Introduction As Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann, John Dewey and other great educators understood, public schools do not serve a public so much as create a public.1 The goal of schooling, therefore, is not merely preparation for citizenship, but citizenship itself; to equip a citizenry with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed for active and engaged civic life. The National Council for the Social Studies firmly agrees with this premise and believes that no other subject area is better suited to achieve…

Standardized test items, and summative classroom tests that look like them (e.g., multiple choice questions about historical details), are rather limited in giving us good data about students' thinking and engagement.  If we want to cultivate 21st-century, cognitive habits of mind among our students, we need better assessment tools to help us see if our teaching practices actually promote them.  This investigation focuses on designing those “better tools” (e.g., performance-based assessments) by providing some examples of how to construct them, put them to use in the classroom, gather…

This sampler of websites represents a few of the resources available for exploring the political, economic, and social rights spelled out in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Podcasts may be useful in the classroom, but teachers need to consider the instructional purpose andcontext within which they areused.

When economics is integrated into the study of history, students gain a much deeper understanding of the way in which monetary policies changed in the decades before the Great Depression.

Tina M. Ellsworth, Northwest Missouri State University

African American history museums are valuable resources for challenging, complementing, or extending the information about Africa that students see in school and society.

The history of American antitrust laws, explored in this interview, can introduce students to the globalization of markets, trade, and legal governance

This guided inquiry walks teachers through the steps to help students understand a societal problem, assess possible actions, and move to civic action.