Social Studies Research Paper

My Social Studies Philosophy Over the course of the semester I have had my eyes opened to the world of social studies education. I have had the idea of being a teacher since I was in high school myself. In this paper I will assess the questions of what social studies is, how it is taught, and how I will use all of these things in my classroom. The first question raised is what is social studies? The National Council for the Social Studies defines social studies as “Social studies is the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence”. (NCSS 1994, p 1). There are many domains under the big title of social studies, the most common domains that are taught in Ohio are American History, Modern World History,

There are many ways to teach social studies content, although there are few that I have noticed that are better suited for social studies. The best practices for teaching social studies are to teach with the students’ abilities -as well as their attention span- in mind. Cantrell, in his article Using a Variety of Teaching Methods and Strategies, discussed the five ways that instructors teach content to students. The five ways Cantrell discussed were exposition, discussion, demonstration, guided discovery, and open inquiry. Exposition is lecturing to the class, mostly all interactions in class is done by the teacher or presenter, this can be a video, fact sheets, or computer assisted instruction. Discussion is self-explanatory, the teacher splits the class into groups and gives the students, examples are small/large groups. Demonstration, like discussion, is self-explanatory. Show the students what a concept is, step by step procedures, and models are examples of demonstration. Guided discovery is something that the instructor facilitates but does not engage in guided discovery activities are games and role playing. Open Inquiry is all student based, learner-centered investigation, surveys or questionnaires. (Cantrell n.d. p