Teaching for Justice in the Social Studies Classroom: Millions of Intricate Moves

Are you attempting to make the move from traditional textbooks and lessons to a more issue-centered, interdisciplinary social studies curriculum? If so, Andra Makler and Ruth Hubbard can help make that move possible. In Teaching for Justice in the Social Studies Classroom, they and seventeen other teachers describe how to focus on teaching for and toward justice, with critical pedagogy as an undergirding theme.

The authors of these essays are all dedicated educators who blend powerful curriculum with the genuine voices and needs of their students. Some are veteran teachers and writers, such as Bill Bigelow, Linda Christensen, Mary Burke-Hengen. Others are experienced teachers who have never written about their classrooms before, but are ready to share their expertise and curriculum with their peers. A few are novice teachers, whose stories challenge the notion that it is too difficult for beginning teachers to do more than survive. Their classroom stories show you the importance of moving beyond a focus on injustice and outrage to considering what justice might require in a given situation, what justice looks like, and how complex and difficult it is to achieve.

At the heart of the book is the importance of knowing your subject well and framing curriculum in a way that does justice to the concepts under discussion. Equally important is the idea that who your students are matters and that you must take both of these considerations into account in your planning and teaching.