When Ben Zulauf started looking for a social studies curriculum just over two years ago, he wasn’t quite sure where to begin.
Zulauf, the director of literacy and social studies in the Cicero School District 99 outside of Chicago, had used third-party curriculum reviews when he had worked on an English/language arts curriculum adoption a few years earlier. The reports helped the district team identify where prospective programs lined up with standards and employed strong teaching practices.
The school board wanted him to use a similar tool for the social studies process. But there were far fewer available.
In part, that’s because social studies is the “forgotten stepchild” of core subjects, particularly in elementary schools, said Barbara Davidson, the executive director of the Knowledge Matters Campaign, an initiative out of the nonprofit StandardsWork that promotes the use of “knowledge-building” curricula in schools.
Federal data shows that schools spend more time on reading and math, subjects that are tested at the elementary level. And there are significant variations in states’ social studies standards, some of which more heavily prioritize content knowledge and others that focus on social studies practices, like learning how to sift through primary and secondary sources. Both factors make it harder to develop review tools, which district leaders now commonly use to evaluate curriculum options in ELA and math.
Now, Davidson’s organization has released a set of guidelines designed to step into that gap.
The “History Matters Review Tool” presents a series of criteria against which schools can assess social studies curriculum options for grades K-5. The guidelines focus primarily on how programs teach history and support students’ literacy skills.
But in focusing mostly on history content, the review tool presents a vision of social studies that looks different from how it’s often taught in elementary classrooms—and wades into values-laden questions about what the goals of the subject should be.
Social studies educators aim to balance skills and knowledge
Social studies is a vast discipline. Teaching basic economic principles, the critical civics knowledge how to register to vote, and world history, like pre-colonial Aztec culture, all fall under its purview.
Because of the field’s scope and diversity, and the relatively short amount of time most elementary and middle schoolers get for social studies in the school day, there have long been tensions about how to balance priorities.
Should teachers focus more on developing students’ ability to use social studies skills, like evaluating sources and using evidence? Or should they instead try to make sure that students leave their classroom with as much content knowledge as possible? How much time should schools spend on each of the different sub-disciplines: history, civics, economics, and geography?
Political considerations further complicate these questions. Red states and blue states tend to choose different required content to highlight in standards, said Tina Ellsworth, the president of the National Council for the Social Studies, or NCSS, the largest professional organization for social studies educators. And finally, secondary social studies tends to do more work with primary sources than elementary schools—in part because these sources are prioritized by certain sequences, like Advanced Placement courses.
The main guiding framework for social studies standards at the national level, published by NCSS in 2013, is the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework. It orients instruction around skills, or “dimensions,” like developing questions and communicating conclusions. One of the few other social studies review tools publicly available, published by the curriculum company InquirEd, also emphasizes skills and inquiry.
The Knowledge Matters Campaign takes a different tack.
“We’re making a pitch that social studies at the elementary level should be about history,” said Davidson.
The Knowledge Matters Campaign has advocated for what it calls “knowledge-building curriculum” since its launch in 2016. So far, most of this work has been in the reading space. The group has promoted curriculum programs that aim to build students’ understanding of the world through reading and writing, citing evidence that readers’ level of background knowledge is tied to their general reading comprehension abilities.
With its new review tool, the Knowledge Matters Campaign is making a similar argument about social studies. While all of the subject’s sub-disciplines are important, they write, “history is the foundation for them all; it provides the essential background knowledge needed to make sense of the others, the central framework through which they can be most effectively taught and understood.”
Criteria in the tool evaluate whether curricula build historical content knowledge and situate it in context; develop students’ abilities to inquire and reason about history; include a variety of text types and vocabulary; and provide regular opportunities for reading, writing, and discussion.
Guidelines don’t specify which historical events or time periods should be included, but the tool does say curricula should cover major political events, as well as “social, cultural, and economic dimensions of history—including everyday life, technological innovation, belief systems, and the arts.”
Lessons should include the “experiences and contributions of a wide range of individuals and groups, including those historically marginalized,” it states.
What should elementary social studies look like?
Some educators say this content-first framing could help them find curricula that would better prepare their elementary schoolers for middle and high school courses.
Elementary schools tend to prioritize some historical time periods over others, said Zulauf, the Illinois social studies director. By the time students in his district get to middle school, they’ve learned about the Civil War several times, Zulauf said. But there are other topics in U.S. history they’ve learned almost nothing about, he said, like the Cold War. Students are much less prepared for middle school lessons on that subject as a result, he said.
But Ellsworth, of NCSS, was more circumspect.
“It’s reassuring to see literacy experts recognizing the critical importance of social studies education in building a well-rounded, literate, democratic citizen,” she wrote, in an email.
But when asked about the tool’s focus on history, she referenced the NCSS position statement on teaching and learning in elementary social studies, which emphasizes that social studies should allow “learners to see the relevance and applicability of social studies topics in their daily lives.”
Ellsworth also noted that many curriculum providers align their materials to the C3 Framework.
Davidson acknowledged that the Knowledge Matters Campaign tool suggests a different approach to the subject. “Not everyone is going to want to move in this social studies direction,” she said.
But she hopes that its publication sends a signal to states and publishers that there’s room to be “more explicit” about what content students should learn.
