TEACHING SOCIAL STUDIES THAT MATTERS
Curriculum for Active Learning

TEACHING SOCIAL STUDIES THAT MATTERS
Curriculum for Active Learning

TEACHING SOCIAL STUDIES THAT MATTERS
Curriculum for Active Learning

This book is about the teacher’s role as curricular-instructional gatekeeper and its ramifications for social studies curriculum, instructional planning, teaching, and teacher education. As gate- keepers, teachers make the educational decisions in the place where they ultimately count: the classroom (Thornton, 1991). That is, they make the day-to-day decisions concerning both the subject matter and the experiences to which pupils have access and the nature of that subject matter and those experiences. Gatekeeping encompasses the decisions teachers make about curriculum and instruction and the criteria they use to make those decisions. Curricular decisions are defined as decisions about appropriate teaching goals and experiences to reach them. Instructional deci- sions concern how to teach within some explicit or implicit frame of reference (Shaver, 1979). Since teacher enactment of curriculum is inevitable, teachers ought to be prepared to do it well.

Stephen J. Thornton