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Graduate Courses in Social Studies

This course examines current and influential theory and research on social studies and history teaching, learning, and curriculum in K-12 education. This overview provides you with a grounding in reading and analyzing this literature, synthesizing ideas from across research, and applying research findings and interpretations to curriculum and educational practice, problems, and contexts. Course activities and assignments give you practice in critically evaluating this research and scholarship and applying research findings to instructional planning, curriculum design, professional development, or future academic inquiry.

Offered typically once a year (online)

Instructor: Dr. Scott Metzger

This course examines the educational uses, tensions, and implications of historically oriented media for teaching and learning historical literacy, focusing on adolescent and teenage learners in the context of K-12 schooling. Lessons support your understanding of historical literacy relevant to educational uses and culturally wider implications of media that are about or situated in the past. Course activities and assignments engage you in academic writing and exchanges of ideas about the educational potential as well as problems and cultural complications of historically oriented film and other media forms, such as music, art, documentaries, and video games.

Offered periodically through World Campus (online)

Instructor: Dr. Scott Metzger

This course studies academic and popular nonfiction history and their historical interpretations for application to K-12 teaching and curriculum. Lessons will immerse you in reading and analyzing historical nonfiction literature to form generalizations and reach conclusions that strengthen history teaching and learning in schools. Course activities and assignments will engage you in academic writing and exchanges of ideas on how to apply professional historical publications about important periods or themes in the past to the context of history education.

Offered typically once a year (online)

Instructor: Dr. Scott Metzger

This course explores notions of active citizenship—and, by extension, K-12 education for active citizenship. Lessons revolve around three essential questions: What kind of citizens does a 21st century democracy need? What should these citizens know, believe, and be able to do? What practices, programs, and structures in educational settings promote active citizenship? Activities and written assignments work to answer each of these questions, encouraging students to grapple with competing theories of citizenship that have shaped citizenship education programs in schools and universities.

Offered typically once a year (online)

Instructor: Dr. Stephanie Schroeder

Through a seminar format, we study conceptions of place and places—“place(s)”—from a diverse set of interdisciplinary perspectives, including our own, and consider what these mean for living, learning, and teaching. Readings draw from the fields of anthropology, curriculum, ecology, geography, indigenous thought, journalism, literature, philosophy, popular culture, and sociology, all intersecting with education. Assignments include personal reflection about lived place(s), critical analyses of place(s) texts, and a final project focused on one aspect or theme related to place(s) in education. 

Offered typically once a year at University Park (on-campus only)

Instructor: Dr. Mark Kissling

This course is an examination of foundations and practices of place-based education in schools with a focus on generating related curricula and/or policies. We engage a diverse range of texts that explain and espouse place-based education, some of which identify as place-based education and others that demonstrate implicitly the principles and practices of place-based education. We also engage local place-based educators to understand the nature of their work in settings near and familiar to us. Assignments include critical analyses of course texts, exploration of personal experiences in place-based education, facilitation of class dialogue, and a final project focused on development of curriculum or policy related to place-based education.

Offered typically once a year at University Park (on-campus only)

Instructor: Dr. Mark Kissling