Social Studies Standards
Today, a high-quality and developmentally appropriate approach to social studies in early childhood is one that is integrated with other areas of the curriculum and includes experiences that are meaningful to children’s lives and understanding and are highly engaging (Seefeldt, 2001). The national standards focus not just on content knowledge but also on the skills and methods of social scientists, attitudes, and values. The preschool/primary classroom or group-care setting provides a natural environment from which to learn about democracy and practice citizenship. The Bank Street School, discussed in Chapter 2, has demonstrated this idea and social studies as the heart of the curriculum for nearly one hundred years.
The revised national standards released by NCSS in March 2010 continue to organize content around ten themes that reflect the variety of disciplines within the social studies:
- Culture
- Time, continuity, and change
- People, places, and environments
- Individual development and identity
- Individuals, groups, and institutions
- Power, authority, and governance
- Production, distribution, and consumption
- Science, technology, and society
- Global connections
- Civic ideals and practices
Early childhood educators and researchers have reservations about the developmental advisability of some standards and performance indicators that address abstract concepts such as time (history) and spatial relationships (geography) (Jantz & Seefeldt, 1999). But the NCSS explanations of each theme suggest “big ideas,” or avenues of inquiry teachers can explore with young children, that are developmentally appropriate, especially in curricular activities that focus on:
- The self in social settings
- Individuals in school and family life
- The neighborhood
- Sharing the planet with others (Jantz & Seefeldt, 1999; Mindes, 2005)
The remainder of this chapter will focus on inquiry themes and strategies early childhood educators can use to develop key concepts, skills, and values embedded in the NCSS standards.