Steven P. Camicia

Deciding What Is a Controversial Issue: A Case Study of Social Studies Curriculum Controversy

Frame analysis was used to examine how competing stakeholders framed a sixth grade curriculum controversy over whether the WWII internment of Japanese Americans should be categorized as a controversial issue. Teachers and administrators in a northwestern U.S. school claimed that the internment was clearly wrong and not controversial, but these claims were challenged by a small group of activists. Three data sets were analyzed: 11 semi-structured interviews, 40 public documents, and curriculum materials. Although activists could not change the schools claims, they were able to change the curriculum. Findings illustrate the ways that stakeholders in social studies curriculum controversies negotiate whether an issue should be categorized as controversial. Categorizations were dynamic and contingent on historical, contemporary, and ideological contexts.

What type of global community and citizenship? Tangled discourses of neoliberalism and critical democracy in curriculum and its reform

Countries around the globe are responding to the pressures of globalisation, standardisation, accountability and market rationality. In curriculum reform, we theorise these pressures as neoliberal cosmopolitanism because they are intended to promote a new type of entrepreneurial citizen that navigates an increasingly interconnected global community. However, there is resistance to these pressures by educators who promote a global community based upon principles of critical democracy and multiculturalism. Because public schools are a powerful regulatory force in society, this curriculum struggle between neoliberal and democratic intents is increasingly significant. It is a struggle that defines the size, scope and qualities of our future global community. We used principles of critical discourse analysis to examine brief examples in two countries, the Philippines and the United Kingdom. Our examination illustrates how, although these countries have very different contexts, curriculum often sends competing messages related to neoliberal and democratic intents. Our analysis has implications for curriculum reform and changing understandings of our global community.

Deliberating immigration policy: Locating instructional materials within global and multicultural perspectives

Abstract Numerous theorists have identified a need for students to learn to solve global concerns in an increasingly interconnected world. The issue of immigration policy is one such concern. This study analyzed the texts of two programs teaching deliberation and U.S. immigration policy. The purpose of the study was to analyze instructional materials that are deliberative in structure and identify the range of deliberative stances regarding global, nation-bound, multicultural, and mainstream perspectives in order to detect overarching ideological stances. A narrow range of deliberative stances or perspectives was indicative of an overarching ideological stance. Findings suggest that both sets of instructional materials studied are predominantly nation-bound in perspective; National Issues Forums contains mainstream perspectives of immigration policy, while Choices for the 21st Century Education Program contains some “transformative” multicultural perspectives of immigration policy.

Cognitive Praxis in Today's "International Education" Movement: A Case Study of Intents and Affinities

We report a qualitative case study of interpretive activity inside the current wave of the “international education” movement in U.S. schools. We used a sociological framework to examine how competing interpretations are mobilized in relation to one another and to the urgent discourses of Globalization and Terror. Data were gathered in interviews of a sample of movement intellectuals—activists positioned between powerbrokers and school practitioners. We found a diverse set of interpretations that were spread across a two-dimensional framework with four quadrants: intent (civic and enterprise) and affinity (national and global). We conclude that the cognitive praxis of this sample extends prior patterns—it is plural and contentious, and national security plays a central role. Within these tendencies, however, are features unique to the current wave. We end with implications for the social studies field.

Identifying Soft Democratic Education: Uncovering the Range of Civic and Cultural Choices in Instructional Materials

Although student deliberation of public issues is recognized as a vital component of democratic education, little research focuses on the range of perspectives available to students during such deliberation. Social justice and legitimacy demand a wide range of inclusion, choices, and perspectives during student deliberation. This article contrasts soft versus deliberative democratic education, where the range of perspectives is correspondingly narrow or broad. Unfortunately, research shows that social studies textbooks promote soft democratic education by privileging dominant cultural representations, ideologies, and metanarratives of American exceptionality. This article presents content analysis as a method for identifying the range of civic and cultural perspectives in curricula. Once these perspectives are identified, social studies educators can revise curricula to increase inclusion and strengthen student deliberation. To illustrate this method, the author examines two sets of instructional materials. While on opposite opposite sides of the ideological spectrum, the sets are similar in their narrow range of perspectives concerning controversial public issues.

A New Childhood Social Studies Curriculum for a New Generation of Citizenship

Traditional concepts of civic education in the United States and the expanding horizons curriculum scope and sequence are challenged by globalization and transnationality because new understandings of citizenship are emerging. In our conceptual analysis, we reconceptualize social studies curriculum for childhood to meet these changes. First, we propose a theoretical framework synthesizing literature in the areas of multicultural, global, and democratic education. Second, we propose opening curriculum and research to the voices of students, especially transnational students. Such reconceptualizations have important implications for a social studies curriculum for childhood that is socially just and responsive to the changing sizes, types, and qualities of the communities with which students engage.

Examining Justice in Social Studies Research

Our article is an extension of a project involving a content analysis of two social studies journals, Theory and Research in Social Education (TRSE) and The Social Studies. We performed an analysis on all articles in these journals from 2006-2016. Our findings from the analysis indicated a narrow frame of perspectives related to epistemologies and methodologies, and an increasing interest in examining a range of researcher and participant positionalities. We interpreted the range of perspectives in social studies journals in light of the possible impact upon democratic education and social justice through Sen’s (2009) framework for theorizing justice. We illustrate aspects of this framework by presenting positionality and autoethnography as methods for increasing epistemologies and perspectives in social studies education and research. Concepts, Ideas, People Positionality, Autoethnography, Justice, Amartya Sen, Social Studies Education Epistemologies, Methods, and Theories Content Analysis, Poststructuralism, Critical Pragmatism This article is available in Pedagogy & (Im)Possibilities across Education Research (PIPER): https://newprairiepress.org/piper/vol1/iss1/3 For over a century, the purpose and substance of social studies education has been under intense scrutiny (Evans, 2004). Scholars have long attempted to frame the nature of the social studies by placing it within specific categories, through, for example, various legal and political approaches, by traditional curriculum designs, and by emphasizing focus on traditional subjects such as history (Oliver & Shaver, 1966; Butts, 1988; Crabtree, 1989). Many contemporary scholars have employed counter approaches – non-categorized, critical and more deliberative approaches to the same subject matter, often as a means to increase the inclusiveness and diversity of the curriculum (e.g. Camicia, 2016; Schmidt, 2010; Loutzenheiser, 2006; Dilworth, 2006). Social studies educational research resembles the larger social studies field with competing conceptions of what should be the focus and purpose of its perspectives, for developing and furthering the knowledge of the field. Since the social studies comprise several different social science disciplines, which all have their own inquiry and methodological traditions, the field as a whole often gravitates to broad foci and purposes that can link the disciplines in purpose, such as multicultural education or social justice education. In this article, we will examine social studies education research methodologies through a lens of justice to analyze the field’s broad foci and purposes as demonstrated through its publications. From this analysis, we will draw upon an ethics of recognition to offer several ways for social studies education research to better address injustices, as a field, through our research. As social studies teacher educators and researchers, we are deeply invested in the current trends and future directions of our field, especially in working toward justice. We examined Theory & Research in Social Education (TRSE) and The Social Studies (TSS) to help us develop a theoretical framework related to the increasing justice in social studies curriculum and research. The choice of TRSE and The Social Studies was not meant to be representative of the entire field of journals but provide only a snapshot of two prominent journals in social studies. We chose TRSE because it is the affiliated research journal with NCSS and CUFA. After his analysis of TRSE issues from 1973 to 1997, Ehman (1998) noted that “TRSE is used as a source of trends in social studies education inquiry over the past 25 years” (p. 238). We chose The Social Studies because it represents a blend of articles on research and practice. We analyzed our findings related to the range of perspectives in social studies journals through the lens of Amartya Sen’s (2009) theory of justice to consider the generative purpose of the methodologies and perspectives for furthering justice and/or retreating injustices in social studies education. Using Sen’s framework, we identified significant trends within the social studies educational research community as reflected in the two journals. From these trends, we asked, what do the illustrations from our field, as indicated by analysis of top journals, tell us about our field’s orientation toward justice? We used Sen’s (2009) theory of justice to analyze social studies research methodologies because of his inductive approach. As an influential and world-renown economist, Sen has consistently confronted modern theories, as well as the roles of institutions in society. His theory of justice departs from top-down notions of purpose that define justice and reimagine a purpose for research 1 Clark and Camicia: Examining Justice in Social Studies Research Published by New Prairie Press, 2017 in which justice is defined by a wide range of positionalities and perspectives from participants in research. Sen’s approach toward justice is imbued with a respect for context, focused on the present, and real-world situations in which injustice may exist. His approach allowed us to think about ways of making social studies research a means for shaping justice, instead of exemplifying or illustrating established definitions of justice. We interpreted our content analysis findings within the context of Sen’s (2009) approach. Our content analysis provided a basis for identifying the implications of Sen’s theory of justice for social studies educational research. His approach prominently defines a theory of justice that attends well to Cochran-Smith’s (2009) teacher education framework that emphasizes the need for both distribution and recognition of justice, instead of only distribution by institutions (see Cochran-Smith (2009) for full articulation of the framework). We paid particular attention to the spaces created for students’, teachers’, and researchers’ positionalities as elements of justice and relational ethics to increase recognition. We also find autoethnography to be a responsive example of methodology that fosters these spaces in social studies classrooms and educational research. For example, Méndez (2013) wrote, “Through reading a cultural or social account of an experience, some may become aware of realities that have not been thought of before, which makes autoethnography a valuable form of inquiry” (p. 282). By valuing these accounts from a variety of positionalities and perspectives, we propose that social studies education can become more inclusive, democratic, and just. In this way, the experiences of individuals form the basis for inquiry from different disciplinary lenses, and social justice based upon experiences becomes the point of departure and return for social studies. The popular need to move toward increasing perspectives in social studies educational research is illustrated by attention to the ways that instructional materials and curriculum frameworks exclude positionalities and perspectives from the curriculum. The following provide illustrations of exclusions or misrepresentations that serve to reinforce social inequalities. Brown and Brown (2010) found that the 5 and 8 grade U.S. history textbooks’ “representations fall short of adequately illustrating how racial violence operated systematically to oppress and curtail African Americans’ opportunities and social mobility in the United States,” and this failure of “limited representation of racial violence has an adverse effect on the larger sociocultural memory and sociocultural knowledge available to students, thus limiting the extent to which all students can truly understand the historical significance of racial inequities” (p. 150). In their analysis of U.S. history standards in four states, Anderson and Metzger (2011) write, that the standards represented an overly simplistic view of history that failed “to consider that attitudes about slavery existed on a continuum at the time and that slavery was a deeply entrenched economic, political, and social institution and not just a moral failing on the part of individuals.” (p. 407). In his examination of Support Documents for 11 grade U.S. history courses in South Carolina, Eargle (2016) found “the Support Document does not offer a complete narrative of slavery and African Americans, 2 Pedagogy & (Im)Possibilities across Education Research (PIPER), Vol. 1 [2017], Iss. 1, Art. 3 https://newprairiepress.org/piper/vol1/iss1/3 DOI: 10.4148/2576-5795.1004 perpetuates a negative image of African Americans, excludes themes of African American heroism, and maintains myths related to slavery” (p. 295). Those who are marginalized in and by the social studies curriculum are unable to find positionality historically, or a sense of identity within the curriculum (Heafner & Fitchett, 2017; Salinas, 2006; VanSledright, 2002). The narrow range of perspectives found in these studies serve to bolster an official knowledge and dominate narratives that reinforce social inequalities (Carlson, 2008). The mis/representations found in curriculum standards serve to locate historically marginalized positionalities in the margins of history. Journell (2009) examined the American history standards of nine states. The standards “leave little doubt that each state prescribes to a traditional version of history that identifies American Indians as victims and marginalizes them by failing to identify key individuals or examples of societal contributions” (p. 28). In their analysis of the curriculum standards of 50 states, Shear, Knowles, Soden, and Castro (2015) write that “standards overwhelmingly present Indigenous Peoples in a pre-1900 context and relegate the importance and presence of Indigenous Peoples to the distant past” (p. 68). In her study of U.S history standards, An writes (2016) “The invisibility of the Asian American experience in the official script of U.S. history sends a message that Asian Americans are