SOCIAL-STUDIES - EDUCATIONAL-TOOLS FOR DIVERSE LEARNERS

The first section of this article presents a historical overview of so cial studies and the issues that have led to emerging reform efforts. The second section describes current social studies instructional prac tices from the perspective of the educational needs of diverse learner s. The section includes a critique of the content, design, and difficu lty of textbooks, although similar concerns can be raised for the full array of educational tools (e.g., textbooks, videos, software, activi ties). The last section describes four attributes in social studies to ols that may help teachers solve some of the problems associated with current practices while trying to respond to the expectations of refor m in the context of increasing diversity in American schools: (a) teac hing the big ideas of social studies, (b) teaching conspicuous strateg ies for solving problems, (c) scaffolding the acquisition of meaningfu l learning, and (d) providing review that is sufficient, distributed o ver time, varied across contexts, and cumulative.