Learning to be fellow inquirers: Exploring students’ critical learning activity in an eighth-grade U.S. history classroom

2025/01/17 by Victoria Davis Smith, Kevin Russel Magill · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy #Global Education and Multiculturalism #Innovative Teaching Methodologies in Social Sciences

paper · doi:10.1080/00933104.2025.2451836

openalex publication_date 2025/01/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15

Abstract

In this article, we argue that social studies education research has yet to capture the practicality of social transformation as outlined by critical pedagogy. We use neo-Vygotskian scholarship to analyze the learning activity of an eighth-grade U.S. history classroom. Our findings reveal the multifaceted dimensions of students’ critical development and offer a more totalizing analysis of critical social studies education. We conclude with practical implications for teachers and teacher educators and an invitation to scholars interested in critical social studies education to do more to study the socially revolutionary roots of critical pedagogy empirically.

Citations

• Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern

Discussions

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