"It happens all day, every day": Exploring how student teachers describe and teach integrative elementary social studies
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- Author:
- Stebbins, Abigail
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 18, 2024
- Committee Members:
- Kimberly Powell, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies
Tiffany Nyachae, Major Field Member
Stephanie Schroeder, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Mark Kissling, Major Field Member
Tanner Vea, Outside Unit & Field Member - Keywords:
- elementary social studies
curriculum integration
everyday pedagogy
elementary teacher education
student teachers
multiple case study - Abstract:
- Elementary social studies is inherently integrative. As such, social studies education occurs throughout the school day within and beyond explicit social studies instruction. However, little is known about how pre-service teachers integrate elementary social studies in their student teaching placements. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore how student teachers described and taught elementary social studies that occurred throughout the school day. To do this, I drew from a conceptual framework of integrative and everyday social studies, which connects theoretical perspectives of curriculum, integration, and liminality with existing frameworks of everyday civics and social studies integration. I conducted a multiple case study with three student teachers placed in first grade classrooms in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Qualitative data were collected through classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and artifact collection. Using a combination of inductive and deductive analysis, findings revealed the student teachers integrated social studies in the explicit, implicit, and liminal curricula of the school day. These findings suggest the elementary classroom is ripe for integration; however, the student teachers’ attempts to integrate yielded mixed outcomes. Indeed, while social studies is ubiquitous in an elementary classroom, leveraging it into “healthy” integration (Hinde, 2015) is easier said than done. The findings of this study have scholarly and practical implications for teaching and teacher education, including expanding what is known about integrative and everyday social studies in the elementary classroom, how pre-service teachers conceptualize and teach integrative social studies, and barriers that impede healthy integration.