CANADIAN SOCIAL STUDIES
VOLUME 39 NUMBER 1, FALL 2004
www.quasar.ualberta.ca/css
Social Studies Research and Teaching in Elementary Schools.
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From the Editor
This issue of Canadian Social Studies focuses
on social studies research and teaching in elementary schools. The
four articles that make up this special issue cover a variety of topics
ranging from an examination of the use of technology in the early
grades to an investigation of how legal studies and the processes
of jurisprudence might be incorporated into elementary social studies.
Taken together, I think these different pieces represent two complementary
trends in contemporary social studies scholarship in elementary education.
On one hand the articles in the issue are a confirmation
of the diversity and quality of the scholarly work currently being
undertaken by researchers in elementary social studies. On the other,
this same diversity of approach, coupled with the authors' appreciation
for the multi-faceted and complex ways in which elementary students
engage issues and understand concepts in social studies challenges
traditional learning theories constructed on the linear and limiting
"expanding horizons" model of the discipline.
As evidence of the two trends I note above, in this
issue Linda Farr Darling examines how children's literature can be
used to help to teach about children's rights as they were declared
at the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Wanda Cassidy's article
proposes innovative strategies for addressing social studies topics
and promoting critical thinking objectives using law. In her piece
on the use of the Internet in elementary social studies, Susan Gibson
suggests that the use of such activities as WebQuest can help students
develop the critical thinking and analytic skills that are fundamental
to the aims of social studies. Finally, Amy von Heyking's exploration
of new research on historical thinking asks us to reconsider how we
approach teaching history in elementary education.
George Richardson