The Journal of Social Studies Research

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of American history among adolescent Mexican Americans at the eight-grade level in a mid-west town's middle school. This qualitative study shows that multiple contexts influenced the process of teaching and learning history between and among a white teacher and adolescent Mexican Americans at Atkinson Middle School. Those overlapping contexts (the context of the education of minority language students, the context of social studies education, and the school's culture) created a unique totality resonsible for shaping the experiences of learning American history by Mexican-American students. These experiences were detrimental for the appreciation by Mexican-American students of American history's potential meaning(s) and significance.

As part of a larger study of children's knowledge and thinking about the topic of shelter, individual interviews were conducted with 216 K-3 students, stratified according to grade, socioeconomic status, achievement level, and gender. The interviews included questions about the physical characteristics and geographical locations of the types of homes in which the children would prefer to reside as adults. Analyses indicated that most students depicted single family homes located in suburban or semi-rural areas, near relatives and friends but removed from urban density and crime. Overall, the students emphasized many of the same home features and location considerations that their parents might have mentioned in response to the same questions, except that many responses emphasized home features that have special relevance for young children and only a few students talked about locating near the parents' workplaces or the children's schools. Findings are discussed with reference to curriculum and instruction in the primary grades.

The social studies has a wealth of opportunity and the responsibility to create equitable learning environments for diverse populations. It is a discipline well suited for the introduction of versatile pedagogy by culturally competent social studies instructors who adapt to students' cognitive abilities and behavioral aptitude. Perhaps no group is in greater need of specialized learning opportunities than the subjects of this study, African American males living in foster care.

Past studies have shown that African American males in general and African American males in foster care in particular are lagging behind other children in the classroom (Dubowitz & Sawyer, 1994; Meeh, 1994; James-Brown, 1995). An aggregate of factors may be responsible for the academic struggles of African American males, including poor ecological conditions in the home and neighborhood, feelings of inferiority, lack of compatibility between preferred learning styles and teacher instructional methods, and ambiguous teacher posturing. African American males in foster care face similar impediments to academic success plus additional obstacles associated with living in foster care. Research has shown that this group is over represented and under serviced members of the child welfare system (Woodley-Brown & Bailey-Etta, 1997).

This study examined impediments to academic achievement for African American males in foster care. Data was collected from the Ohio Proficiency Test and from questionnaires distributed to foster parents and social workers. Test scores for African American males in foster care were compared with test scores for a number of other groups on the fourth, sixth, and ninth grade proficiency tests. Questionnaires asked foster parents and social workers to rate the impact of various aspects of foster care on academic achievement for African American males in foster care.

The study found that African American males in foster care achieved consistently lower scores than the comparison groups on most portions of the proficiency test, and differences were significant in many cases.

This study explores the question of how social studies education researchers might more fully engage novice social studies teachers in research. Utilizing an action research framework, the author investigates the nexus between recently published topics in social studies research and salient instructional problems perceived by a sample of novice social studies teachers. The results suggest that university researchers may have to collaborate more closely with teachers to identify areas of shared concern.