College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for State Social Studies Standards

The C3 Framework (National Council for the Social Studies, 2013) ushered in an important opportunity to articulate a common vernacular for and a curricular approach to inquiry. Featuring four distinct but inter-connected dimensions, the C3 Inquiry Arc lays out a process for supporting students to ask questions about our social world, use concepts and tools from the disciplines that make up social studies, analyze and argue about what they have learned, and apply that knowledge to the challenges that face our world today.

Learn more at https://www.socialstudies.org/c3


Teaching Social Studies: A Methods Book for Methods Teachers

This innovative methods book features short tasks designed to take preservice teachers deep into schools in general and into social studies education in particular. Organized around Joseph Schwab’s commonplaces of education and recognizing the role of inquiry as a preferred pedagogy in social studies, the book offers a series of short chapters that highlight learners and learning, subject matter, teachers and teaching, and school context.

Available from Amazon HERE


Teaching the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework: Exploring Inquiry-Based Instruction in Social Studies

Part I of our Teaching the C3 series consists of model lessons contributed by 15 social studies curricular organizations. Each lesson encompasses the whole of the C3 Inquiry Arc from questioning to action, engages students in a meaningful content experience that fits a typical curriculum, and needs between 2 and 5 days of instruction. There are lessons for all grade bands from K-2 to 9-12.

Published in conjunction with the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). Learn more HERE


Teaching the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework, Part 2.

The powerful social studies inquiries in this book bring the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework to life. They are based on the Inquiry Design Model (IDM), a curricular approach that animates social studies standards and integrates the four dimensions of the C3 Inquiry Arc.

The editors of this book invited outstanding social studies curricular organizations to take the “IDM challenge” and contribute units based on IDM blueprints about topics that are central to K-12 social studies. The resulting inquiries cover an impressive range of subjects: teaching students about the concept of money and how to understand maps; engaging students in historical investigations of Indian Removal, slavery and the failure of Reconstruction, and the Holocaust; exploring social changes such as the historical impact of bicycles and the present-day effects of the use of robots in manufacturing; and dealing with current issues such as gun control, media literacy, the minimum wage, and the controversy over school bathrooms. We are pleased to feature inquiries from an impressive array of organizations and colleagues in the collaborative spirit of the C3 Framework.

  • Digital Public Library of America
  • Echoes and Reflections
  • Facing History and Ourselves
  • Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
  • Ford’s Theater
  • National Constitution Center
  • National Geographic Society
  • National Museum of American History
  • National Museum of the American Indian
  • Project Look Sharp
  • Teaching Tolerance
  • University of Delaware Center for Economic Education
  • Virginia Commonwealth University Center for Economic Education

This book is a companion volume to the popular NCSS publication, Teaching the C3 Framework. Published in conjunction with the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), the Teaching the C3 books are available from the NCSS store HERE

Should we tax robots? A sample blueprint from the book is available HERE.


Inquiry-Based Global Learning in the K–12 Social Studies Classroom

Edited By Brad M. Maguth, Gloria Wu

This book, edited by experienced scholars in the field, brings together a diverse array of educators to showcase lessons, activities, and instructional strategies that advance inquiry-oriented global learning. Directly aligned to the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standard, this work highlights ways in which global learning can seamlessly be interwoven into the disciplines of history, economics, geography, civics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Recently adopted by the National Council for the Social Studies, the nation’s largest professional organization of history and social studies teachers, the C3 Framework prioritizes inquiry-oriented learning experiences across the social studies disciplines in order to advance critical thinking, problem solving, and participatory skills for engaged citizenship.

Available from Routledge here


Race Lessons: Using Inquiry to Teach About Race in Social Studies

Addressing the space between the theoretical and the practical, this edited book provides teachers and teacher educators with concrete lesson ideas for how to engage learners with social studies content and race. This work is unique in that it represents an attempt to use Critical Race Theory and inquiry pedagogy (Inquiry Design Model) to teach about race in the social science disciplines.

http://www.infoagepub.com/products/Race-Lessons

Edited by:
Prentice T. Chandler, Austin Peay State University
Todd S. Hawley, Kent State University