The Guide to Curriculum in Education illuminates how four commonplaces of curriculum--subject matter, teachers, learners, and milieu--are interdependent and interconnected in curriculum making and the ties between and controversies over public debate, policy making, university scholarship, and school practice in defining and developing curricula. Complex traditions of curriculum scholarship are traced to illuminate curriculum ideas, issues, perspectives, and possibilities. A major goal is to highlight and explicate how subject matter, teachers, learners, and context or environment are interdependent and interconnected in decision-making processes that involve local and state school boards and government agencies, educational institutions, and curriculum stakeholders at all levels. Key Features: • Organized around four parts as articulated by curriculum scholar Joseph J. Schwab: subject matter, teachers, learners, and milieu • Brief, objective chapters of 5,000 words each provide student readers with more depth than found in an encyclopedia entry • Chapters focus on key contemporary concerns and provide Further Reading suggestions for students wishing to explore a topic in more detail • The Guide focuses on 55 topical chapters organized in four parts: Subject Matter as Curriculum, Teachers as Curriculum, Students as Curriculum, and Milieu as Curriculum This guide will serve as a general, non-technical resource for students and researchers within education programs who seek to better understand the four commonplaces of curriculum and how it influences various aspects within the field of education.

Subject Matters of Social Studies

Subject matters of social studies
Yoonjung ChoiKathryn Wegner

For nearly 100 years social studies has been a vital part of school curricula across the United States. The century saw the definition, nature, purpose, and content of social studies subjected to endless debate, or “wars” (Evans, 2004), while its inclusion in the school curriculum was rarely questioned. But now in the 21st century the very existence of social studies as a school subject is uncertain, which also threatens the viability of research on social studies curriculum.

First conceived by a National Education Association (NEA) committee, social studies was defined in its 1916 report as subject matter within history, geography, and the social sciences that promoted citizenship and invigorated democracy (U.S. Bureau of Education, ...

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